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Ayalik to appeal no-racism decision

"It was not a hard decision to make"

JIM BELL

Robert Ayalik: still insists he was treated to racial discrimination. (FILE PHOTO)

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Robert Ayalik, a former Nunavut government employee from Kugluktuk, is attempting to appeal a decision issued by a Nunavut Fair Practices officer last month that found Ayalik was not a victim of racial discrimination.

"It wasn't a hard decision to make," Ayalik said of his appeal, which he filed this past Monday with the Nunavut Court of Justice.

Sara Kay, a Yellowknife lawyer brought in to act as a fair practices officer, presided last January over a four-day hearing in Iqaluit held to deal with a complaint Ayalik filed with the Nunavut Fair Practices office in July 0f 2002.

Ayalik's complaint alleged that in July of 2001, senior managers in the Nunavut government coerced him into quitting his job after he complained about a primary health care conference in Rankin Inlet at which no Inuit were listed as participants.

Kay found that Ayalik "may have been treated unfairly," and that there was "a clear breakdown in basic human resource management" on the part of Andrew Johnston, the deputy minister of health at the time, and Keith Best, the assistant deputy minister of health and Ayalik's immediate supervisor.

Their cancellation of Ayalik's special work assignment with the health department in Kugluktuk, where he needed to reside to take care of urgent family issues, would have forced him to move to Iqaluit.

But she also found that they did not discriminate against him because of his Inuit ancestry - but in response to insubordination.

Ayalik, however, alleges in his appeal that Kay erred "in fact and in law" on eight separate points. In an interview this week, Ayalik said he prepared the appeal by himself, because he can't afford a lawyer.

Ayalik also said that on July 15, he wrote to Paul Kaludjak, the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., seeking help with his case, but he has yet to receive a reply.

The Fair Practices Office for Nunavut, which hears complaints under the old Fair Practices Act, will be replaced after Nunavut's new Human Rights Act comes into effect.

It's not clear yet if, or when, a Nunavut judge will hear Ayalik's appeal.

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