Fired ADM sues premier, cabinet ministers

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A former senior bureaucrat has slapped the territory’s most powerful politicians with a hefty lawsuit over her recent firing, alleging that they orchestrated her dismissal on false claims that she abused access to medical travel.

Sharon Ehaloak, former assistant deputy minister of health for the government of Nunavut in Cambridge Bay, filed the lawsuit against the premier and two other cabinet members, after she lost her high-paying position in December.

Ehaloak states the three politicians – Premier Paul Okalik, Finance Minister Leona Aglukkak, and Health and Social Services Minister Levinia Brown – conspired to fire her in the wake of repeat investigations into her conduct as assistant deputy minister of health.

The lawsuit seeks more than $6 million in damages for lost salary and pension payments, and for mental suffering brought on by the dismissal. Ehaloak’s contract was worth more than $145,000 a year when she was fired.

Ehaloak claims her race played a factor in the firing. In her statement of claim, she says the three cabinet ministers were “prejudiced” against her because she isn’t Inuit.

None of the allegations in the lawsuit have been proven.

In early June, the government started an investigation, for unknown reasons, into an allegation that Ehaloak boarded a medevac flight from Cambridge Bay to Edmonton with her sister-in-law.

The statement of claim says that Ehaloak denies that she ever took such a flight and claims that she was never disciplined as a result of the complaint.

Ehaloak was the subject of a second investigation in late June, when seven nurses at the health centre in Cambridge Bay complained she interfered with their medical examination of her nephew, “a young man with known psychiatric difficulties.”

Ehaloak was suspended with pay for 30 days during the investigation.

She alleges Aglukkaq later held a conference call with the nurses, although the finance department didn’t have jurisdiction over the accusation and that Aglukkaq the MLA for Nattilik, does not represent Cambridge Bay.

Ehaloak adds that the nurses shared medical information with Aglukkaq without the permission of her nephew’s family, violating their oath of confidentiality.

In the meantime, the government started a third investigation into allegations that Ehaloak arranged for her son, daughter, and father-in-law to get seats on a government-chartered medevac plane from Cambridge Bay to Bay Chimo.

Eventually, the government found nothing to support the second complaint, and exonerated Ehaloak in a letter from Bernie Blais, the deputy minister of health, in late November. The letter states that Blais “looked forward to” working with Ehaloak.

A few days later, in early December, deputy minister of human resources Kathy Okpik fired Ehaloak, based on the outcome of the third investigation.

Ehaloak denies all accusations against her, and called each investigation a “sham” manipulated by the conspiracy between the premier and his two cabinet ministers.

In her statement of claim, Ehaloak said staff in the premier’s office wrote the department of health, indicating she would be fired, even though her supervisor, Keith Best, approved her flight to Bay Chimo.

Best was already at the centre of a dispute with a former employee, Robert Ayalik of Kugluktuk, who believed he was dismissed for racist reasons. A fair practices officer ruled that human resource mismanagement, not racism, was the root of the problem.

Around the same time as Ehaloak’s third investigation, Best resigned as assistant deputy minister of health. Although he lacked authority over the former employee, Blais wrote to Best after his resignation for “failing to follow rules pertaining to air charters.”

Ehaloak claims that the GN knew she was directed to take the flight to Bay Chimo, which was “the ultimate issue in her termination,” according to court documents.

Ehaloak’s statement of claim suggests that even if the three cabinet members didn’t conspire to fire her, that taking a charter flight “was standard practice and common knowledge in the communities in Nunavut and among employees of the… GN.”

Ehaloak had been lobbying cabinet to move her position from Kugluktuk to Cambridge Bay since she took the job in June.

None of the defendants have filed a statement of defence.