The GN: a haven of racism and incompetence?

The most despicable aspect of Harbir Boparai’s untimely dismissal from the Government of Nunavut, of course, is the strong and well-substantiated suggestion that he is a victim of racism.

But his short, unhappy sojourn in Nunavut also raises many more serious questions about whether the premier, the cabinet, and the Nunavut government’s senior managers are even willing and able to do the basic work of government.

Boparai has already produced enough evidence to suggest that Nunavut’s cabinet ministers and senior civil servants have little or no interest in ensuring that the territorial government is staffed by competent people. His evidence suggests that their only real concern is the manipulation of public perception, through cynical pandering and lying.

First, the allegations of racism:

Boparai, who is of South Asian descent, asserts that he is the victim of malicious, racist rumours that circulated among some Panniqtuuq residents after he was hired for a short, four-month term position. At the time, he happened to be staying with another man who is also of South Asian descent.

The rumour-mongers assumed that the two men were related, and that Boparai’s housemate somehow conspired to get his friend a job. This is the kind of crude racist stereotype that non-white immigrants to Canada have endured for many, many decades: let one of them into the country and they’ll bring all their relatives. Right?

It’s not the government’s fault those rumours arose. That, unfortunately, is human nature.

But the government, by its own admission, chose to act on them. And that makes the Government of Nunavut a party to a racist act. In accepting those racist rumours as being worthy of action, the GN, from the premier’s office on down, has validated them.

The government, of course, claims otherwise. In documents acquired through the Access to Information and Privacy Act, government officials say that Boparai’s contract was terminated to ensure “fairness and equity.”

But when Boparai re-applied for the job afterwards, no one at the GN responded to him. Why not? This, after all, is a young man with a university degree in economics seeking a job with the Department of — guess what? — Economic Development.

It’s also worth noting that for the short time he was there, he was the only person in his division who held a degree in economics. Meanwhile, two Inuit hired at around the same time, in the same manner, and under similar contracts, were allowed to keep their jobs as project managers. Since the only discernible difference between them and Boparai is race, the logical conclusion is that racism was the only relevant factor in their decision.

The documents show that the premier’s office was involved in the decision to get rid of Boparai. They also suggest that Human Resources Minister Louis Tapardjuk may have been involved too.

Why? It’s highly unusual in any government, even the Government of Nunavut, for cabinet ministers to become directly involved in the hiring of low-level government workers. This evidence suggests that there is a willingness by elected politicians to interfere with a public service that is supposed to be non-political. That, in turn, suggests a short, slippery road to the grossest forms of corruption in government.

It happens that the premier, Paul Okalik, and the assistant deputy minister who ordered that Boparai’s contract by terminated, Rosemary Keenainak, are from Panniqtuuq, the community where Boparai worked and where the malicious rumours arose. Was cronyism or nepotism a factor? We don’t know. But because of the actions of their respective offices, that question is now out there.

It is also the case that the Department of Economic Development and Transportation is one of many departments that have been carpet-bombed into near-total dysfunction by the GN’s badly-implemented decentralization policy.

The innovation division, where Boparai was to have been employed, suffered from at least four longstanding full-time staff vacancies. “We are facing serious capacity issues…,” his supervisor said in an e-mail to the human resources minister on July 8.

That is a comment that could be made about many parts of the GN, especially those divisions whose employees are supposed to generate the vital information the territorial government needs to make good decisions on behalf of Nunavut residents.

The Bureau of Statistics, for example, has now evaporated. The GN ordered that the office be moved to Pang, and every single employee refused to move. There is now one lonely manager there, charged with the thankless task of rebuilding the entire bureau. Similarly, the wildlife division, which was decimated by a forced move from Iqaluit to Igloolik, has never recovered. That division still consists of a mostly empty office, staffed by ghosts.

Despite all this, the Nunavut government still pretends that economic development is one of its major priorities. The Nunavut government still pretends that capacity building is a major goal. The Nunavut government still pretends that it is committed to human rights.

We now know that none of that is true. The least that they could do is stop lying about it. JB