Nunavut land use body mired in chaos

Enmeshed in a bitter dispute with board members who want to review his job description and salary, Bob Lyall, chair of the Nunavut Planning Commission, refuses to call board meetings until DIAND minister Andy Scott helps him deal with rebellious board members.

In a letter to Scott dated May 10, Lyall complains about NPC board members who are challenging his authority. He accuses them of violating certain procedural rules, and asks DIAND to give him “direction” on what to do.

“In these circumstances, it is my best judgement as chair to suspend the balance of our Board meetings and to seek further direction from you as minister to resolve a situation which suggests to me certain members of this board are acting without authority,” Lyall says in his letter.

Lyall also suggests that the DIAND minister should give direction on whether it’s “appropriate” for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the government of Nunavut to be consulted on the matter.

The letter is contained in a package of documents leaked to Nunatsiaq News this week.

On Feb. 23, NPC’s board passed a resolution setting up an ad hoc committee to review Lyall’s job description and salary, and the commission’s bylaws. The members of that committee are Peter Kritaqliluk, Meeka Kilabuk and Suzie Napayok.

But that committee has yet to make a report to the full board on their work, and now that Lyall has suspended board meetings, it’s not clear when or if that will happen.

Speaking on a condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, one board member alleged that the ad hoc committee may have been blocked in attempts to get information from staff that they need to do their work – especially financial information.

Another board member, also speaking on a condition of anonymity, suggested that a majority of planning commission members may now be opposed to Lyall’s actions.

Five board members who come from Baffin and Kivallliq represent one side of the dispute, the source suggested. On the other side are Lyall, two board members from the Kitikmeot, and the NPC’s executive director, Luke Coady.

If this is true, it suggests that Lyall may have lost the support of a majority of board members.

For his part, Lyall says in a May 16 letter to all board members that the planning commission was to meet May 10 in Yellowknife with members of the Nunavut Water Board and the Nunavut Impact Review Board, and with the help of former DIAND minister Bob Nault, to talk about ways of working more closely together.

Lyall alleges in his letter that some board members “chose not to attend” the morning meeting, and met on their own without his authority.

Then, at 6 p.m., the commission was to have started a regular board meeting, Lyall said. On the agenda for that meeting, the ad hoc committee was to have made a report.

By 6 p.m. that day, Lyall had already decided to suspend the commission’s board meetings. He says in his May 16 letter that he went to the original “meeting” already armed with his letter to Scott, and a decision to suspend the meeting.

But five days before that, on May 5, members of the commission say they presented Lyall with a new agenda, and a request to hold a separate commission board meeting on May 10, 11 and 12 at a different location, starting at 9 p.m. May 10. Several members attended that meeting, but not Lyall.

In a May 18 letter to Lyall, the board’s secretary-treasurer, Suzie Napayok, said neither she nor the planning commission’s vice-chair, Peter Kritaqliluk, approved of the meeting with the NWB and NIRB, because of a lack of prior notice.

The ad hoc committee has not yet had a chance to present any report on its review of Lyall’s salary and job description – because no full board meetings have been held since the committee was struck in February.

At around the same time, Luke Coady, the commission’s executive director, issued a suspension with pay to Carol Sarazin, the commission’s finance officer.

The Nunavut Planning Commission, one of the more obscure creations of the Nunavut land claims agreement, is part of Nunavut’s family of public shared management boards.

It’s a public, not an Inuit organization, and is funded by the federal government. With about 12 employees based in Ottawa, Yellowknife and Cambridge Bay, its job is to produce land use plans for Nunavut’s various regions.

Its members are appointed by the minister of DIAND, some from lists of names submitted by Inuit organizations and the Nunavut government.