NTI met with Kiviaq’s lawyer

Your July 30, 2004 editorial notes that the federal government fails to provide Inuit living in southern Canada with programs and services as good as those provided to First Nations. We agree with your praise for Kiviaq’s determination to confront the federal government about this injustice.

However, your editorial is not correct in suggesting that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. has ignored Kiviaq’s complaints.

NTI gives priority to asserting and defending the rights that Nunavut Inuit gain from the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. For example, NTI is currently engaged in three key court cases with the federal government (over firearms, shrimp allocations, and the Manitoba-Dene boundary). We are also deeply engaged in negotiations with Canada for funding to address this unequal treatment of Inuit.

NTI is interested in Kiviaq’s legal arguments, which he mainly bases on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. NTI met with Kiviaq’s lawyer and offered opinions and suggestions in the development of Kiviaq’s court case, and NTI has not ruled out joining a court process in the future.

The factors underlying the Kiviaq case are part of a pattern of unfair and destructive treatment of Nunavut and Inuit. For example, the allocation of commercial fisheries by the federal government has made Nunavut the only region in Canada that does not have access to most of the fish in waters adjacent to our coast.

Further, when it signed the land claims agreement, the federal government promised that 85 per cent of jobs in the public sector in Nunavut would go to Inuit, but today the government refuses to provide the needed education and training resources to make this possible. The result is that Canadian taxpayers are paying some $65 million a year to bring in southern workers to a region with the highest unemployment rate in Canada.

This pattern of federal government unwillingness to help find concrete solutions to concrete challenges is disappointing and damaging to Inuit and the rest of Canada. NTI is actively using every political and legal tool available to us to change this and we will continue to work closely with GN and all others in Nunavut in trying to make real changes.

Paul Kaludjak, president
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.