Ottawa to pay Nunavut more than $250M in land claim lawsuit settlement – CTV
May 5, 2015
IQALUIT, Nunavut — Ottawa is to pay an Inuit land-claim group more than $250 million to settle a long-standing lawsuit and improve training for Inuit to enter the territorial civil service.
The payment is included in a previously announced deal for more than $300 million that ends a nine-year-old claim against the federal government by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the group that oversees the Nunavut land claim.
“There’s a lot of interest in the Arctic now and we have a large, untrained Inuit work force,” Cathy Towtongie, NTI president, said Monday. “We have to deal with that situation now.”
The land claim guaranteed that Inuit would hold the same percentage of jobs in the territorial government that they do in the general population — about 85 per cent. But they have never held close to that number. The level has been stuck at about 50 per cent for years.
