‘Major safety concern’: Nunavut’s aging schools spur thousands of maintenance requests
Reports from 2022 include fuel spills, ‘extremely dangerous’ doors and glycol seeping through floor
Clockwise from top left: Tusarvik School, Joamie School, Inuujaq School and Paatsaali High School. These schools have experienced many maintenance issues over the past year, ranging from broken doors and windows to heating issues, fuel leaks and plumbing problems. (File photos)
This story is the first of a three-part series examining the state of Nunavut’s school infrastructure and how it impacts the delivery of education in the territory. Watch for parts two and three in the coming weeks.
Nunavut’s students are heading back to school for a new year, but the buildings they learn in face a myriad of maintenance issues that have, in some cases, led to injury.
Work order requests obtained by Nunatsiaq News via Nunavut’s access to information law show that between January and December 2022, staff at the territory’s 45 schools filed a total of 3,907 requests with the Department of Community and Government Services for structural repairs, building maintenance and upkeep of school grounds.
The requests range from simple maintenance issues like leaky faucets and snow removal to major problems like fuel leaks.
More than a dozen schools experienced problems specific to doors with exterior locks that don’t work, leading to security issues and even break-ins.
“Three hallway doors were installed incorrectly when school was built. The doors are installed so that when closed they trap students in a section of the corridor with no means of escape — this is extremely dangerous as it poses a major safety concern during an emergency,” reads one service request, made in June at Paatsaali High School in Sanikiluaq.
In Naujaat’s Tusarvik School, a November 2022 request notes “the doors are slamming and squeezing the fingers of our primary school students. We have asked CGS several times to help us slow the doors down because they are dangerous.”
“We would like the exterior doors to close more slowly. We are concerned because a child’s finger was nearly severed when it got caught in the entrance door,” reported a staff member in June 2022 at the Inuujaq School in Arctic Bay.
Nunatsiaq News has reached out to CGS for an update on whether these problems have been fixed, but did not receive a response by press time.
At Joamie School in Iqaluit, “there is a large gap between the step and the wall. A student was holding the door and their leg slipped down and she hurt her leg,” a request from June 2022 reads. This issue was fixed within days of the incident, according to work-order information obtained by Nunatsiaq News.
Other persistent issues listed on the request sheets cite little or no heat in classrooms, toilets that won’t stop flushing, no running water in fountains and faucets and numerous cases of fuel and glycol leaks.
“There must be glycol leaking in the classroom. It is seeping under the linoleum and coming up through the seams,” a staff member wrote in May 2022 about Rachel Arngnammaktiq Elementary School in Baker Lake.
Break-ins, weather and vandalism
Hala Duale, a spokesperson for Community and Government Services, said the department usually gets 1,500 to 2,300 school maintenance requests per year.
“Receiving 4,000 service requests is notably high,” she said in an email to Nunatsiaq News.
The hamlets with the most school work requests in 2022 were Arviat (675), Rankin Inlet (543), Iqaluit (351), Baker Lake (335) and Gjoa Haven (245).
The high number of work order requests in 2022 is largely due to how old many of Nunavut’s schools are, Duale explained.
“Aging infrastructure in Nunavut has contributed to a surge in maintenance issues across the board,” she said.
Ten of Nunavut’s 45 schools were built between 1968 and 1979. Of those, only Quluaq School in Clyde River and Inuksuk High School in Iqaluit received renovations in the past 20 years (Quluaq twice, in 2002 and 2014, and Inuksuk in 2008), according to documents Nunatsiaq News received from the Department of Education.
The other eight schools haven’t had extensive renovations since at least the late 1990s.
“Despite schools being designed for a 25-year span, community-intensive use accelerates wear,” said Duale.
“Maintenance remains unpredictable, influenced by wear and tear, break-ins, weather, and vandalism.”
Education Minister Pamela Gross said Community and Government Services is mandated to do regular maintenance checks of schools to see where repairs are needed and identify infrastructure issues to be addressed.
She said Education provides funding to CGS’s Maintenance and Operations Division to have the work done “in a timely manner.”
Millions for maintenance
The Government of Nunavut spends approximately $18.1 million on school maintenance alone each year with another $11.5 million allocated for utilities.
That’s about $121.75 per square metre for schools to be maintained, according to Gross.
For example, Kugaaruk’s Arviligruaq Ilinnarvik School is 4,000 square metres, which gives it an operation and maintenance cost of $487,000 annually.
