Nunavut government caught using southern designer
Nunavut’s Department of Sustainable Development, and it’s predecessor under the GNWT, have been using the work of a Montreal fashion designer to promote the seal industry in Nunavut.
SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT—A local businesswoman says the Nunavut government is snubbing local fur fashion designers in favour of a Montreal clothing designer.
Monica Ell, owner of Arctic Creations, a fabric, sewing supplies and clothing store in Iqaluit, won a round of applause at a local constituency meeting last week when she charged that the Nunavut government was planning to buy seal skin vests as gifts for officials from DIAND.
“I heard your government is proposing to buy seven coats from a Montreal designer to hand as gifts to DIAND department officials,” she said at the meeting last Wednesday night.
Premier Paul Okalik, who is also the MLA for Iqaluit West, said he would look into the allegations and said it was the first he had heard of it.
“It’s unacceptable,” he said.
But two days later the Nunavut government’s Sustainable Development Minister Peter Kilabuk said an investigation in his department found nothing to support Ell’s claim. Kilabuk said Friday his department has never bought coats or vests and isn’t planning to.
“As far as anyone in the department knows at this time there’s no arrangements for anybody to make any coats for anybody. And if we were going to be making coats for a group as such that has been mentioned, we would put out a proposal for calls to bid on the contract,” he said.
But Ell said on Tuesday of this week that the idea to buy the coats originated from the Premier’s office and not the Department of Sustainable Development.
“Someone from the premier’s office went down to Ottawa. They showed off these coats from Montreal to the department of DIAND,” said Ell.
She said the plan had since been axed.
“From what I hear they’re not doing that now. I should have waited until they’d actually bought it,” she said. “Now, because I squealed and now they won’t do that. But the thing is, they still did show off the seal skin coats,” said Ell.
However Annette Bourgeois, press secretary for the premier, said there were no plans in the premier’s office to buy any coats. Like Kilabuk, she said that if there were to be coats purchased the job would go out for tender.
Ell said that her comments at the constituency meeting were an effort to get the government to change the way it promotes the seal fur industry.
She said that two or three years ago the GNWT went to Montreal designer Irma Patler to come up with seal fur clothing designs. She said those designs are still being displayed at shows intended to promote the seal fur industry in the Arctic.
She said that instead of using Patler, the government ought ot showcase the work of northern designers. A drum dancing group from Iqaluit is also touring Europe right now wearing Patler’s designs, she said.
“Because Sustainable Development is trying to promote seals, they’re using a Montreal designer, Irma Patler, Rosamori Designs. And her beautiful collection of seal skin coats are being marketed through Sustainable Development at our expense,” Ell said.
Ell’s work is included in a recent marketing effort by the Department of Sustainable Development in a publication entitled Seals and Nunavut: Our tradition, Our future, however Patler’s Rosamori Collection takes up the lion’s share of the featured products.
Ell said she and D.J. Sensations— another Nunavut seal fur clothing design company and retailer—were included only after they complained.
“They are including me in more things now,” she said. She said that she has been complaining about the way the industry is promoted since February.
“She (Patler) will probably hate me for this, I’m her distributor up North,” said Ell.
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