March 27, 2009
IN THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
Direct hiring a good idea, MLAs say
The Government of Nunavut still uses a preferential hiring policy for Inuit beneficiaries of the Nunavut land claims agreement, which includes direct appointments where no job competitions are held, Daniel Shewchuk, the human resources minister, told the legislature March 17.
Shewchuk was responding to badgering from Paul Okalik, the MLA for Iqaluit West, about the direct appointment process.
Okalik, the former premier, boasted that this policy helped his government increase the number of Inuit workers to more than 1,500.
"We achieved an increase of over 70 per cent in less than 10 years as a government. Why are you rescinding this program that provided such benefits to our government and the Inuit?" Okalik asked.
 |
Shewchuk, Nunavut's human resources minister, said the GN did suspend direct appointments for a short period of time.
"But we have initiated that program again and we are doing direct appointments," he said. "Where there are qualified people in positions to be directly appointed, under certain criteria they will continue to do so."
Shewchuk also faced questions about the GN's direct appointment of casual labour, with James Arvaluk, the MLA for Tununiq, saying some casual hires are hired in from outside Nuanvut.
"I'm unaware of the situation in Pond Inlet where people are being flown in from the South to take casual positions. But I can tell you that casual people are usually hired in the local community for short-term help and then they are more qualified to apply for the position when a competition becomes open, and that's our standard process that we use," Shewchuk said.
 |
New words added to Inuit language
A group of 15 elders and 14 medical interpreter-translators from across Nunavut added more than 500 new words to the Inuit language lexicon last month, Louis Tapardjuk, the language minister, told MLAs last week.
This work was done at a "terminology development workshop" held in Iqaluit.
Speaking March 18 in the legislature, Tapardjuk said the goal of the workshops was to create Inuktitut terms to help monolingual Inuit patients better communicate with non-Inuit nurses and doctors.
 |
Workshop particpants identified, developed, and standardized more than 500 Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun words related to the human body, Tapardjuk said.
He said these new terms will be compiled within an Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun glossary and illustrated on an anatomical poster to be distributed to health centres, hospitals, and schools.
Baffin patients overflow Iqaluit
Patients sent from smaller Baffin region communities into Iqaluit for appointments at the Qikiqtani Regional Hospital are having a tough finding places to stay, MLAs said when the legislature started sitting March 17.
 |
"There have been times where Inuit and non-Inuit, but mainly Inuit, that have left Cape Dorset for Iqaluit to go to the hospital and there has been no room in the boarding home and apparently they have been told that they have to find their own accommodations. In one case, of course, they didn't know anybody in Iqaluit," said Fred Schell, the MLA for South Baffin.
Health Minister Tagak Curley said the chronic lack of space at the Taamaativvik Boarding Home will be eased by the construction this summer of a new 90-bed patient residence in Iqaluit.
The GN's health department is also trying to improve the rates paid to families who take in patient billets, Curley said.
There are three separate categories for billet rates, which have not changed since 2004, Curley said: $10 per night for infants up to three years of age, $25 per night for children from four to nine years old, and $50 per night for all others, nine years and up.
 |
"This government doesn't approve of these current rates. We have informed the managers of this program, which goes through a technical committee of the federal government that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. is included in, that we have to change the rates to reflect the higher cost of living in Nunavut. Yet, we have not heard any responses and they are still working on it," Curley said.
Sanikiluaq wants equity
Allan Rumboldt, MLA for Hudson Bay, said March 18 that income support recipients in Sanikiluaq get the lowest food allowances in Nunavut, even though the GN gives its Sanikiluaq employees a higher northern allowance to recognize the high cost of living on the Belcher Islands.
"Government employees in Sanikiluaq receive over $400 more in monthly northern allowance benefits than government employees in Iqaluit. At the same time, however, a Sanikiluaq family of nine on income support receives $100 less in food allowance than a family of the same size in Iqaluit would receive each month," Rumboldt said.
"This doesn't seem fair."
Louis Tapardjuk, the minister responsible for income support, said March 19 that the federal Indian and Northern Affairs department sets the food allowance rates, not the GN, although he said he would "review the matter further."
Ahead: review of medical travel
Nunavut's health department is ready to review medical travel contracts, health minister Tagak Curley said in the legislature this past week.
Some airline flights are overbooked due to medical travel contracts, while others fly empty because they have no patients on board, he said.
In the Kivalliq region, Curley said First Air can't take a medical patient from Rankin Inlet to Winnipeg via its renewed jet service, "even if they are extremely sick," because Canadian North has the medical travel contract.
Curley said he's asked himself whether the GN should reopen the territory's medical travel contracts to allow patients to travel on whatever airline has space on its places.
This might also save the GN money, he speculated.
But Curley said he can't act immediately because medical travel contracts are legal contracts and that "they don't expire for another year."
Speaking in the legislature March 18, James Arvaluk, MLA for Tununiq, also asked Curley to conduct a review on the decentralization of patient travel services, which are now located in Pangnirtung.
Curley said he was willing to meet with regular MLAs and promised his department would make "decisions based on practical solutions."
All you need to know about rocks
Soon students and wannabe prospectors in Nunavut will have a new tool to learn about rocks commonly found in Nunavut, Peter Taptuna, the minister of economic development, said March 18.
Taptuna's department and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada have come up with the "Nunavut Rock and Mineral Teaching Kit," which contains more than 60 different rock and mineral samples from Nunavut or donated by mining companies.
"Knowledge of these rock and mineral samples will give a student a basic understanding of the geology of our territory - the foundation for our mineral exploration and mining industry," Taptuna said.
The kit includes a guidebook in English, Inuktitut, Innuinaqtun and French, which shows how to identify rocks and minerals, where they are found in Nunavut, and explains their uses.
Nunavut high schools and middle schools will receive the kits, which will also be used in the GN's prospector training courses and by mining companies for use in community outreach activities, Taptuna said.
