NY Times: Nunavut a “disheartening” story

A story in last Sunday’s New York Times says that although the creation of the Nunavut territory seven years ago was praised around the world, it’s now a “disheartening story of frustrated hopes and local failures.”

The story, by the Times’ Canadian correspondent, Clifford Krauss, focuses on two recent documents that highlight two of the Nunavut territory’s problems: Justice Thomas Berger’s report on education, and Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s recent report on the GN’s decentralizing system of financial administration.

“A second report, by Sheila Fraser, the auditor general of Canada, disclosed widespread financial mismanagement…,” the story says.

The story also says, inaccurately, that Fraser found examples of fraud.

But Fraser told MLAs this past April that she did not find evidence of fraud. She did say, though, that the GN is highly vulnerable to fraud because of weak financial controls.