“In terms of speed, it would be really nice to see more schools getting renovated and new schools being built, but the reality is we only have a limited budget,” she said.
And renovating schools doesn’t come cheap. Coral Harbour’s Sakku School will begin an extensive $65-million, two-year renovation this fall that will see it stripped down to the studs.
Its last renovation was in 2007, but that was poorly done due to cost estimates coming way over budget during the bidding process, said Gross.
“We can only work within the realms of what we have when tenders go out,” she said, adding that roughly a quarter of the Government of Nunavut’s annual budget is spent on the Education department.
Even when maintenance issues at schools are addressed and steps are taken to remedy them, the unique challenges of fixing and constructing buildings in the North means even simple repairs can take months or years to fix.
“It is very challenging to build in the North,” said Clarence Synard, president and CEO of NCC Development Ltd., which specializes in design and construction projects in Nunavut.
Obstacles include the high cost of shipping materials, the limited time frame when sealifts can travel, limits to how much space can be reserved on a sealift, gravel runways in many small hamlets limiting the kind of aircraft that land, short construction seasons, and the high cost of packaging materials for transportation and storage once they reach a hamlet.
One recent example of that is Sanirajak’s Arnaqjuaq School which, for nearly a full year from May 2022 to April 2023, did not have a functioning fire sprinkler system.
Community and Government Services ordered parts to fix it, but when they arrived the problem proved more complicated and the school had to wait longer for additional parts to arrive in the hamlet.
In the interim, the school, which had other maintenance issues to deal with, put in place a 24-hour fire watch team that eventually cost the GN more than $200,000 to maintain.
Add to that the delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on shipping, labour and expenses, Synard said.
“Those costs translate over to the contractors and building owners or homeowners. That lack of infrastructure really becomes challenging.”
Keep an eye for Part 2: When schools have to close: Fuel leaks, sewer floods push Nunavut students out.
If education wasn’t free parents would care what’s going on in schools no one cares it’s free drop it place for kids for 9 months ?
Education is only free to those who do not work and pay taxes. The tax payers pay for the education system.
That’s what Nunavut lives off not working ? if I quit my job today I’d take home more $$from not working how sad is that ?
There are countless angles to approach this problem, one that leaps out is that we have 25 communities meaning the need to replicate of services 25x, resulting in thinly stretched resources across the board.
To suggest this might not be a desirable or sustainable situation seems obvious, yet it is a conversation we appear incapable of having. That fact, in my opinion, is a hurdle we need to clear if we are serious about progress in any area.
Yes, why replicate services 25x when we can forcibly relocate Inuit to other areas. What can go wrong?
“In forcibly relocating Inuit, real progress will be found!” – iThink™, probably
Hi Barry… your comment is exactly the kind of non-sense I was thinking when I wrote. As long as people are going make ludicrous and spurious associations like this will never be able to talk seriously about anything.
Is your solution residential schools? A “consolidation” of population? Do tell us.
Barry’s comment is what you call a “Strawman” argument.
The fantasy, at the cost of (insert here: children, healthcare, language, culture, infrastructure, jobs, services, housing ), is that there is an inherent right and obligation on government to magically multiple services x25 and make them equal of exceed what is available in Ottawa. It is a fantasy because of logistics in Nunavut. It is fantasy because of capacity in Nunavut. It is a fantasy because there is no economic argument for it.
.
Yet here you have people like Barry, and like many Premiers, and like NTI Presidents, who push and push and push public governments to go this route. Public government does what it does and responds in a mediocre fashion and schools fall down and we can’t have clean water in the capital city.
.
We cannot mention centralization, relocation, etc. because people have a conniption fit about residential schools. About sixty’s scoop. About TB.
.
People are so naive. And it is unfortunate that individuals with a self-serving agenda thwart discussion and policy solutions with hyperbole and disassociated links to past events and more recent narratives about “how it really was”.
.
Nunavut deserves another 30 years of squalor and bandaid buildings and services because we permit the loudest voices to prevail, not the most reasonable.
Yes, how dare Inuit talk about the harms of residential schools and forced relocations.
Classic strawman, Barry. Amazing that you don’t even try to hide it. Maybe you don’t even realize it?
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/straw-man-fallacy/
Yes, it’s terrible that the residents of Nunavut want basic services. And it’s horrible that Inuit have a “conniption fit” about residential schools and other injustices. We all get your point.
