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IPG funding deal may be less than meets the eye

No firm funding commitment from Ottawa yet

JIM BELL

When is an "agreement" not an "agreement?"

For officials at Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., it's when one side says they'll do something - but without checking to make sure they can pay for it.

NTI says that's what happened last December and January, when federal government negotiators "agreed" to a new multi-year funding deal for Nunavut's family of environmental co-management boards, known as "Institutions of Public Government," or "IPGs."

Under it, Ottawa would give the IPGs about $15 million a year between now and 2013 - an increase of about $2 million a year over what Ottawa now gives the IPGs.

But until the federal government, through the Treasury Board, approves that extra million, NTI says there's no deal.

And in a letter to Nunatsiaq News this week, NTI even says that conciliator Thomas Berger was "misled" last December and January when federal negotiators created the impression that a done deal exists.

"On the basis of my recommendations, the parties have found themselves able to agree to funding for the work of these boards in the sum of $15 million per year for the balance of the 10-year implementation period, 2003-2013," Berger said in a March 1 letter to Jim Prentice, the DIAND minister, attached to Berger's final report on the implementation contract talks.

Berger was appointed last year to help revive failed talks between NTI, the Government of Nunavut and Ottawa aimed at producing a new implementation contract for the Nunavut land claims agreement.

Berger's interim report, issued last fall, recommended various ways in which the three parties could reach agreement on IPG funding.

And after a meeting on Dec. 21, held with Berger's encouragement, the three sides worked out the basis for the IPG funding deal, which was refined further in a meeting of the Nunavut Implementation Panel on Jan. 24 and Jan. 25, and then attached to Berger's final report.

But NTI says that by the time the IPG agreement was finished, DIAND negotiators inserted a set of words that, in effect, amount to an escape clause:

"All recommendations are subject to approval of the Parties and their respective internal approval processes."

The federal government's "internal approval process" for the spending of new money is an agency called the Treasury Board. Federal government departments are not allowed to spend new money unless the Treasury Board says yes.

And Treasury Board approval can't happen without the prior approval of the federal cabinet.

NTI officials told Nunatsiaq News this week that DIAND has not yet sent a submission to cabinet to ask for the extra money, and that if that happens at all, it may not be occur until the fall.

And they also say that DIAND has instructed the IPGs - organizations such as the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Nunavut Water Board - to plan their 2006-07 budgets on the basis of their old funding arrangements.

Yet another issue that worries NTI is the status of Berger's recommendations on a little-known, but important body called the Nunavut Arbitration Board, and another body called the Nunavut Implementation Panel

The job of the implementation panel is to monitor the implementation of the land claims agreement. The job of the arbitration board is to help solve disputes over how the agreement is implemented.

Berger recommended that a dispute resolution process be built into the implementation panel, and that a binding arbitration process be created for the arbitration board.

The last implementation contract for the Nunavut land claims agreement expired March 31, 2003. Talks aimed at creating a new one fell apart in late 2004.

Berger's final report on his conciliation efforts was submitted to NTI, the GN and the federal government on March 1, and leaked last week to Nunatsiaq News.

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