College program to encourage growth of Inuit in Nunavut government

A college program in Ottawa is expanding in an effort to increase the number of Inuit working in Nunavut's public service.

Nunavut Sivuniksavut, an Inuit youth college leadership program based in Ottawa, has launched a new university certificate program in collaboration with Carleton University for graduates of its second-year Advanced Inuit Studies program.

"We're quite excited about it and we're very optimistic it's going to work well," said Murray Angus, who helped develop the program.

"The students that have been selected are people we know well, obviously, because they're graduates of our program and we're very, very confident in that it's going to be good for them." 

Students in the Academic & Career Development program will take university-level courses that are applicable to full degrees, and complete two work placements in federal government departments. 

Angus said the program is a stepping stone to further studies, and that while about two thirds to three quarters of Nunavut Sivuniksavut graduates go onto post-secondary, there hasn't yet been an initiative to encourage them to pursue careers in the public service.

"While they're studying public administration topics at university, they'll also get the advantage of seeing what it's like to work inside government, inside a big bureaucracy and to get a sense of what the career possibilities could be for themselves," he said.

"That will hopefully provide motivation for carrying on in the university track and preparing themselves for careers in the Nunavut public services." 

Inuit hold only 51% of gov't jobs

Three federal departments are involved in the pilot phase of the program: Statistics Canada, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Employment and Social Development Canada. Angus said they are directly involved in the implementation of the Nunavut Agreement.

Article 23 of the agreement aims to increase Inuit employment in the government to a representative level, which the territorial government and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated agreed would amount to 85 per cent of the workforce.

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However, according to a June 2017 report by Nunavut Tunngavik, only 51 per cent of filled government jobs in Nunavut at the territorial and federal levels are held by Inuit. 

Starting out small

Six students will be part of the pilot phase of the program, which will begin in late August and end in December 2019. 

"We didn't want to bite off too much and the first time through we're testing out to see if all the pieces will mesh. And we're very optimistic that that will be the case," Angus said.

He noted that doing things incrementally has always been the approach of Nunavut Sivuniksavut. When it launched its second year program in 2003 it started with only three students.

Angus said future growth of the new program could include the involvement of more government departments and Inuit organizations along with larger cohorts of students.

The program is being funded by the Makigiaqta Inuit Training Corporation and students that qualify for the Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students program will receive funding from the territorial government. 

With files from Qavavao Peter