Barry has moved from strawman arguments to gaslighting.
It is rather you that is gaslighting. Look up “projection behaviour”.
“We cannot mention centralization, relocation, etc. because people have a conniption fit about residential schools. About sixty’s scoop. About TB.“ <- an example of telling Inuit to stop talking about injustices such as residential schools.
Is your solution residential schools? A “consolidation” of population? Do tell us. You won’t of course. But keep spewing, it’s great.
Intelligent people are right to avoid conversation with those who intentionally misrepresent and distort their points.
Relocation is necessary for most people in their lives and has been for all peoples historically. People leave bad situations for better all the time.
.
It’s of course acceptable to talk about residential schools and 60s scoop and dog slaughters, but the hyperbole that anyone can be “forced” to do anything in 2023 in anyway remotely like historical events is a straw man and red herring. It’s strategic: to keep decentralization as the policy let’s stop anyone from talking about centralization by using past atrocities as examples of what happens when Inuit move. As if Inuit are not nomadic people culturally.
.
To me it is not only logically flawed, but ethically questionable whether the conversation about the future of Nunavut should be manipulated on the back of stories of suffering that are not remotely relevant to the discussion. It is nothing more than sensationalism. We are on to your game Barry.
How dare Nunavummiut talk about rationalization of resources and a better future. Isn’t that what you mean Barry?
Indeed.
In northern Ontario, first nation’s teens have to go to Thunder Bay for high school. The results are atrocious. Just listen to the podcast “thunder bay” if you don’t believe me.
Government of Nunavut is at its best here!! CGS is known to have long-term staff who have overstayed their mandate in a position that doesn’t care what maintenance repairs are being done in these schools or health centers. They are no different from public housing staff who drives around all day and are taxi drivers for their spouse and family members.
1. You have engineers-Project Managers, directors, and technical officers who sign off the construction of these schools, and health centers (Capital and Infrastructure projects within Nunavut by Government of Nunavut, -Namely under CGS.
2. You have a Superintendent in each region who supervises the settlement maintainers in the smaller communities. The settlement maintainers usually hire casuals under them to assist in work orders and demands.
CGS DM should be getting on top of this and asking a lot of questions about why these work orders aren’t being tended to.
How much training do these settlement maintainers and casual need to stop a leaking faucet or to install a door closer?
How much OT are they putting in each week, but you continue to see the work demands going up and not getting any lower?
It is time that the territorial gov’t bring back the Dept. of Public Works. It is time that they take qualified Red Seal tradespersons to head up each division of trade, hire apprentices and combine the trade school (NATE e.g.) and work experience to make them qualified tradespeople. The academic only high school curriculum does not work for everyone. Implement trades high school curriculum as well. Get it done now so that the GN CGS is not reliant only on contracting the work out.
No care/not my problem attitude, kids alighting school buildings, parents and their social issues passed down to the kids. School buildings are/were not designed to take that amount destruction/abuse. Roots, problems have roots, look for those and do what needs doing to correct it.
ithought
Also , all the schools and Government buildings need proper ventilation systems (air exchange). This became apparent since the arrival of Covid in our lives. We also have TB , RSV and flu season in our territory, all respiratory illnesses highly transmissable. We have a new variant of Covid that is highly transmissable and no updated vaccines yet. Other jurisdictions have remedied this ( ventilation). With climate change. our summers have become much hotter, making it unbearable to work in the Gn offices during summer, veritable greenhouses, hot houses.. Not every office have windows to open . high time to get air conditioning in the office spaces
In Cambridge Bay, for years in a row, the footings for the Elementary School and Utilities Outbuilding have been dug up for what seems like repairs to underground water and heating lines. Every summer, the same areas are dug up, and similar pipes are yanked out and put back in.
It certainly makes one wonder whether these facilities and equipment were designed and selected properly, or whether the repairs or solutions have been adequately thought and carried out.
If it was not designed properly, the GN should be accessing their engineer’s insurance in order to financially protect taxpayers from these costs. If the repairs are not being done right, hopefully the GN is not paying the contractors anyway. There is no transparency in either case.
Weeks of earthworks every summer cannot be cheap. This must represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs every year, a big chunk of the $18M mentioned above. How many years more will they keep doing what seems to be the same thing?
