Violence rising in Nunavik as assaults, police clashes increase
In 2024, Nunavik had higher violent and serious crime rates than in the rest of the province and Canada
Interim police Chief Jean-François Bernier is pictured speaking to Kativik Regional Government in November 2025. He told councillors at this week’s meeting that violent crimes and confrontations with police are rising in Nunavik. (File photo by Dominique Gené)
Assault-related violence and confrontations with police are increasing in Nunavik.
Serious violent crimes remain persistent, with high volumes of assault and weapon-related incidents reported annually, said Jean-François Bernier, interim chief of Nunavik Police Service, in an update during Kativik Regional Government’s meeting Monday.
Offenders are almost always under the influence of alcohol or drugs during incidents.
“We have, as a community, to look in the mirror and go, ‘Oh boy! What can we do about this,’” Bernier said.
There were 3,123 assaults reported in 2025, compared to 1,759 in 2023.
Occurrences of assaults with a weapon rose to 1,017 from 654 over three years, statistics from Nunavik Police Service show.
Bernier also said offenders, witnesses and bystanders are increasingly not co-operating with police. Some resist, confront and even ambush officers during interventions.
The police service statistics show that assaults on police increased to 297 in 2025 from 237 in 2023.
“The confrontation [with] police on that scale is worrying for me as chief,” Bernier said.
The Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, which investigates cases where people are injured or killed during interactions with police, is looking into an incident where a person was taken to hospital with serious injuries earlier this month after being held in custody in Kangiqsujuaq.
In December, a six-year-old-girl identified by a family member as Alacie Iqaluk died and her father, Andrew Naluktuk, was injured in a police-involved shooting in Inukjuak.
Joshua Papigatuk died in November 2024 and his twin brother Garnet was badly injured after they were shot by police.
In May 2025, Mark R. Annanack died in Kangiqsualujjuaq after a confrontation with police. In July 2025, James Kavik in Inukjuak died after an incident involving police.
The BEI has submitted its investigation report into the Papigatuk and Annanack cases to the director of criminal and penal prosecutions, which decides whether charges are warranted. The others are still under investigation.
Crime in Nunavik is far more serious and violent than in the rest of Quebec and Canada.
Statistics Canada keeps a crime severity index by assessing the volume and severity of crime in individual jurisdictions over time.
In 2024, Nunavik was listed as 801.05 on the crime severity index, while Quebec sat at 63.01 and Canada is indexed at 77.89.
For violent crimes specifically, Nunavik’s score was 2,046.04, compared to 97.04 in Quebec and 99.87 across Canada.
Even compared to other northern regions, Nunavik’s violent crime severity is significantly higher. Nunavut was listed at 649.11 and the Northwest Territories was listed at 571.63.
Salluit Coun. Stephen Grasser said, “I had to force myself to look at the statistics. Those numbers are really frightening.”
Bernier said public safety needs to be the top priority to tackle rising crimes in Nunavik, with violence and substance use as key issues that must be addressed.
The proposed strategy is for government, law enforcement and health services to work together to prevent violence and substance abuse through education, providing medical care and mental-health care, and upholding the law to ensure communities are actively involved in creating solutions.
IT S OUT OF CONTROL !!!!
Wow , the most violet region in all of canada .
Nunavik’s violent crime is an epidemic, on par with some of the most violent countries on earth. Nobody wants to admit it but the stats don’t lie. Why haven’t they declared a state of emergency?
Meanwhile , our leader are busy saving greenland from trump !
@ 867
“……. stats don’t lie”…..
But stats can and are more often then not “skewed” to sow a specific outcome.
True story.
But these numbers are collected in a uniform manner across the country, they are consistent with the reality on the ground.
Nunavik is a violent place. This doesn’t mean every person is violent. But the reality has been consistent for decades.
This reality is what drives the number of police interventions, taxes Healthcare resources, and sends students to class tired and stressed. It’s also what leads to disruption of municipal services when people are unable to work due to injury, incarceration or intoxicated at work.
Police are meant to deal with behavior on the margins, but in Nunavik, the margins have become the middle. Until leaders address that reality, it will not change.
So leadership is great but this leadership has to come from a community level. Each of these small communities need every resident to come together and decide what is acceptable and what is not. It is not up to the Quebec Government, The police or KRG to solve the problems. Communities need to advocate for resources but also hold each other accountable. Part of accountability is working with police not against them when they are upholding the law. It means not painting them out to be out to kill Inuit when they shoot back at someone shooting at them who is posing a risk to the public.
it takes real leadership to say we can do better and we won’t accept someone in our community who is not holding that standard. Too many times we make excuses for people and it keeps them around causing trouble. I doesn’t matter if he had a bad childhood you can’t beat your wife. These are the kind of things people can do to change
If the new strategy is … ”
The proposed strategy is for government, law enforcement and health services to work together to prevent violence and substance abuse through education, providing medical care and mental-health care, and upholding the law to ensure communities are actively involved in creating solutions.”
What was the previous strategy….?
To let things get out of hand ? And why?
