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IQALUIT - Meetings of Iqaluit's new public safety committee have been put on hold after the group failed to follow proper procedures, including providing Inuktitut translation.

At a special meeting of council on March 30, Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik announced that she had postponed the second meeting of the committee, which had previously met on March 18 in the absence of an interpreter and support staff, and without having the agenda and relevant documents translated into Inuktitut. There were also last-minute changes to the agenda and insufficient public notice of the meeting, according to Sheutiapik.

The mayor said the postponement would allow for some "cooling down time," as the committee needed to regroup and develop its focus more clearly.

She added that there had also been some "frustration" due to the absence of proper procedures.

"It's not an indication of not supporting the committee," said the mayor, explaining her decision. "If anything, we delayed it to ensure we follow the normal practices that we use."

Councillor Jimmy Kilabuk said he was concerned that the lack of translation would hamper this ability to represent his constituents.

"For me, I really want to point out that I didn't want any agenda items that were not translated," he said through an interpreter.

"I didn't even want to touch them because they were not translated."

Coun. Jim Little, chair of the public safety committee, responded that he wasn't trying to insult anyone by not having documents translated and acknowledged that the committee was getting ahead of itself.

"The whole nuts and bolts of the committee is sort of in our hands," he said. "We have to sort that out."

Little said that Inuktitut translation was expensive and that there would have been an overwhelming number of pages to translate for the meeting.

As he had understood Kilabuk would not be attending the first meeting due to illness, "the need to have a translator to me didn't seem to be all that important," he said.

Little acknowledged that he had previously made the comment, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could all speak English?" to Coun. David Alexander, and expressed some remorse over this remark.

"He should not have said that," said Coun. Simon Nattaq through a translator.

"I do not like to hear that Inuktitut is just something to waste money on."

Kilabuk said he realized that Little was "a very good person," but expressed some surprise at his colleague's remarks. "He's lucky he's in Iqaluit and not anywhere else," he said in Inuktitut.

Little said he was puzzled as to how he had offended his fellow councillors, suggesting that there had been problems with the simultaneous translation provided to council.

"I really wonder how things got translated here," he said. "I was not in any way trying to put down the Inuktitut language here."

Inuktitut translation is "a cost, but I see it as a necessary cost," Little added.