Ad’s wording puts top job at FCNQ beyond reach of Inuit

Inuit are being sidestepped for the top job at the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec, according to Aliva Tulugak, a former president of Nunavik’s co-operative network, and long-time board member on Puvirnituq’s co-operative association.

The current job posting for general manager of the FCNQ says a “baccalaureate in Business Management is desirable.”

The job posting is worded this way to encourage Nunavimmiut who pursue post-secondary studies, said Yves Michaud, the acting general manager of the FCNQ.

“It was the executive of the FCNQ that decided on this,” Michaud said. “This item was among those discussed by the executive. They came to the conclusion that it was important to include it, to recognize the efforts of Inuit who go to university, even if it wasn’t one of the most important requirements for a general manager.

The job posting also says “the capacity to write and speak in Inuttitut is essential” and that “a solid experience might compensate for a lack of diploma.”

But Tulugak said qualified Inuit won’t dare apply for the job.

“All my years as a co-op member and as a board member, I’ve never seen the word ‘baccalaureate’ used,” Tulugak said. “It’s put on the posting as a smoke screen to say there’s nobody ready as yet.”

Tulugak said degrees and diplomas are not even close to being the most important requirements for the job of general manager at the FCNQ.

“When Inuit hired their first general manager it was all based on experience and trust,” Tulugak said from the FCNQ headquarters in Baie d’Urfé, where he has been researching a book on the coop movement’s history with Peter Murdoch, the FCNQ’s first general manager, who retired several years ago.

“That’s the way it still is up North. We don’t have any southern-born store managers in Nunavik, yet we’ve managed to survive so far.”

Tulugak also said the general manager should be chosen from among the co-op members from the North and be someone already involved with the co-op movement.

“We can’t work with people we don’t know,” Tulugak said.

Tulugak wants to postpone any consideration of a new FCNQ general manager until after March when the FCNQ holds its annual general meeting, a request Michaud said has not been formally made yet to the FCNQ management or executive.

Tulugak said the future of the FCNQ will be at risk if the selection of a new general manager isn’t postponed because the Puvirnituq co-op would consider breaking away from the FCNQ, which was established in 1967.

“That would be the worst and the last option but it’s always a possibility that if the Inuit lose control of the federation, it will be up to the directors of the Puvirnituq co-op to have a referendum with its members,” Tulugak said. “We were able to exist on our own long before the federation started: we know we can exist without the federation.”

This isn’t the first time Puvirnituq’s co-op has threatened such an action. More than two years ago, its board of directors wrote a letter to the FCNQ, asking for more Inuit employment at the FCNQ as well as the relocation of some of the FCNQ’s various departments to Nunavik.

“FCNQ should have more Inuit people who can get involved in decision-making, so that others will not make mistakes for us,” the letter said.

Puvirnituq’s co-operative is one of Nunavik’s oldest associations and the largest, running a huge store and a new hotel, as well as fuel supply operations in the community.