NTI: We ain’t guilty of no lawyer-talk

Re: “Berger chides both sides in land claims dispute,” October 21, 2005.

Before taking up my current position as chief executive officer for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., I served for four years as NTI’s chief negotiator in negotiations to update the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement implementation contract. I also served as one of NTI’s representatives on the Nunavut Implementation Panel.

NTI welcomes your newspaper’s long standing interest in NLCA implementation problems, and we share your expectation that the conciliation project now being conducted by Thomas Berger will provide key guidance in how best to achieve the objectives of the NLCA in the coming years. Mr. Berger’s interim report is valuable in itself. His final report, at the end of the year, will demand frank and far-ranging responses and commitments.

I reject however, your suggestion that NTI reduces everything in the NLCA to what you call “lawyer-talk.”

In the four years of negotiations to update the NLCA implementation contract, NTI consistently took the position that an updated contract would not deliver a perfect world, but would make tangible and measurable progress against fundamental objectives. We not only talked the talk, we walked the walk. Our willingness to put aside disputes over the precise meaning of particular sections of the NLCA to come up with reasonable steps was demonstrated in a number of ways.

We invited federal negotiators to bring relevant expertise from federal departments and agencies (Human Resources Canada, Public Service Commission, etc.) to address better ways of making progress on Article 23 (Inuit public sector employment) in the future, perhaps taking advantage of the federal government’s experience in recruiting francophones at the national level. This invitation was never taken up.

NTI and the Government of Nunavut shared the $200,000 cost of relevant economic research by Pricewaterhouse Coopers into the costs to Inuit and government of failing to bring about a representative government work force in Nunavut (approximately 85 per cent Inuit).

This economic research formed part of a broader report prepared by GN and NTI, entitled the Annaumaniiq Report. This report was devoted to the political and policy commitments made by successive federal prime ministers, ministers, and other officials to re-design government in Nunavut to reflect the 85 per cent Inuit majority in Nunavut.

NTI attempted to persuade federal negotiators to bring federal heritage officials to participate in negotiations to find new ways to combine public sector and private sector funding to launch the construction of a new museum and heritage conservation facility in Nunavut as contemplated by the NLCA. Our efforts were rejected.

In arguments for the need for additional wildlife harvest studies and adequate funding for hunters and trappers organizations through an updated implementation contract, NTI relied on the advice of expert wildlife managers and experienced Inuit hunters. Federal negotiators never agreed to send federal experts from the Departments of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment to the negotiating table.

In none of these negotiating efforts did NTI confine its arguments and suggestions to legal points. On numerous occasions, NTI suggested that instead of exchanging conflicting interpretations of the NLCA, the parties should seek understanding based on more constructive reference points: reasonable expectations of the parties, plausible interpretations, reliance on the spirit of the NLCA and its articles, etc. None of these suggestions were embraced, nor was the suggestion that we use the arbitration provisions of the NLCA to come up with reasonable results.

NTI is not alone in thinking that the major obstacle to implementing the Nunavut and other land claims agreements is the federal government’s desire to do only what a judge might order it to do in the event of a court challenge. This is reaffirmed in what the Auditor General of Canada has said in recent years. It is not NTI’s policy, but the federal government’s policy of reducing land claims agreements from instruments of sharing to pared down lists of bare legal obligations that promote “lawyer talk.”

Fortunately, the appointment of Mr. Berger indicates that there is some openness within the federal government to a new approach. Let us hope that once we have Mr. Berger’s final report at hand, a new approach will take shape and momentum.

Joe Kunuk, chief executive officer
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.