Former MLA shoots for job at teachers’ union

JOHN THOMPSON

Former MLA Tommy Enuaraq wants to be the next president of the Nunavut Teachers Association.

And he’s confident enough that, when he phoned the NTA’s office recently, he announced to the secretary he would be the next boss.

Enuaraq served as MLA for Baffin Central between 1995 and 1999. He lost his bid for re-election, and returned to teaching at Clyde River’s school.

He’s taught now for some 27 years, beginning as a teaching assistant in the 1970s, before graduating from the Teacher Education Program in 1982. Right now, he teaches physical education and computer science to high school students.

Enuaraq is a maverick inside the NTA, without experience on the association’s executive. But he says his past political experience will help him lobby for better staff housing for teachers. He also says he’ll push for the return of vacation travel allowances, which were taken away in the mid-1990s.

“A teaching position in Nunavut used to be very attractive, back in the 1980s,” he said during an interview.

He says that isn’t the case any more.

Enuaraq’s candidacy could appeal to some 250 Inuit teachers working in Nunavut, many of whom have felt underrepresented by their union in the past. But Enuaraq says teachers from the South should also feel more welcome than they do now, and says he will work to ensure better orientation is carried out than exists now.

All this doesn’t shake incumbent Jimmy Jacquard, who points to his past experience on the NTA’s executive in different roles, such as secretary treasurer, and his current two-year term as president.

He says he’ll also push for better housing, and additional benefits for teachers. But he won’t touch the subject of VTAs.

“Those days are not coming back,” he says.

If re-elected, he says residents can expect to see more NTA campaigns such as the one currently underway, called Make Learning Safe, which aims to raise awareness of the violence teachers face on the job from some students.

The NTA hired an executive director in January, which Jacquard says will free him from duties such as taking care of payroll problems, to focus on political lobbying.

Jacquard also says he hopes to hire an Inuktitut-speaking office assistant so that more material is translated into Inuktitut.

Staff housing is excluded from the teachers’ collective agreement. However, Jacquard says he will focus on how high job turnover among teachers imposes high costs on government, especially when Inuit leave teaching jobs for other government jobs that offer housing.

“We do have several Inuit teachers who are just saying that housing is too expensive,” he says.

And that compromises the quality of education in Nunavut, which should concern everyone, Jacquard says.

Jacquard says he plans to keep his campaign positive, but does note that Enuaraq was likely an MLA when VTAs were pulled.

“He was an MLA when they took them away.”

The last collective agreement was not terribly popular with teachers, passing ratification with only about 60 per cent voting in favour of the deal. Some complained the contract was four years long, rather than three, and locked teachers into an agreement they felt was unfavourable to them.

Others were upset the government didn’t give an expected three per cent increase each year, instead offering 11 per cent over four years.

Jacquard stepped into his job as president when negotiations with government were already underway. He says teachers got the best deal they could at the time. He also says, if elected, they will do better when they negotiate their next contract in two years.

In fact, Jacquard says the NTA has already begun preparing for the next round of bargaining.

Teachers go to the polls from Feb. 19 to Feb. 28. The president serves a two-year term.