Okalik introduces Nunavut’s first human rights bill

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

PANGNIRTUNG — Premier Paul Okalik, the minister of justice, introduced Nunavut’s first human rights bill in the legislature this week, a move he hopes will be a powerful step towards ending inequality between Inuit and Qallunaat in Nunavut.

Bill 12 received first reading in the House on Wednesday. MLAs were to begin their analysis of the bill after Nunatsiaq News went to press this week.

Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are the only jurisdictions in Canada without human rights laws. The NWT introduced the first draft of its legislation in November 2000.

The NWT had previously relied on the Fair Practices Act, an old law that Nunavut inherited with the creation of the new territory in 1999.

But the Fair Practices Act was badly outdated, failing to recognize sexual orientation as grounds for discrimination, even though it has been recognized in the Canadian Human Rights Act since 1996.

“The Fair Practices Act is limited in scope. It is confined to basic issues,” Okalik said in an interview in Pangnirtung, where the legislature is sitting this week. “New laws have come forward. New challenges have come forward that go beyond basic discrimination on the basis of race and gender.”

The new act would cover the commonly accepted grounds for protection enshrined in the Charter, including race, religion, age, disability, sex and sexual orientation.

However, it won’t go as far as the NWT legislation, which has become the first jurisdiction in Canada to include “gender identity,” or “people who feel they were born into the wrong body,” as grounds for protection.

“I have not seen anyone that lives that lifestyle yet,” Okalik said.

But what Okalik has seen is first-hand discrimination, both subtle and overt. “I still encounter it today,” he said.

“When I travel and have to go through airports, I am frequently searched. I see white people, see them pass through, but I’m often targeted for that reason — because I’m a minority,” he said.

“We’ve lived through it as Inuit. We were unable to vote until the 1960s,” he said. “We lived through those experiences and we don’t want them to be continued with our own government.”

What makes the proposed legislation different than similar legislation throughout Canada is that in addition to protection of minorities, its goal is to end discrimination against Nunavut’s Inuit majority.

“It is to protect minorities — that is the main intent of any human rights legislation,” Okalik said. “But even though you’re a majority, you still face discrimination. We are trying to catch up to the community in Nunavut and when we do catch up, I think it will be fairer for everyone.”

To that end, the act seeks to continue the Nunavut government’s practice of “positive discrimination,” or “affirmative action.”

“We have been disadvantaged in the past and we’re living with that today — we have high unemployment and low education levels. So we will permit for government to discriminate positively until the day that changes,” he said.

In an effort to change it quickly, the act would implement an important tenent of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.

“In Inuit culture,” Okalik said, “you try and deal with a problem as it comes up, as soon as possible, so it does not fester. We are trying to extend that to issues that deal with discrimination because we don’t want them hovering over people’s lives. We want to try and deal with them as soon as they come up.”

Okalik hopes that in creating a new human rights system from the ground up, Nunavut can avoid some of the backlogs that plague the process in other jurisdictions, where a claim can drag on for months and even years before it is settled.

The work will be carried out by a “small, simple body” of members appointed by government. “We don’t want a huge body that would be costly and slow,” he said.

Though it will be responsible to the legislative assembly, Okalik stresses the new human rights commission will be an independent body.

The matter of who will sit on the commission and how complaints will be investigated is yet to be determined. “We will try to keep it simple so that people know where to go if they do have problems,” Okalik said.

“We hope we never really have to use this body, but it will be there for people’s own safeguard.”