On March 3, the Government of Nunavut released its detailed plans for increasing Inuit employment across all its departments and agencies.
Nunavut government aims for 58 per cent Inuit employment by 2023
Document dump contains marching orders to meet land claim obligations
The Government of Nunavut will slowly work towards raising the proportion of Inuit employed in GN jobs over many decades, say the territory’s Inuit employment plans, released on March 3.
To that end, they’ll start with an Inuit employment target of 58 per cent by 2023, up from today’s 50 per cent.
The plans also set a target of 55 per cent Inuit in GN executive positions by 2023, up from today’s 43 per cent.
That, and numerous other employment targets, along with analyses of job numbers and educational attainment statistics, are contained in a one-day document dump that’s intended to meet the GN’s obligations under Article 23 of the Nunavut Agreement.
You can find the collection of Inuit employment plans on this web page.
Lorne Kusugak, the minister of the newly constituted Department of Human Resources, released the collection of Inuit employment plans in the legislative assembly, declaring that the GN aspires to become the first choice for Inuit in Nunavut who seek jobs.
“Employer of choice for Inuit”
“These Inuit employment plans demonstrate our commitment to being an employer of choice for Inuit in Nunavut and are concrete steps toward fulfilling the government mandate,” Kusugak said in a minister’s statement on March 3.
The documents include a master Inuit employment plan that covers the whole of the Nunavut government, plus individual Inuit employment plans for each department and for Nunavut Arctic College, the Nunavut Housing Corp. and Qulliq Energy Corp.
Though the GN has put together such plans for many years, this is the first time that the GN has created individual Inuit employment plans for each department.
The GN’s goal is to use them to slowly work towards raising the level of Inuit employment until the proportion of Inuit in the public service is equal to the proportion of Inuit in Nunavut’s population—about 85 per cent.
85 per cent target will require long journey
But they say that could take many decades.
“We expect that the journey towards a representative public service will be a long one,” the GN master plan says.
“It may take decades for sufficient numbers of Nunavut Inuit to pursue education in professional occupations in which the GN has many positions, such as teaching or nursing.”
That’s because their workforce analysis showed that Inuit employment at the GN is lowest in occupations that—by law—require a university degree and occupational experience.
That’s mostly in regulated professions like nursing, engineering and teaching.
And of those areas, the lowest growth in Inuit employment is in the health professions.
The master plan does say that in recent years more Inuit in Nunavut are getting better educated, but not fast enough.
“The educational levels of Nunavut Inuit are rising. However, the supply of Inuit with education beyond high school is currently insufficient to meet the needs of the GN and many other employers in the territory.”
But the highest growth area is in occupations that involve on-the-job training with little need for post-secondary education.
“Many of these occupations can be entered with high school education or no formal education at all,” the plan said.
Inuit employment higher outside Iqaluit
And Inuit employment is generally higher in communities outside Iqaluit.
“As of September 2019, Inuit representation was 70 per cent or greater in almost half of all communities. Inuit representation was 34 per cent in Iqaluit,” the report said.
One factor affecting Inuit employment is mobility—the willingness or ability to move to another community for a job. In Nunavut, most Inuit do not move away from home to work.
“Between 2011 and 2016, 93 per cent of Inuit in Nunavut did not move from their home community. Among Inuit government employees whose home community is in Nunavut, 81 per cent worked in their home community and 81 per cent of these had never moved to obtain government employment.”
Nothing new about IEPs
There’s nothing new about the concept of an Inuit employment plan, known as “IEPs” in the language of the bureaucracy.
The GN has done them since 1999, and the Nunavut Implementation Commission prepared Inuit employment and training plans prior to the creation of Nunavut.
The NIC’s work led to the transfer of 789 Inuit employees from the Government of the Northwest Territories to the Government of Nunavut before 1999, as well as the hiring of 41 Inuit staff members for the Office of the Interim Commissioner, which operated a transitional regime from 1997 to 1999.
That produced an Inuit representation rate of only 44 per cent in the fledgling Nunavut government, a proportion that rose to 52 per cent in 2009 and then fell to 50 per cent in 2012, where it’s been stuck ever since.
After that, the raw number of Inuit employees at the GN rose to 918 in March 2000 and to 1,843 by December 2019.
But the size of government rose also, so the proportion of Inuit has been stuck at 50 per cent since about 2012.
The current set of employment plans have emerged because of the 2015 settlement agreement that resolved a billion-dollar lawsuit that NTI filed in 2006.
That settlement agreement required that Ottawa go out and do a proper Nunavut Inuit labour force analysis, which created the data used in the department-by-department plans that were released on March 3.
“Prior to the 2015 settlement agreement, there was little data available on Nunavut’s labour force beyond what was routinely published by Statistics Canada,” the master employment plan says.
