Decentralized GN jobs still go begging

After more than seven years of effort and $32.3 million in spending, 124 decentralized Nunavut government jobs still sat vacant as of September, 2006.

That means that of the 459 jobs that the GN moved into smaller communities after April 1, 1999, 27 per cent are represented by empty desks.

Keith Peterson, the MLA for Cambridge Bay, acquired this information from Premier Paul Okalik in a written question submitted in the legislative assembly this past December.

Okalik tabled his written answer March 6, at the start of the legislative assembly’s fourth session last week.

The premier’s numbers do show, however, that decentralization has created at least some jobs for Inuit and other residents of smaller communities. Of the 335 decentralized jobs that are filled, 189, or 56 per cent, are held by beneficiaries and 146 by non-beneficiaries.

And of those 335 filled jobs, 215 are held by people who lived in the decentralized community before they were hired.

Another 86 are filled by people hired from southern Canada. Only 22 are filled by people who moved from Iqaluit, 10 by people who moved from Cambridge Bay and two by people who moved from Rankin Inlet.

But the 189 Inuit in decentralized jobs represent only 41 per cent of all decentralized jobs, filled plus unfilled.

John Bainbridge, executive director of the Nunavut Employees Union, said these numbers show that the Government of Nunavut did not adequately prepare for decentralization.

“From our point of view, decentralization was handled badly from the start. They should have preceded it with job training,” Bainbridge said.

The decentralized communities with the largest numbers of GN job vacancies were Igloolik (29 vacancies, 40 jobs filled), Pangnirtung (27 vacancies, 42 jobs filled) and Arviat (15 vacancies, 51 jobs filled.)

Most of the empty desks in Igloolik are accounted for by unfilled positions in the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth (10 vacancies), the Department of the Environment (nine vacancies) and the Department of Finance (seven vacancies).

In Pangnirtung, 11 of 25 jobs in the Department of Health and Social Services were unfilled.

But the quietest GN office in Pangnirtung must be the one used by the Department of Economic Development and Transportation, where seven of 10 jobs sat vacant last September.

On the other hand the Department of Education’s office in Pangnirtung, with 23 positions, had only seven vacancies.

As for the total cost of decentralization, $32.3 million, GN officials calculated this figure by adding up the cost of five activities:

* relocation and removal costs for employees;
* compensation payments (worth $612,201) to employees who said no to decentralized job offers;
* advertising and recruitment;
* infrastructure, office renovations and the cost of providing staff housing in decentralized communities; and
* administrative and miscellaneous costs, including the cost of running the GN’s decentralization secretariat.

Of that $32.6 million, the GN spent $20.3 million on capital projects and $12 million in operating costs.

The GN points out, however, that at least some of this money would have been spent anyway, even if all of the jobs had been filled in Iqaluit.