March 2, 2001 Annie May Popert relieved after going public Dissenting Nunavik commissioner is glad s

KUUJJUAQ — After more than a year of soul-searching, Nunavik commissioner Annie May Popert is finally at ease.

It’s been a long day, and Popert is exhausted. But she’s relieved at going public with her grave misgivings about the work of the Nunavik Commission and its recommendations for a new regional government in Nunavik.

“I feel very worried about our future. What I’d like is for the people to become aware of the political implications of the Nunavik government,” Popert says. “It’s to let people know we have to be very, very careful.”

She’s spent all day forwarding copies of her correspondence to the Nunavik Commission to every organization in Nunavik, to all the region’s mayors and to officials in Quebec City and Ottawa.

Her letters detail her growing concerns about the work of this body. Popert, who is orginally from Kangiqsualujjuaq, is an educator and a former director-general of the Kativik School Board. She’s one of three Inuit who sit on the eight-member Nunavik Commission.

Popert says she takes her role as commissioner seriously.

“We have to be examples for our youth,” Popert says. “I’d felt we’d be fooling the people, that I’d be deceiving the people if I didn’t say anything.”

Popert says Nunavimmiut, who have been looking forward to a more independent government for 30 years, put their trust in her and, as a result she’s not going to stay quiet about her concerns.

“People put me here to make sure our rights don’t get screwed in the process,” Popert says.

In April, the Nunavik Commission will table its recommendations for a new regional government at the Makivik Corporation’s annual general meeting in Kuujjuaraapik.

Popert says Nunavimmiut need to learn about the flawed process behind those recommendations.

Popert has decided to speak out and share letters she wrote to the commission’s co-chairs. From October to January, she sent four letters to Harry Tulugak and André Binette, outlining her concerns, but none were answered.

When she recently read a draft report of the commission’s recommendations, which Nunavimmiut will be asked to support, she saw that none of her concerns were included.

In her last letter to the co-chairs dated Feb. 24, Popert said she wouldn’t put her name on the report.

“I’m not — I’m not willing to sign it. Oh, no, not whatsoever,” Popert says. “I couldn’t just sign it and say, ‘Something good will come out of it.’”

The Nunavik Political Accord, signed in November, 1999, gave the Nunavik Commission a mandate to “develop a timetable, plan of action and recommendations… as the basis for the discussions to create a government in Nunavik.”

But Popert says the commission’s final report falls short because it sidesteps such important issues as Quebec sovereignty and native rights.

The commission has also lacked independent legal counsel, she says, relying on Binette. As a result, it stuck to a very narrow mandate.

She now fears the commission’s shortcomings may rob Nunavimmiut of political voice in the future. That’s because in the event of a successful Quebec referendum on sovereignty, Nunavimmiut would be at a disadvantage if it looked as if they’d already accepted territorial integrity of Quebec and the authority of the National Assembly.

Over the past months, Popert says she also has become increasingly concerned about the commission changing its own internal rules of procedure. She says it was also subject to political interference.

Popert raised all these issues in her letters.

But as she became the dissenting voice within the commission, she says the original idea of reaching consensus — a guiding principle of Nunavik Political Accord — was thrown out in favour of majority opinion.

Popert says her comments at commission meetings were ignored and not even included in official minutes.

Popert admits she clashed openly with co-chairs Tulugak and Binette, but she’s quick to say the debate was not about personalities, but issues.

“I was frustrated, over and over I was disappointed. I did ask for answers,” Popert says. “Each time I raised an issue, no one wanted to discuss it. I felt very strongly my voice was being drowned out.”