Shabby treatment?

The Legislative Assembly of Nunavut is now seeking a new language commissioner.

Based on how they treated Eva Aariak, the last and only person to hold that job, we wish them the best of luck. They may have to wait a long time before they find a qualified candidate willing to put up with the uncertainty that Aariak has put up with for the past year.

There are three “commissioners,” all with watchdog roles, who are accountable to the legislative assembly: the languages commissioner, the integrity commissioner and the information and privacy commissioner. Because they’re accountable to the assembly, their terms of office normally expire around the time that the assembly dissolves for an election.

The standing committee of MLAs that is responsible for making recommendations on the appointment of these commissioners is called Ajauqtiit – “those who push forward.”

After some dithering, Nunavut’s integrity commissioner, Robert Stanbury, and the information and privacy commissioner, Elaine Keenan-Bengst, were each reappointed to their jobs with no fuss and bother.

But in dealing with the status of the language commissioner’s job, “those who push forward” got themselves stuck in a deep snowdrift. It’s too bad there was no one around to push them forward too. Unfortunately, legislative committees can’t be held accountable in the way that cabinet ministers are. Committee chairs aren’t required to stand up in the legislative assembly to answer pointed questions.

The language commissioner – who knew, of course, that her term was expiring – waited a year for the Ajauqtiit committee, and the assembly, to figure out whether to reappoint her or put the job out for competition. By the time they did decide, she took a job with a private business.

Aariak is too professional, and too discreet, to complain about this in public. But since her appointment as Nunavut’s first languages commissioner in November of 1999, Aariak has given excellent service to the people of Nunavut, and to the legislative assembly.

She is the first person in Nunavut to hold that job. That meant she had to build up an office from scratch. Then she had to develop the capacity to promote Nunavut’s Inuit languages, monitor language use within government departments, receive complaints from the public, make annual reports to the assembly, and make proposals on how to change the official languages law that Nunavut inherited from the Northwest Territories.

There is no evidence that she failed to perform any of these responsibilities. And there is lots of evidence to show that she performed them well. She leaves two influential accomplishments. One is the work that she did to make her office known to ordinary people. The other is the work that she did on language legislation, when she recommended that the Nunavut government create a new Inuktitut Protection Act to complement the changes it must make to the Official Languages Act.

When an important government agency loses a talented and competent professional in Nunavut, it’s always a serious loss. But we wish Eva Aariak well in her future endeavors. And we hope the legislative assembly is more thoughtful in their treatment of her successor.