NTI to review regional development corporations

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

The board of directors of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. voted last week to review the “financial health and management capacity” of the three regional development corporations.

The vote passed despite a heated discussion, and a decision by the two board members representing the Qiqiktani Inuit Association to abstain.

In a note to the NTI staff member recording the votes, Thomasie Alikatuktuk, the president of QIA, cited “regional” concerns for his refusal to vote.

He would not elaborate on what those concerns are.

Malachi Arreak of Pond Inlet said he decided to abstain from the vote when he discovered that the English version of the resolution differed from the Inuktitut.

“I initially understood it to be – in Inuktitut – all corporations,” he said in an interview after the vote. “In English, somebody put in a prefix, so only regional development corporations will be reviewed.”

Arreak said that Nunasi Corp. should be included in the review as well.

“It was supposed to create jobs for Inuit, but its record is even worse than the GN,” he said.

The giant Nunasi, based in Yellowknife, was created long before NTI. And although its board includes the executive of NTI and the three regional development corporations, NTI staff members say they have no authority to review Nunasi’s finances.

However, the regional development corporations report directly to NTI.

“There are certain conditions that the corporations have to follow,” said Paul Kaludjak, NTI’s vice-president of finance, in an interview in Cape Dorset.

“It has come to our attention that the day-to-day functions and current operations may have some difficulties. We need to know what they are.”

Kaludjak and John Lamb, NTI’s chief executive officer, will begin the review immediately. In particular, they will examine the corporations’ current financial position, their capacity to meet their management requirements and their policies and procedures for investment, the resolution says.

But they must work fast. The board gave them a May deadline and asked them to present their findings at NTI’s next board meeting.

“We had to bail out one of the corporations within the last couple of years. The board doesn’t want to do this every year,” Kaludjak said.

Sakku Corp.’s recent financial troubles are only part of the rationale for the financial review, he added, saying, “each region is different.”

Kaludjak said the review would be a straightforward examination — for now. The NTI board will consider acting on the review’s findings at some point in the future.

So for the moment, Kaludjak has no plans to replace the heads of the regional development corporations.

“That would be a last-resort measure,” he said.