THATS WHAT THE SYSTEMS WERE CREATED TO DO. DIVIDE AND CONQUER. ALLOW THE INUIT TO KILL EACH OTHER OFF SINCE THE RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS, DOG SLAUGHTERS AND COLONIALISM DIDN’T WORK. THE GOVERNMENTS AND JUSTICE SYSTEM (ALSO A PART OF THE GOVERNMENTS AND INCLUDE THE NUNAVIK POLICE SERVICE) WANTS US TO DO SINCE THEY COULDN’T KILL US OFF….
Go back to bed.
There is an incredible amount of the most heinous violence in modern inuit culture coupled with an almost total unwillingness to deal with it.
So using the following numbers:
“There were 3,123 assaults reported in 2025, compared to 1,759 in 2023.”
and
“The police service statistics show that assaults on police increased to 297 in 2025 from 237 in 2023.”
A quick Google search revealed how many assaults were reported in Canada and how many police were assaulted in Canada as well. A little Math revealed the following.
A Nunavik resident is 15 times more likely to be assaulted than the average Canadian.
A Nunavik police officer is 64 times more likely to be assaulted than the average Canadian police officer.
That’s a very telling statistic and likely sheds some light on some other issues as well. Not a good look for Nunavik. Time to stop with the finger pointing.
Taking a walk and fresh air about town with my kid in a larger Nunavik village and wanting to keep to more quiet streets we would turn away from areas where loud and drunken behavior was obviously happening. I found it is not far or long before having to make detours. We walked to the the edge of town, where you’d not expect to see that behavior not in a non residential area however even there in a shack, open door and spilling on to the street was a gang, loud, drinking going strong party mode. Amazing. You can see for yourself anytime, take a walk. 😊
I see it every day driving to work.
I was visiting a public forum where the Quebec Courts are held inside at least 3 times a year on the Ungava Coast. I was astonished or amazed listening to the court hearings. 99.9% of the Defendant’s were seen by the judge for: Domestic Violence, Community Violence, Violence against the Police, Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol, Being Drunk in a Public Place, Going inside a Public Place Intoxicated and verbally threatening workers. My heart goes out to the new born babies, children, teenagers, and Elder’s who has to witness those living in the same household 3 or 4 times a week seeing their siblings, parents and or friends of the family becoming angry than violent. These new born babies and teenagers will be forever scarred emotionally and psychologically. They one day will repeat the violent cycle once they turn into adults.
@Really? This Violent. Nunavik community?
Tell me you know there is a housing problem (which leads to other social problems) in Nunavik, without telling me you know what you’re talking about.
@DOMICILES: yes, you or others could use the shortage of housing that could be causing other social problems in Nunavik. But, Really, why don’t people STOP buying illegal liquor from bootleggers? Why don’t the federal, quebec, krg governments, along with their police office and the makivik corporation in kuujjuaq and montreal with air inuit start working together to stop the flow of illegal liquor from entering the 14 nunavik communities? You just want to blame the housing issue, why not tell those in charge about the rapes (past and present), molestations, abandonment, suicides, murders, quitting school, children having children, those children than give their children to their parents and grandparents, begin drinking booze the moment they wake up, start smoking drugs as soon as they wake up, getting drunk and stoned from 7 ion the morning to 3 in the morning. Yes, lets blame the lack of housing for the violence. Inuit for years and years and years have been in denial that they know they can’t drink alcohol bu they still do. Some Inuit not all. Yes, lets blame the lack of Housing.
The issue is much more nuanced than “if we stop or start” individual behaviours.
The degree of trauma in Nunavik is unprecedented, and ongoing. Small steps such as referring offenders to supportive resources is a place to start.
The Saqiujuq program is a good start.
Until public organizations adopt and meaningfully implement practices that discourage public intoxication or public consumption, these issues will continue. Impaired driving, for example, must also be discouraged at the community level, apart from judicial intervention. Impaired driving is extremely common. It should be seen a public health and safety issue. Those who drink and drive should be treated like pariah.
Nunavik organizations could adopt policies that make Impaired driving convictions incompatible with public office positions, to reinforce the degree of threat It poses in Nunavik. This would also reinforce the importance of personal conduct at the public level.
This is nothing new, this situation has existed for decades and we know what the cause is. But, first, stats: in small populations, stats are generally skewed since one murder in a community of 10,000 equals a stats of 10 per 100,000 which is the usual figure used to assess crime rates and it’s extremely high.
That being said, the justice system was imposed on Inuit about 100 years ago and has been part of the colonial scheme to eradicate Indigenous cultures, like residential schools, and the Inuit society’s social control was mostly eradicated and replaced by colonial institutions, even where there is a land claim agreement like Nunavik. The police and court system with its circuit court have been unable to address violence and crime over decades while in other jurisdictions, more local control by Indigenous communities based on their own culture and legal traditions have been successful in addressing crime and justice.
Compared to Nunavut and the NWT, Nunavik is worse because it’s much more under a colonial system while in Nunavut, they have a full government and the court system is based in the territory. While the Nunavut court system is still profoundly colonial, it’s still an improvement from the one based in the South, like in Nunavik. It’s well documented that returning social control to communities like what is the normal in Greenland will improve safety and lower violent crimes. The flying circus that’s sending offender to jail is known to exacerbate violence since jails are among the worst environments where violence prevails and, in particular for young people, they are much more violent after a jail term. There are other ways for dealing with violence and it starts in the communities in their own culture and traditions.