Heat’s on Nunavut MP for dog inquiry

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Nunavut’s Liberal MP faces mounting pressure to convince the federal government to launch an inquiry into why police killed a massive number of Inuit sled dogs throughout the Arctic decades ago.

Nancy Karetak-Lindell, a back-bencher with the Liberal party for eight years, promised in a recent interview to keep reminding her colleagues in caucus about the Inuit demand for an inquiry.

But she declined to act as a champion of the cause.

“I think the matter should be addressed,” Karetak-Lindell said last week. “I don’t know if [the inquiry] is the right way to go about it.”

Karetak-Lindell was in an awkward spot last month, when Parliament’s standing committee on aboriginal affairs and northern development met with Inuit elders and political leaders.

The group told committee MPs about how police shot thousands of Inuit dogs from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Inuit leaders suspect the RCMP in the Arctic and provincial police in northern Quebec were acting on orders to force Inuit to stay in settlements by removing their only means of travel.

Police argue they were protecting the communities because the dogs were diseased and dangerous.

Karetak-Lindell sympathized with the elders’ stories, saying they deserved to know the truth about the killings.

But after their testimony, it was six opposition MPs on the committee, not Karetak-Lindell’s fellow Liberals, who endorsed a motion demanding the government appoint a superior court judge to investigate the group’s claims.

Four Liberals on the committee voted against the motion, citing procedural concerns about whether another committee should be dealing with the matter. Karetak-Lindell didn’t vote because she chairs the committee.

In parliamentary tradition, a committee chair remains neutral, unless she has to break a tie in voting.

Karetak-Lindell insists she doesn’t oppose having a judicial inquiry. Only, she questions whether Inuit should look for another way of getting answers.

She didn’t have other suggestions about how to investigate the dog killings.

“I’m in a difficult position,” she said. “I’m chair of the committee and I try to be impartial. As a member for Nunavut, I want to make sure their message is getting through.

“If they feel they want a judicial inquiry… then that’s the message I’m going to give.”

Karetak-Lindell is quick to point out that she saw the pain that the dog killings inflicted on her neighbours while she was growing up in Arviat in the 1960s.

Karetak-Lindell, 47, grew up with the RCMP, and sometimes acted as an unofficial translator between officers and unilingual Inuit. Her father was a police officer, and likely saw his colleagues shoot dog teams, ostensibly because they were sick with a canine disease called distemper.

Inuit leaders are disappointed Karetak-Lindell isn’t more supportive of their demands, considering her roots.

“She’s voted MP of Nunavut,” said Thomasie Alikatuktuk, president of the Qikiqtani Inuit Assocation. “She has to support us. We’re talking about our people, her people. And my people really want an inquiry.”

The demand now sits in the government’s hands, without a legal obligation to act on it.

However, Bernard Cleary, the Bloc Québécois MP leading the push for an inquiry, said the Liberals have no choice.

Cleary said if the government fails to set up a judicial inquiry by April 15, the opposition will create a political crisis.

“They’re a minority,” Cleary said in French. “That means they can’t reverse the decision. They have the right to reject it, but they’ll have to pay the price it brings.”

The Liberals may have already got the message. Nunavut MLAs passed a unanimous motion last month calling on the federal government to meet Inuit demands.

Plus, rumours are swirling around Parliament Hill that Anne McLellan, the minister responsible for the RCMP, has starting looking for a judge to head the inquiry.

Guy St-Julien, the recently defeated MP for Nunavik, now lobbies his former Liberal colleagues in cabinet on behalf of Makivik Corp., which spearheaded the campaign for an inquiry.

St-Julien said he met with the prime minister and several cabinet ministers last week to pass on the Inuit demands.

“The big victory is coming,” St-Julien said coyly in French. “But it still needs to be won.”

If the government agrees to the inquiry, St-Julien said the judge will release a report on the dog killings by July.