Nunavut’s trainee-led government is facing collapse

I read with dismay Carmen Levi’s recent statements in the press regarding the qualifications that will now be considered when hiring new bureaucrats for the Government of Nunavut.

While I have no doubt that “living on the land” and “raising a family” are admirable qualities, they are not those needed by a public government when staffing critical positions within an already over-stretched bureaucracy.

Enough is enough. Nunavut has made far too many concessions to political correctness and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. Just because you are an accomplished hunter, that doesn’t mean you are qualified to administer government programs on behalf of the people of Nunavut, and anyone who thinks differently is deluding themselves.

Nunavut has already poured too many of its scarce taxpayer dollars into questionable senior management trainee and internship initiatives and a law school program made up of students who don’t have the academic qualifications to get accepted even into a third-rate undergraduate program in southern Canada.

In the latest salvo aimed at getting Inuit hired at any cost, the government has once again “dumbed down” the bureaucracy rather than ensuring that Inuit get the education they need to succeed.

Rather than putting in the hard work to ensure that Inuit get the necessary education to be able to compete with anyone in Canada for a civil service position, the Government of Nunavut would rather take the easy route. They would rather use the lethal combination of pre-existing preferential hiring policies and watered-down entry qualifications to ensure that every man, woman and child in Nunavut is now eligible for a career in the public service.

Jobs are important, and with unemployment running at almost 50 per cent in some communities, the Government of Nunavut’s attempts are honourable. They are also programmed to fail. The Government of Nunavut has already made far too many concessions to effective and efficient program management and good government in its attempts to integrate Inuit into the public service.

And what is the result of these efforts?

To enhance the optics of having a representative aboriginal government, Nunavut is now burdened with a largely ineffective bureaucracy that is top heavy with Inuk managers, directors, assistant deputy ministers and deputy ministers, who are mostly unqualified for their positions of authority.

For the most part, they are so far over their heads that the very stability of the territorial civil service is at stake.

Those qualified and well-educated civil servants who remain loyal to the Government of Nunavut are now burdened with not only doing their own jobs, but also covering for less-capable superiors. What will happen to the Government of Nunavut when their remaining qualified staff burn out and leave? I predict that this top-heavy and under-qualified bureaucracy will finally collapse under its own inertia.

What is the Government of Nunavut’s primary responsibility? Is it to meet the terms and conditions of the various articles of the Nunavut land claims agreement?

No. The Government of Nunavut’s primary responsibility as a public government entrusted with public funds is to provide effective, professional and responsible governance to the residents of Nunavut and Canada who are funding their efforts with their hard-earned tax dollars. Anything less than this is, in my view, stealing money under false pretenses.

Would anyone reading this letter allow an unqualified doctor or nurse to examine and treat their children, or an untrained teacher to educate their children, or a “trainee” civil engineer design and build their schools and hospitals?

If in your mind the answer to these questions is very obviously “no,” then why is it acceptable to entrust millions of the government’s program dollars to the hands of a civil servant with a Grade 10 education, but who has good land skills?

It is time for everyone to take a deep breath and take a big reality pill. If we don’t turn the current trend around and begin to view our public service as a place where education and training are valued pre-requisites for employment, then it will only be a matter of time before our public government will become a wasteland characterized only by its incompetence and gross mismanagement.

Janson Biggs
Iqaluit