A weakened public service

Nunavut’s public service got a lot shakier last week with the sudden departure of Nora Sanders, the deputy minister of justice, who left her job just before May 6.

Sanders was liked and well-respected by her staff, other senior managers, and nearly every member of the public who dealt with her. She enjoyed a reputation for competence, integrity and wisdom that stretched far beyond Nunavut’s borders, especially in criminal justice circles.

She’s one of only a tiny handful of senior managers left from among Nunavut’s first group of deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers, most of whom were hired in April of 1998, one year before Nunavut’s creation. In leaving her job, Sanders takes with her an irreplaceable store of experience and institutional knowledge — qualities that Nunavut’s inexperienced and understaffed public service desperately needs.

It’s a lot to give up for the sake of a $215 fine.

That’s how much money the legislative assembly’s former speaker, the former MLA for Arviat, Kevin O’Brien, paid this past January for illegally possessing liquor in Arviat, where liquor has been prohibited since about 1980. The charge was laid in July of 2003.

There’s no evidence that O’Brien supplied liquor to anyone else, or was bootlegging. So stupid though it may be, O’Brien’s Liquor Act charge — a relatively minor offence only a little more serious than a speeding ticket — was not his worst sin. His greatest display of poor judgement was in failing to inform the legislative assembly — and the public. MLAs learned of O’Brien’s indiscretion long after the time when they could have done anything about it.

Such minor offences don’t often appear on the criminal dockets that are made available to the public, and they’re often dealt with by local justices of the peace. It’s not surprising that O’Brien managed to bury it for so long.

But embarrassed MLAs now have an urgent need to cast blame. Last week, Paul Okalik, the minister of justice, has apparently found a likely scapegoat — his own deputy minister. But his office has not explained what she did, exactly, other than a vague reference to the “handling of an RCMP investigation.”

Did he know what he was doing when he accepted her resignation? Right now, that’s an impossible question to answer. JB