Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (May 03/99) - The NWT Department of Justice dropped the ball in Iqaluit last month, but officials say they're going to do everything they can to make sure the same mistake doesn't happen again.

It all started off as business as usual in the Iqaluit courthouse on April 13 as a sexual assault case was waiting to be heard by NWT Supreme Court Justice John Vertes. Even though the Nunavut Court of Justice has been sworn in and is the official court of Nunavut in both territorial and supreme court matters, about 15 higher court cases did not cross over during the transition and must still be dealt with by the NWT Supreme Court.

As is often the case in Nunavut, several of the prospective jurors who were summoned to hear the case were unilingual Inuit.

All was progressing as it should until NWT court workers realized they hadn't successfully hired an interpreter for the trial. The end result -- all of the unilingual Inuktitut-speaking prospects had to be sent home.

According to Cayley Thomas, the director of court services for the NWT Department of Justice, the process of hiring an interpreter for Nunavut matters is done from Yellowknife. While the system had worked in the past, it failed this time around.

"We tried to contact at least six interpreters. It was a case of not being able to find one. It happens, but it's rare," said Thomas, from her Yellowknife office.

Because of the blunder, officials in both of the territories have taken big steps to make sure that such an embarrassing incident doesn't happen again.

"What we've done to try and solve this, at least in the short-term, is we're working with the Nunavut Court of Justice to either have them arrange the interpreter so we're not competing for the interpreters, or we'll co-ordinate interpreters with them," said Thomas.

The NWT Supreme Court will get another kick at the can in Nunavut later this spring, but most of the leftover matters should be cleared up by the end of the summer.

To make sure that lingering language problems don't find their way into the new court system, the deputy minister of justice in Nunavut, said much was being done to make sure the transition between the two courts was seamless.

"It's something that won't be solved overnight," said Nora Sanders.

But to make sure that a similar incident doesn't happen in Nunavut's own hearings, at least one staff interpreter has been hired to date and negotiations for additional legal interpreter training with officials in the interpreter training course at Arctic College are under way.

"We're fairly optimistic. We recognize that it's a very important area and something we want to do right," said Sanders.

As for making sure unilingual Inuit are not sent home from the court in the future, Sanders said she'd do everything she could to prevent that from happening again.

"We'll have good co-operation and work together on future things."

And while everyone promises to do their best in the future, the question remains if there are enough trained interpreters to go around. While the deputy minister of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth declined to comment on the situation, he did say that everyone was trying to bring themselves up to speed on the language issue.

"We're all working on this to make sure we provide good language services to all the departments in the government as well as to outside agencies," said Peter Irniq (Ernerk).

"In the beginning, there will be a few surprises in Nunavut. Now we want to make sure there are good language services."