Fix the Article 24 issue now

The last paragraph of the Nunavut land claim agreement’s well-known Article 24 says that the three parties to the agreement “shall conduct a review of the effect of this Article within 20 years of its implementation.”

The way things are going in Nunavut right now, it might take that long just to figure out how to finish carrying out the policy.

Article 24, as many readers already know, requires that governments provide reasonable forms of help to Inuit-owned companies, aimed at making it easier for them to compete for government contracts.

In principle, most Nunavut residents, Inuit and non-Inuit, support this idea — that governments pay a premium, within reasonable limits, to help Inuit-owned businesses establish themselves in Nunavut. Why not? Nearly all Canadian provincial governments have procurement policies that favour their own residents. And in return for surrender of their aboriginal title, Inuit deserve to receive tools to help develop their economic self-sufficiency.

The Nunavut government’s way of complying with Article 24 is fairly simple. It took the well-known and longstanding “business incentive” policy inherited from the government of the Northwest Territories, and then, in co-operation with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., adapted it to provide competitive advantages to Nunavut-based firms owned by beneficiaries of the Nunavut land claim agreement.

In March 2000, GN and NTI officials jointly announced their brain-child: the Nunavummi Nangminiqaqtunik Ikajuuti policy, or NNI. At the time, Paul Quassa, then the president NTI, happily declared that the territorial government was in compliance with Article 24.

“I’d like to commend the government of Nunavut for working hard with us to ensure the obligations under Article 24 are being met,” Quassa said in the March 24, 2000, issue of Nunatsiaq News.

But that was then, and this is now.

Since many Nunavut firms could not survive without government contracts, it’s probably naive to expect that the implementation of Article 24 will produce peace, love and happiness within the business community. The evidence shows that, instead, it has simply given Nunavut’s whining classes a new piece of paper to squabble over.

The most serious shortcoming, however, is that NTI and the territorial government have yet to agree on how to set up a board that would hear appeals from people who disagree with government contract decisions.

The GN says such a board should deal only with two matters: whether a contractor’s status as a northern, Inuit or local firm is properly determined, and whether the bid adjustment is calculated properly — according to the formulas set out in the NNI.

The NTI position is that such a board should be able to hear appeals based not only on the application of the NNI, but also based on Article 24 itself. Since the NNI is supposed to resolve the Article 24 issue, this is a curious position to take.

Even though NTI, the organization that represents Nunavut Inuit, co-wrote the NNI policy in co-operation with the government of Nunavut, whose authority derives from a legislative assembly representing an electorate that is 80 per cent Inuit, a lot of people still think the NNI policy doesn’t serve Inuit.

The appeals are starting to pile up. And because there’s no appeal process, some disgruntled companies that fail to win contracts are now going to court to make their complaints.

Just last month, three private Inuit-owned firms launched a legal action against the government of Nunavut, alleging the government violated the NNI policy by not giving them fuel distribution contracts within their respective communities.

In words written for them by an Ottawa law firm, the three companies claim that Nunavut’s Inuit-owned co-operatives aren’t Inuit-owned. Why? Because their umbrella organization, Arctic Co-operatives Ltd., has an office in Winnipeg.

This, of course, exemplifies a particular type of idiocy that only lawyers are capable of — reality as defined by words on a piece of paper, rather than what is revealed by reason and common sense. After all, Nunavut’s community-owned co-operatives are among Nunavut’s oldest Inuit-owned businesses. Some have existed since the early 1960s.

But this lawsuit, absurd though it may be, underscores the need to resolve the Article 24 issue, in a way that balances Inuit rights with the territorial government’s obligation to manage public funds in a responsible, efficient manner.

The Nunavut government now has a new minister of Public Works, and Nunavut Tunngavik now has a new president. Now would seem to be the right time for them to sit down and work out a way of setting up an NNI appeal board, perhaps in time for an announcement to be made at the next sitting of the legislative assembly.

JB