As this seems to be an ongoing problem, perhaps they need to think about placing the pipes above ground and enclosing them and heating them. At least this way, they are readily and more cheaply available for the next time something fails and needs replacing.
but with the acting director at CGS overseeing the work being completed, I’m sure the work across the street of the RCMP Building is much more of a huge concern isn’t it. I know at the evacuation of Yellowknife, their biggest concern was how they would ensure their refreshments would be kept in stock.
but to your point, it’s amazing how much money they have spent with underground work and excavation to no end. will it ever be done?
RCMP detachments and their buildings are federal buildings and are maintained by Public Works Canada.
Nunavut schools are territorial buildings maintained by Community & Government Services
Just pointing out that CGS does not over see repairs and maintenance to RCMP buildings in Nunavut
Rcmp buildings and facilities are maintain by contractors not PSPC, PSPC only provides crown housing to members in Iqaluit.
Meanwhile CBC is reporting 81 teacher vacancies as we head into the year.
Huge shortage across the whole country. The days of surplus teachers we can attract from elsewhere are behind us and will be for a number of years.
I almost died laughing listening to the Minister of Education say how well the plan is going for teacher recruitment that the Dept has in place when the conversation should be about teacher retention! But the GN really seems to dislike teachers and is so unsupportive that it’s amazing there are any teachers in Nunavut schools-like every other jurisdiction in North America, the GN takes advantage of teachers’ goodwill to children and young people. NTEP might be graduating new teachers every year, but how long will they stay in the profession?
Does the public know how many Inuit teachers have left the teaching profession in the last, say, 10 -15years? Does the public want to know WHY those teachers have left? That would be an incredibly interesting and enlightening conversation to have, but it’s one not likely the Regional School Operations and the Dept of Education would want to be made public. The leadership of the GN and its’ management is colonial in so many ways (under the guise of IQ, but we all know how that doesn’t happen in most GN workspaces.) . Management is an Old Boys Club.
On the CGS issue…did you hear about the huge glycol leak in one of the Rankin schools last winter which closed it to students for over 2 weeks? Work being done in schools without permits and so some work is not being done to code? Work on schools that isn’t started until late July/early August so classes have to be cancelled until other arrangements can be made…How will full-day Kindergarten even be possible in most schools? Many are already overcrowded and there are not enough classrooms to make this possible. There has been no thought given to population growth and the fact that schools have to be enlarged and modernized, much less maintained obviously isn’t obvious. Classrooms still have carpet in them that is probably over 15-20 years old but CGS doesn’t get the work requests done over the summer which schools submit before summer. The same thing can be requested multiple years in a row (such as the removal of carpet) and it still is not done over the summer-that doesn’t help anyone’s breathing -and then those awful ventilation systems….School buildings are falling apart due to neglect.
David Joanasie left the education system in disarray, he is going to leave CGS in disarray as well.
David Joanasie should have been fully aware of the state of Nunavut schools
Is this the same David Joanasie in this Nunatsiaq New story from 9 years ago?
https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/65674south_baffin_mla_will_not_face_jail_time/
Is this the same David Joanasie>
The GN must invest in the training of skilled tradespeople in every community in Nunavut. It also must invest in stock-piling commonly used material in each community, so construction season does not have to wait for sealift.
.
There is more than enough work for them to do, maintaining existing infrastructure and building new.
.
The investment would more than pay for itself.
.
No more fly in fly out for regular work, only for occasional specialty skills.
.
More Inuit would be earning a living, rather than collecting Family Assistance.
.
The GN would be collecting personal income tax, rather that money going to the governments of other jurisdictions. It would even be collecting income tax from Nunavut based businesses that employ Inuit tradespeople.
.
The tradespeople who build new schools, arenas, and houses can be expected to sign their work, just like any other artist.
Maybe we can ship some teachers to Nunavut and they can realize their not to bad here in Nunavik, they paid very low monthly rent and complain all the time about minor stuff, they call in night because lights bulb not working or battery of smoke detectors need to change, I imagine they stay before at their mom place downsouth.
Seems like the only way a community gets a new school is after an act of arson is committed. Sad!
See it for what it is,contractors taking advantage of GN,look back when a certain community had surplus inventory but was sent to the landfill,see it for what it is,contracts are more important than education!
These contractors are often under the veil of being Inuit owned, onion companies, who flow a kickback to the elite Inuit on the backs of the taxpayer, and by extension the poor.
Sure, this is the way the luminaries who designed the system either wanted it to be, or lacked the wisdom to anticipate.