Nunavut’s rat’s nest

It’s too bad more Nunavummiut didn’t sit in on the four-day hearing held last January in Iqaluit to deal with Robert Ayalik’s racism allegations against the Government of Nunavut.

If they had, they could have caught a rare glimpse into the bush-league rat’s nest within which far too many of the Nunavut government’s senior bosses ply their trade. This comparison is, of course, highly unfair to rats, who, unlike many GN managers, know how to co-operate with one other — and are cleaner in their habits.

Consider the findings of Sarah Kay, the Yellowknife lawyer who ran the hearing, in explaining why Ayalik lost his job after asking a few legitimate questions:

o Ayalik’s bosses, the health department’s erstwhile deputy minister, Andrew Johnston, and his underling, assistant deputy minister Keith Best, produced “a clear breakdown in basic human resource management;”

o Johnston failed to brief Best about why he ordered that Ayalik be sent back to Iqaluit — a community that, for family reasons, Ayalik could not possibly move to;

o Tom Thompson, an assistant deputy minister of human resources, wrote a letter to Ayalik canceling his job assignment in Kugluktuk without saying why;

o Keith Best, the second-most powerful bureaucrat in the health department at the time, could not see or understand the connection between primary health care, and the shortage of Inuit employees in the health care system.

The only person who Kay saw fit to praise in her decision is — Robert Ayalik.

“Mr. Ayalik’s testimony made it clear to me that his views were very much imbued with a fundamental underlying belief that a Nunavut government had to be more inclusive of Inuit when it came time to research, develop and implement programs and services that affect Inuit so fundamentally … In my view, Mr. Ayalik took his work very seriously and was proud of the contribution,” Kay writes.

So why is this bright, committed young man — who, by the way, represented himself at the hearing and held his own against a university-trained lawyer — not working for the Government of Nunavut?

Ayalik believes that it’s because he’s an Inuk who believed that it was his duty to remind his bosses of their legal obligations under the Nunavut land claims agreement.

Kay, however, found that Ayalik did not suffer discrimination on account of his race. Assuming that none of the witnesses suffered from bouts of selective amnesia when they gave evidence at her hearing, this appears to be the legally correct conclusion.

Nor is it surprising. GN bureaucrats are singularly adept at the production of career-saving butt-covers, which explains why so many dunderheads make it all the way to retirement.

Kay’s findings do not get the GN off the hook. The affair has done serious damage to the GN’s reputation, and deservedly so. Her decision, and much of the evidence presented at the hearing, raise serious questions about the territorial government’s organizational culture, and the people at the top who run it.

The fact remains that when Robert Ayalik asked legitimate questions about the participation of Inuit in the design of GN policies that affect Inuit, he was treated like a used piece of toilet paper — and they flushed him away.

It’s no wonder that Ayalik honestly believed that he was the victim of racial discrimination. Wouldn’t you?

It’s more likely, though, that the GN suffers from equal-opportunity incompetence. If it practices discrimination, it’s against decent, self-respecting human beings. They’re the kind of people who struggle the hardest to find their way inside the GN’s rat’s nest. JB