Quebec City once again delays KSB move to Nunavik

MONTREAL — Nunavik residents will have to wait yet another year before their school board moves closer to home.

All of the Kativik School Board’s main offices are located near downtown Montreal — and that’s the way it will stay until at least 2002.

Just a few months ago, in May, Quebec’s minister of education, François Legault, promised that the KSB could start its long-awaited move to Nunavik.

But now Legault is putting the brakes on the costly relocation.

“We want to put it off by one year,” said Paul Rémilliard, who is in charge of native affairs at the education department. “It’s just the availability of money. When we do it, we want to have the money.”

The move north will cost the Quebec government at least $40 million.

Quebec had allotted $6.2 million for the first phase of the school board’s relocation. This summer 22 new housing units (11 duplexes) were built in Kuujjuaq, presumably to house employees transferred from the South. Two duplexes were to be temporarily converted into offices for relocated workers.

In July, 2001, 17 employees who work in curriculum development, training, research and computer resources, were to move into these units.

But this plan has been kicked back to July, 2002, although the formal letter hasn’t yet gone out to the board from the education department.

The board’s educational services and general administration were to be the first move to Kuujjuaq, followed by the transfer of technical services to Kuujjuaraapik. The only services eventually expected to remain in Montreal were student services.

The board has been seeking money for relocation since 1982.

But some observers say the board was lagging behind in its preparations for the move, and training of new employees hadn’t even started up yet, despite Quebec’s commitment to move forward on the relocation last May.