Gossip leads to firing of GN worker

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A former Government of Nunavut worker of South Asian descent alleges his human rights were violated this summer when a senior GN bureaucrat fired him on what he believes are racist grounds.

“Nunavut is the most racist place I’ve been to,” says Harbir Boparai, a 22-year-old university graduate who was born and raised in Vancouver.

This past summer, Boparai, who holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of British Columbia, was hired by the GN’s Department of Economic Development on a four-month contract. His job, based in Panniqtuuq, was to do work on a new banking system for Nunavut, and other projects.

About three weeks after his contract started, the GN’s assistant deputy minister of economic development, Rosemary Keenainak, ordered that his contract be terminated.

Documents that Boparai obtained under the Access to Information and Privacy Act suggest the GN did this in reaction to malicious rumours circulating around Panniqtuuq.

At the time, Boparai was staying with another Panniqtuuq man who is also of South Asian descent, and to whom Boparai is not related. But some gossiping Panniqtuuq residents falsely believed that Boparai is a relative of his former housemate, and that his housemate conspired to get his friend a government job.

“I believe it [my firing] is racially motivated, because we’re both brown-skinned men,” he said. “If you see two brown guys living together, the perception is that they’re related. That’s the perception of the town,” Boparai said.

“When it affects your employment, when people higher up are using this as an excuse to terminate you, that’s unacceptable,” Boparai said.

An e-mail written by Keenainak to Boparai’s supervisor, Rueben Murphy, appears to support Boparai’s allegation. The e-mail suggests those rumours are the source of a complaint that someone made to the office of Premier Paul Okalik, and to Panniqtuuq MLA Peter Kilabuk.

And they suggest that Keenainak may have then acted upon pressure exerted by the premier’s office.

“This office is getting complaints thru the premier’s office and the local MLA about the hiring of Harbir. The complaint I got today was that he [Boparai] just got off the plane a few weeks ago and was able to get a job with EDT, thru someone he knows and lives with (people are saying that Harbir is [name deleted]’s brother-in-law.),” Keenainak said in the e-mail, dated July 26, 2004.

Boparai says he was the only employee in his division with a university degree in economics. He also says he was hired because he was the only qualified person available for the job.

Two Inuit from Panniqtuuq were hired at around the same time, under similar circumstances, Boparai said, but their contracts were not terminated.

“If I was Inuit, this would have never come up,” Boparai said. “If an Inuk moved in with another Inuk, would it be a problem then?”

The office where Boparai worked is called the Division of Economic Development and Innovation. Its employees are supposed to provide the GN with strategies and policies related to job creation and economic development.

But Boparai says the decentralized office suffers from severe staff shortages that seriously hamper its work. Last summer, four full-time positions were vacant.

“We are facing serious capacity issues and the input from these casual hires will contribute significantly to some of our priority work areas,” says a fax that Murphy, the director of that division sent to Human Resources Minister Louis Tapardjuk on July 8.

Despite those staff shortages, Keenainak went ahead and ordered the termination of Boparai’s contract.

Boparai filed a grievance through the Nunavut Employees Union. Doug Workman, the president of the NEU, said the grievance has been sent to arbitration. That means the union and the government will agree on an arbitrator, who will then hold a quasi-judicial hearing to decide the issue.

Besides violating his charter-protected rights against discrimination, Boparai says the government is also breaking its own rules of employment.

“They’re willing to violate their own hiring policy,” he said. “Nowhere… does it state you can fire a non-Inuk to replace him with an Inuk. You can’t do that.”

After the grievance was filed, Boparai’s supervisor wrote a letter to the union, saying the dismissal was based not on Boparai’s race, but on “public perception.”

“Mr. Boparai’s casual employment was terminated on the basis of the perception of fairness by members of the community,” Murphy wrote in a draft version of the letter, dated Aug. 23, 2004.

“… We, as a representative of government, have an obligation to hire on the basis of fairness and equity. If the community feels, however inaccurately, that this process is not fair, then we are obliged to ensure fairness and equity. This was the case with Mr. Boparai’s casual employment.”

Boparai also plans to seek compensation through the federal Human Rights Commission, who he believes will take up his case as a violation of his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A GN spokesperson for the department of economic development, Karen Kabloona, said the government will not comment on Boparai’s case because it is an “employer-employee issue.”

The job was eventually re-advertised, and Boparai applied for it again, but he says the GN never contacted him.

Boparai has since moved to Toronto, where he hopes to start a computer technology business.