Pangnirtung man seeks treatment, pleads guilty to drug trafficking
Ken Papatsie described by Crown as struggling addict who was taken advantage of by Ottawa dealer
A Pangnirtung man is expected to be sentenced Dec. 18 after pleading guilty to two drug trafficking-related charges. (File photo by Jeff Pelletier)
This story was updated on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Pangnirtung’s Ken Papatsie resorted to trafficking drugs to finance and fuel his own addictions, Crown prosecutor Stephanie Boydell said in court in Iqaluit Wednesday.
But during his time in custody since 2023, Papatsie has sought treatment and shown a “continued commitment” to recovery, she added.
In a joint submission, Boydell and defence lawyer Lauren Shadley offered that characterization after Papatsie pleaded guilty to one count each of possessing methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking and conspiracy to traffic a controlled substance.
Papatsie faced 19 Criminal Code and Controlled Drug and Substances Act when he appeared in court Wednesday. He pleaded guilty to two of them, six were withdrawn, and the others are expected to be dealt with at his next appearance in December.
Papatsie has numerous convictions and served sentences for drug trafficking and assault.
The charges he faced Wednesday sprang from a police investigation that occurred in August and September 2023.
In the months leading up to that, Papatsie had completed a prison term for drug-related offences.
Boydell said while serving that sentence, Papatsie requested but did not receive treatment for his addictions. After he was released to an Ottawa halfway house, he reconnected with a man named Dustin Venton who began supplying him with drugs.
After Papatsie returned to Pangnirtung, he communicated with Venton on Facebook to co-ordinate sending drugs to Nunavut from Ottawa.
Papatsie only asked for “small amounts” for himself to feed his addiction, Boydell said.
However, in what Boydell described as a predatory act, Venton sent larger amounts for Papatsie to sell to others.
“Mr. Papatsie is not the bus driver,” she said. He was “trying to get high.”
The RCMP carried out a search warrant on Papatsie’s home, seizing 220 tablets of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant, as well as a cellphone and $1,050 in cash, Boydell said.
Days later, police continued their investigation and searched the local post office. They found a package containing 53 grams of cocaine, 1,033 tablets of methamphetamine, 21 grams of MDMA (known as molly or speed), and several bottles of alcohol, Boydell said.
In September 2023, the RCMP announced charges against both Papatsie and Venton. Venton was eventually sentenced to five years in prison — three for his role in sending drugs to Nunavut and two for charges stemming from Ontario, Boydell said.
Shadley said systemic issues in Nunavut prevented Papatsie from receiving addiction treatment.
After a decade of asking for help and speaking to a Healing by Talking program counsellor following his 2023 arrest, Papatsie was granted permission to temporarily leave custody in 2024 to attend out-of-territory recovery programs for a period totalling five months, she said.
Papatsie has continued with counselling since returning to Aaqqigiarvik Correctional Healing Facility in Iqaluit, she said. He plans to continue when he gets out of jail and is exploring ways to support other addicts.
Society “should be very pleased” that Papatsie was able to get into a treatment program, Shadley said.
The two lawyers jointly proposed a three-year sentence.
Shadley calculated that Papatsie earned 900 days’ credit for the 600 days he spent in custody. His time in treatment adds 54 days to that credit, totalling 954 days.
If accepted, that would leave Papatsie facing approximately five more months in custody.
Justice Mark Mossey scrutinized both lawyers on the gravity of dealing drugs in a small community like Pangnirtung, as well as Papatsie’s history of dealing drugs and other criminal convictions.
“The change here has been, from the Crown’s perspective, the treatment,” Boydell said, while noting that Papatsie’s addictions don’t “absolve” his past criminal actions.
Mossey set Dec. 18 as the next court date when the lawyers can finish their submissions and Papatsie will be sentenced.
Correction: This story was corrected to clarify Venton’s five-year sentence and what lawyer Lauren Shadley said about Papatsie’s treatment.
Addictions treatment is one of the many things Inuit need that the billion-dollar but dead-money Nunavut Trust should be paying for.
It’s not a land claims issue it’s the responsibility of governments to provide the services not land claims holders
While international and more-local merchants of the drug-abuse/addiction scourge must be targeted for long-overdue political action and criminal justice, Western pharmaceutical corporations have intentionally pushed their own very addictive and profitable opiate resulting in direct and indirect immense suffering and overdose death numbers for many years later and likely many more yet to come.
It indeed was a real ethical and moral crime, yet, likely due to their potent lobbyist influence on heavily-capitalistic Western governance, they got off relatively lightly and only through civil litigation. … Instead, drug addiction and addicts are misperceived by supposedly sober folk as being weak-willed and/or having committed the moral crime.
People who self-medicate should not feel embarrassed or ashamed about their addiction(s). The greater the induced euphoria or escape one attains from it, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their non-self-medicating reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while not self-medicating, the greater the need for escape from one’s reality — all the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.
Frequently societally overlooked or ignored is that intense addiction usually does not originate from a bout of boredom, where a person occasionally consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on a self-medicating substance that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
Especially when the substance abuse is due to past formidable mental trauma, the lasting solitarily-suffered turmoil can readily make each day an ordeal unless the traumatized mind is medicated. And, too often the worth(lessness) of the substance abuser is measured basically by their ‘productivity’ or lack thereof. Aware of this, they may then begin perceiving themselves as worthless and accordingly live and self-medicate their daily lives more haphazardly.
Decades ago, I, while sympathetic, would look down on those who had ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted to hard drugs or alcohol. Although I’ve not been personally or familially affected by the opioid overdose crisis, I suffer enough unrelenting PTSD symptoms (etcetera) to know, enjoy and appreciate the great release by consuming alcohol or THC.
In the book (WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing) he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Bruce D. Perry (M.D., Ph.D.) writes in regards to self-medicating trauma, substance abuse and addiction:
“For people who are pretty well-regulated, whose basic needs have been met, who have other healthy forms of reward, taking a drug will have some impact, but the pull to come back and use again and again is not as powerful. It may be a pleasurable feeling, but you’re not necessarily going to become addicted. Addiction is complex. But I believe that many people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse are actually trying to self-medicate due to their developmental histories of adversity and trauma.”
Albeit, while people should not be ashamed of their substance addiction, they also should not give in to it by completely giving up on any potential for eventual sobriety or perhaps a reduction in their consumption of the health-hazardous substance.