End of a Training Era: NITC Shut Down

(Former CEO Lorne Kusugak, Peter Kapolak, Hugh Nateela: NITC Offices in Rankin: Zak Kunnuk films NITC workshop)

After nearly twenty years of operation, the Nunavut Implementation Training Committee (NITC), one of the first organizations created in 1993 following the ratification of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA), closed its doors for the last time on Friday.

Despite NITC’s track record of successful training, the federal and territorial governments decided not to renew funding to support scholarships, workshops, and employment training for Inuit in Nunavut.

"This is an organization that really made a difference,” says Paul Quassa, President of the organization. “I’m very proud of what we achieved. Many of Nunavut’s leaders worked for NITC over the years, or served on our Board. Just about everyone received NITC-funded training or scholarships. Today is a sad day.”

NITC was established under the NLCA to support training within the complex network of implementation organizations in Nunavut. As part of its mandate it administered the popular Nunavut Beneficiaries Scholarship Program. It was also intended to assist the territorial and federal governments in implementing Inuit employment plans, and to help the planning and delivery of training.

Former Board Member Joanasie Akumalik in the spotlight; NS graduating class: NITC sponsored workshop on the land.

Consilium has worked with the organization since - and even before - its creation. Ron Ryan served on an advisory group planning for HR in Nunavut in the early nineties, and helped steer the formation of NITC. Terry Rudden was actually NITC's first employee, designing the organization, hiring its first permanent staff, and overseeing its incorporation. And it was an NITC project that  brought the original partners of Consilium together for their first  contract - a project that yielded the comprehensive, seven volume Implementation Training Strategy that shaped NITC's training plans and programs for the next twenty years.

"I don’t know what’s supposed to happen now", said NITC CEO Dorothy Merritt. "Over the years our scholarship helped hundreds of Inuit students through school, and we provided dozens of workshops on management, governance, special skills – training Inuit in literally every community. There’s no other funding for training like that."

Paul Quassa agrees. “The needs that NITC was created to address—training for Inuit in DIOs and IPGs, trying to establish representative levels of Inuit employment with the federal and Nunavut governments, coordinating training funding and programming for maximum impact—those needs remain after NITC ceases to exist. I hope NTI and the government don’t forget that. We changed a lot of lives: I hope our work wasn’t wasted.”

NITC’s last day of operations was Friday, March 30th, 2012.