GN Master IEP Summary by NunatsiaqNews on Scribd
85% Inuit employment is absolutely achievable but it will need to be a generational goal. There are a lot of really remarkable Inuit children coming up right now and I’m excited to see what they accomplish.
Totally agree with this comment. I think if you look at the big picture Nunavut being a young territory that 45-50% of the GN workforce being Inuit is actually quite impressive at this point and based on the population of Inuit and Nunavut
Except there is a bit of tokenism embedded within that, and worse the stigma that “you only got the job because,” that can never be fully known or refuted. This has an effect on how others see you (including other beneficiaries) and how you see yourself.
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As for the 85% part, at the bureaucratic level perhaps it could, but given Nunavut’s small size jobs with the highest technical skill and complexity will always remain a challenge. How many doctors, lawyers, nurses and Deputy Ministers (who know something) can a population sample of 30 to 40 thousand produce anywhere in the world? Least of all in a place with a sub-par education system. It is rarely considered in this way. Instead we see a sense of entitlement to jobs that takes no account of education or skill levels. If you don’t believe me go read the comments on any job related story on facebook. Beyond the usual gripe fest about southerners is this belief that anyone could do these jobs. This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or the bias of illusory superiority, where when people have little concept of the abilities needed to do something they are unable to see those abilities as part of the equation at all. I bring this up because it’s an actual issue here, and it underlies some of the pressures to ‘lower the bar’ so to speak, which in turn feeds into the stigma I mentioned above.
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Be mindful that well meaning policies can have unintended and even counter-productive consequences at times.
We still hear stories about Inuit not getting hired for jobs they are qualified for. We still see non-Inuit hiring their friends from the south and from other Departments when CSA’s expire. We still see toxic personalities within the GN being protected and promoted by their friends. Hell, I’ve even seen a guy get promoted into management in another Department after having some pretty serious allegations made against him.
That’s ok though – after the grilling I seen some Ministers take in the house last week, it looks like the writing is on the wall.
It’s interesting to read that many of the occupations can be achieved by Inuit through on-the-job training with no formal education. However, I doubt the current labour force can get into those positions as most of us don’t have formal education. It’s a lofty goal but GN is not hiring us right now. Only recent graduates are getting into those training positions.
Our government will have a very young workforce that hardly have any experience. Let alone that don’tt know Inuit Qaujimanituqangit or even Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. They will only have to rely on GN’s definition of IQ and its seven guiding principles. How sad. People that actually do know real IQ are not getting fired nor trained right now.
Piitaqanngi .. let’s stop lying to ourself, IQ is just a made up pile of baloney, most probably put together by non-inuit just to give the illusion of having some inuit regulation. when you look closer at each component of IQ, and compare to the way Inuit currently and previously live, you will see how it barely has anything to do with them.
Oh please! Govt of NU can reach those #’s sooner than projected. Continue doing what they are presently doing re: underfilling positions with candidates who are hugely unqualified.
Sounds awful racist. Our Government should only hire based on qualifications of a person. Not race, sex, or anything else.
Many say that hiring Inuit might be undue favouritism if there is another non Inuk that would be better for the job. That’s easy to say when you’re part of the colonial establishment and of the mainstream culture in Canada. However, that works when one applies southern, western, standards that are now standard in Nunavut despite some efforts to the contrary. What if there is an Inuit way of doing things differently and the governement changes its approach to truly switch to the Inuit way.
An example is the court system. If you want to work in that system you have to be a lawyer and what do you do? You apply mostly southern laws within a process designed by the mainstream society even for Nunavut laws. Now what if Inuit legal traditions were explored and are likely a viable alternative to the mainstream system? Inuit would do a much better job than southern lawyers and judges. In Nunavut, there is a court system that mostly failed Inuit people – just look at the crime rates that haven’t decreased in decades and are among the highest in the country. Obviously that system doesn’t work even though it has way more people in it than, let’s say, 30 or even 20 years ago and cost much more money. Perhaps it would be worth trying a different approach than always doing the same things that we know don’t work…
There’s a price to will pay when you choose people who are under-qualified and under-prepared for whatever position you might put them in. I see it everyday in my workplace. That’s true no matter who we are talking about. On the other hand no one here seems hostile to hiring Inuit.
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I’d like to hear more about the “Inuit way” you describe. I’ve seen you reference this quite often in the comments. What would an Inuit way of managing look like? My manager is an Inuk and I suspect he might profit from your lesson.
It’s not southern or western law it Canadian law. Last time I checked we are all Canadian. Well most of us.
If you want to run everyththings a traditional way then you have to give all the other things like technology. It’s hard to say but we must embarrass traditional or new. It is holding us back to try and do half and half.