Nunavik teachers take strike action after latest talks fail
Negotiations have been ongoing for more than 2 years; strike expected to last until Tuesday morning
Around 50 people stood in front of the Kativik Ilisarniliriniq headquarter in Montreal, and around 450 teachers across Nunavik are striking as of Jan. 16. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
Picket lines formed outside Nunavik schools and in front of the Kativik Ilisarniliriniq headquarters in Montreal as teachers started their four-day strike Thursday.
Across Nunavik, about 450 Kativik Ilisarniliriniq teachers took strike action in their communities after another round of negotiations for a new collective agreement ended in disappointment Wednesday evening.

Nunavik teachers’ union president Larry Imbeault speaks to supporters in Montreal Thursday. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
The teachers’ strike started Thursday morning and is scheduled to continue until Tuesday at 11 a.m. The board said schools will remain closed until the strike ends.
Larry Imbeault, president of the Association of Employees in Northern Quebec, said the most recent round of talks that began Wednesday at 10 a.m. ended around 6 p.m. with the union providing financial information regarding its priorities for a new contract to Quebec’s treasury council, which is also involved in negotiations.
“We put in numbers so that they can have an idea for their budget envelope,” Imbeault said in a French interview Thursday, standing next to KI’s Montreal headquarters minutes before picketing started.
He said the treasury council replied, saying it would provide a response by late Thursday morning. The response had not arrived by the time picketing started, he said.
The treasury council declined comment Thursday when contacted by Nunatsiaq News.
“We’re not feeling urgency coming from the school board, and that is sad,” Imbeault said.
The union has identified two key priorities that led to it taking strike action: improving staff bonuses, which have not been updated since 2001; and ensuring sufficient water is available in staff housing.

Centre Union of Quebec vice-president Pascal Côté addressed pickets and supporters in Montreal Thursday as negotiations for Nunavik teachers’ collective agreement remained at a standstill. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
In Montreal, about 50 members of various Quebec unions picketed outside the school board office, raising their signs in -8 C weather to show solidarity with Nunavik’s teachers.
“That is not how we wanted to start 2025,” said Pascal Côté, vice-president of Centre Union of Quebec, the province’s largest trade union representing more than 225,000 members, in a French speech.
He said unionized teachers working in southern Quebec negotiated their new collective agreement a year ago.
Imbeault said teachers in the North always follow their southern counterparts in negotiations.
“We depend on what is being negotiated in the south, and after that we have to see how we can integrate that in our collective agreements,” he said.
The Kativik teachers’ union started negotiations for a new contract with the school board and the Quebec treasury council in October 2022. The old collective agreement expired in May 2023.
But after more than 30 meetings over more than two years, “negotiations [are] dragging on and on,” said Côté.
“During that time, the needs are huge, we need to recruit, attract, retain and on top of that, new salaries negotiated in the south are still not applied” to teachers in the North.
Imbeault said the lengthy negotiations have created “a lot of recruiting problems” due to the disparity in salaries between Nunavik and other regions.
“There are more and more personnel that are not qualified, and it is not normal that they make up over 50 per cent of the staff,” he said.
He said education in the North should be equal to the rest of the province and “it takes an investment.”
Kativik Ilisarniliriniq communication co-ordinator Jade Bernier told Nunatsiaq News the board will not publicly comment while negotiations are ongoing.

Picket signs were set up on a snow hill in front of Kativik Ilisarniliriniq’s Montreal headquarters Thursday as Nunavik teachers started their four-day strike. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
KSB needs to realize that retention measures comes with money, flexibility and some backbone when it comes to conflicts. So many teachers leave because they are being threatened or told it is their fault that students don’t come to school.
Mr. Imbeault said education in the North should be equal to the rest of the province
– its time someone compared the actual curriculum being used by Kativik Ilisarniliriniq. Canada does not have a national curriculum; Its the provincial government who is responsible for establishing the curriculum for their schools, and each province has its own ministry-established common curriculum.
Question: Is Nunavik part of Quebec? If the answer is yes, then why are the students in Nunavik at the secondary 3 or 4 level learning english, math, social studies, and science at a primary level? Why does Nunavik have to be inferior?
Lets stop ignoring the real issue and pretend the issue will improve with higher salaries for imported teachers and water on demand.
I support the teachers who demand equality with the southern portion of the province, but i would also strongly support each and every student and parent for refusing to attend such lackadaisical facilities of learning in Nunavik.
Its time the students also protested for equality! The curriculum must improve!
The kids in rest of Canada go to school every day. Until that is true for Nunavik too, there will always be a difference.
Sorry folks some of us like not fake news , only truth will be us. The whole KI needs revamping. Get ride of theses Inuit in head office down south, and even in kuujjuaq that are preventing growth and development in our education society. That sounds simple and maybe even too harsh. But for too long uneducated Inuit , just because they’re Inuit has been negatively impacting our kids education. I’m not speaking up for more non Inuit by no means. I’m speaking up for the future of our children. Many negotiations and progressive in potential and actual are being hauled due to biased individuals, uneducated at that. And I’ll invite you who are not aware to look at those Inuit , presenting as new and improved, moved away to southern life, never went to an educational facility themselves advocating blindly, selfishly and unacceptable planning the future for Nunavik. It’s not good enough. We must continue to make it mandatory for theses people to have an education to be in theses positions. They living off the funds of Nunavik’s education , self serving. Look at the same ones from one particular village in Ungava in what I am referring to. The ones that kept our children in dire straits over too many years. Somebody in these talks, got to make changes, I’m pointing it out again. The government of Quebec has to be more strict also about allowing this injustice ,even to our future.
Yes, where theses people came from shaped their world view. Their world is about 1/2 km, to the coop store , church and a government office. The same ones telling people to not celebrate holidays, holloween , put all your cd music in the community fire. And yet they somehow, fool the herd into supporting their plans on our kids. This is an example why Inuit after 50 years of join on to education and medical access, and consequently have nothing to show for it. It’s not anything other than Inuit that are preventing Inuit from successful living. This will continue to the next generation of uneducated in Nunavik. It’s actually a crisis that’s denied into blindness while eyes are able to see, but not register. The non Inuit involved are either afraid to say anything or not bright enough to have insight.