May 23, 2008
Around Nunavut
Man pleads guilty in Iqaluit gunfight
The man who exchanged gunfire with police during an armed standoff in Iqaluit last summer will serve 32 months in prison.
Kevin Joseph Tikivik pleaded guilty to pointing a firearm at an RCMP officer and firing a shot at another.
He also pleaded guilty to two incidents that took place while he was in custody at Baffin Correctional Centre: an attempt to escape in December, 2007 and an assault on a prison guard in November, 2007.
Justice Rene Foisy sentenced Tikivik to a total of 52 months in prison, but gave him the usual two-for-one credit for the 10 months Tikivik was in jail awaiting trial.
Tikivik is also banned from owning guns for 10 years and must provide a DNA sample to a national database.
The July 8 incident shut down Iqaluit's downtown for nearly 12 hours, as heavily-armed police traded shots with a man holed up in a housing unit in the city's Green Row neighbourhood. Despite bullets hitting the Astro Hill complex, no one was hurt.
Horne healing money to flow
After nearly four years of wrangling, the lawyers involved in a second lawsuit launched by victims of Ed Horne's sexual abuse have found something to agree on.
In a deal reached on the morning of May 13, lawyers representing the governments of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories agreed to pay for the first step in a process that will lead to the provision of interim healing and counselling services while the victims await a final settlement.
Under the agreement, two former Nunavut social workers, Cindy Parson and Patricia Smith, will be contracted to conduct assessments on about two-thirds of the plaintiffs in the case.
Those plaintiffs are all part of a group of 69 Nunavummiut who filed a second lawsuit against the territorial governments in 2004, claiming compensation for sexual abuse committed by Horne while he worked in various Nunavut schools in the 1970s and 1980s.
Justice Beverly Browne said she's happy that lawyers were able to agree on the issue without the need for a lengthy hearing court.
"I'm pleased that I didn't receive a raft of paper for me to review..." Justice Beverly Browne said.
Lawyers also agreed to try the case in March of 2009, rather than February.
Legal slugfest continues in NTI suit
Justice Earl Johnson's April ruling that kept the Government of Nunavut from being dragged into Nunavut Tunngavik's billion-dollar lawsuit against the federal government will stand.
Johnson has rejected a request by the Government of Canada to stay that ruling, which would have forced NTI to add the GN to the suit.
Ottawa, however, is still appealing that decision, which goes before the Nunavut Court of Appeal in September.
In his judgment on Tuesday, Johnson wrote that the federal government did not show there was enough legal justification for a stay.
"Canada is asking me to assume that there are serious issues simply because a notice of appeal has been filed," Johnson wrote.
During arguments over the stay application, Dugald Brown, NTI's lawyer, suggested Canada was dragging its heels with legal maneuvers, while Ottawa's lawyer, Michelle Annich, said NTI has failed to meet deadlines for filing documents.
NTI alleges Ottawa has failed to live up to the terms of the Nunavut land claim agreement and is seeking $1 billion in damages.
The organization launched the lawsuit in 2006, after talks aimed at producing a new 10-year implementation contract for the Nunavut land claims agreement ground to a halt in January of 2005.
The last implementation contract, which sets out who is responsible for carrying out the land claims agreement and how much they must pay, expired July 9, 2003.
NTI's biggest new demand would have Ottawa spend an extra $10 million to $20 million a year on Inuit training and education. Under the old contract, the federal government was required to spend only $175,000 on training over 10 years.
Conciliator Thomas Berger, who was brought in as part of a last-ditch effort to get a deal, failed to bring the two sides together.
Since then, Ottawa has funded its end of the agreement on a year-to-year basis.
