A board without power

In the appalling letter that Bob Lyall, the Nunavut Planning Commission’s $148,000-a-year chair and CEO, sent to DIAND minister Andy Scott on May 10, the most pitiable sentence, perhaps, is the one that begins with these words:

“Pending further direction from you including whether or not consultation with NTI and GN is appropriate under these circumstances…”

In the fall of 1992, Nunavut’s entire political elite, except for one or two people, took part in a one-sided campaign aimed at persuading the Inuit of Nunavut to vote Yes in a referendum to ratify the Nunavut land claims agreement. Under this agreement, the Inuit of Nunavut surrendered about 82 per cent of their land to the federal government.

In exchange, they received all the things listed in the land claims agreement. That includes a system of environmental management boards called “institutions of public government,” such as the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Nunavut Water Board. The Nunavut Planning Commission is also one of those bodies.

When beneficiaries asked how they would control their land after surrendering it to the federal government, negotiators with the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut told them not to worry. They pointed to the system of environmental management boards, and promised beneficiaries that these boards would give Inuit effective control of Nunavut’s entire land base.

We now know that this promise was a lie. Thirteen years later, the highly-touted board system at the heart of that lie now smells like a whorehouse on a Sunday morning.

At best, it’s a shared management system that allows Inuit, and the public, to be consulted on some issues. At the very worst, it’s a system that surrenders effective control of the entire land base, for most environmental issues, to the federal government. The DIAND minister, the federal fisheries minister, other federal cabinet ministers, and sometimes territorial ministers hold veto rights over all management board recommendations. And regardless of who submits their names, it’s the federal government, and no one else, that appoints all members of these public government boards.

This explains why Lyall addresses Andy Scott, the DIAND minister, with the sort of words that a junior employee would use to address his boss – seeking “direction.” They’re the words of a subjugated person addressing his colonial master.

It also explains why he suggests that it’s Scott who should decide all on his own if the GN and NTI should be consulted. As co-partners in the Nunavut land claims agreement, we would expect that GN and NTI will be less than pleased about this.

Worst of all, Lyall’s May 10 letter to the DIAND minister, and the extreme dysfunction within the NPC, show that Nunavut’s public government management boards may be so disempowered, they don’t even have the legal right to control their own employees.

In all organizations, whether public or private, boards are supposed to represent the interests of the organization’s stakeholders. Management employees work for the board. To carry out their duties to the stakeholders, board members must be able to request, and receive, all information relevant to the organization’s work, especially financial information, including staff salaries and benefits. Boards normally have the right to censure, or dismiss with cause, any employee who does not carry out the board’s directions.

The NPC is not a private corporation. It’s a public body, and we pay for it through our taxes. The biggest stakeholder in the NPC, therefore, is the Canadian public.

But evidence contained in a variety of documents shows that the NPC’s board has not been able to protect the public interest, and not for lack of trying. When they became fully aware of their duties after a workshop this past February, the NPC’s board tried to do its job. The evidence shows that management resisted them at nearly every turn.

In a healthy system, a board is able, within the law, to meet, discuss such issues, and then vote to discipline or remove its chair.

But this is a sick system. The chair of the NPC is appointed by the minister of DIAND, not the board. Even though the chair of the NPC appears to have lost the confidence of his board, the board has no legal right to remove him. Lyall has the legal right to prevent the board from meeting. And Lyall even has the legal right to ask his colonial master, Andy Scott, to protect him from a board that is trying to do its duty on behalf of the public, the Inuit of Nunavut, and the GN.

This outrageous situation, could, theoretically, occur in any of the other public government management boards in Nunavut. Given the innate corruptibility of most human beings, it probably will – all because the Inuit of Nunavut voted Yes to a lie. JB