IQALUIT
The Government of Nunavut (GN) did not fare well on the second day of the chief coroner's inquest into suicide, which focused on Nunavut's suicide prevention strategy and its apparent stall and failure to be implemented.

Two people involved in the strategy's creation took the stand and suggested lack of political will is at least partially responsible for its failures. An independent evaluation was tabled Sept. 15, which comes to a similar conclusion.

As early as 2003, when Greenland and Alaska were working on suicide research and prevention, "Nunavut was not even in the game," said Jack Hicks, a social researcher at one time employed by the GN's Department of the Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs as its suicide prevention advisor.

Hicks led inquest participants through harrowing statistics on suicide in Nunavut.

He testified that the high rate in Nunavut among young people "runs counter to the national pattern. In southern Canada, rates are higher among older people."

He said in aboriginal populations around the world with elevated rates of suicide, "it is overwhelmingly a crisis of young people." And in the case of Nunavut, the number of suicides is specifically high within the demographic of young men aged 14 to 25.

Hicks showed how, since 1967, suicide climbed from being on par with the national average to its current state at 9.8 times the national average.

Hicks then compared the peaks in numbers, using a Nunavut Sivuniksavut graphic titled Inuit History Power Curve. It demonstrates the heavy-handed government interventions that culminated with forced relocations into settlements, increasingly disempowering Inuit.

"The low point started playing out, the intergenerational impact. The first generation of children born to angry families in troubled communities," said Hicks. "There is suicide all over the world. There is no society without suicide behaviour. It's human. But there is no society that exists like the Inuit - what Inuit have experienced in the past 50 years."

Hicks also pointed to major differences in rates from region to region, and how Inuit in each region experienced different aggressive government interventions.

He said, "Kivalliq communities on the whole have a lower rate," citing being "rescued from starvation" had a "less traumatic impact, less impact on self-worth of men" than the "process of coercion on Baffin." Kugluktuk, a standout in the Kitikmeot, experienced "different trauma."

Hicks, along with Natan Obed, worked on the Nunavut Suicide Prevention Strategy.

Obed, director of social and cultural development for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), explained the makeup of the partnership responsible for the strategy - NTI, the GN, Embrace Life Council and the RCMP. Together they sit on an implementation committee.

Obed called himself "the last man standing."

His involvement dates back to consultations in all 25 Nunavut communities.

"We know that suicide is normalized in Nunavut, unlike any other jurisdiction in Canada. Children are talking about this and their understanding is more complete," he said, adding there was some concern in the early days that "drawing attention to suicide and talking about it would lead to more suicides. Yet people wanted the power to do more."

But, he said, throughout the consultations "we did not hear people say we shouldn't be doing this.

"People seemed to be very happy for a structured, regimented way to deal with this."

However, when the strategy was at the draft stage, the GN, with a day's notice, unilaterally tabled it in the legislative assembly, he said. The action plan, according to Obed, was heavily edited, with deletions and some items "recast as aspirational" rather than actions.

"There was no envelope, no funding."

In his testimony, Hicks confirmed that the GN had internally, without discussion with its partners, removed the column "resources required."

"That decision was made by key players," said Hicks, resulting in "an implementation plan with no budget."

This was but one GN action that would threaten the partnership and impede results. For example, since the formation of the implementation committee, the GN has cycled through 20 to 30 representatives and shuffled the file from department to department, Obed said.

"There has to be a definite position from the GN on whether or not it wants to be a partner," said Obed. "Our partnership is tied up in the GN process. We need to get beyond that. This is not a government strategy."

Regardless of the partnership, the GN is responsible for delivering services and programs, and following up on commitments.

Asked what is stopping NTI from moving forward with the strategy, Obed said NTI is not "a service delivery agent. The GN has that obligation. Nunavut is not a self-government alongside a public government."

Regarding the strategy, Obed said, it needed to be "the primary priority of the government to carry it through, like in Quebec" and "the willingness to fight through an obstacle."

In Quebec, youth suicide rates have been halved by aggressively committing to its suicide prevention strategy, he said.

Hick also testified about a multi-partner $1.5 million "follow-back study," also called a "psychological autopsy," which saw a team create psychological profiles, with the help of family, friends and community members of 120 Inuit who died of suicide between 2003 and 2006. The study, titled Learning From Lives That Have Been Lived, included a comparative group of peers, tracking through similar interviews their success in life and how they coped with similar difficulties or noting the absence of specific risk factors.

Hick says that study should have translated into change in policy in Nunavut. Sadly, he added, that hasn't been the case.

Mental health expert Allison Crawford testified the suicide prevention strategy is a "gold standard strategy," but the problem lies in the implementation, adding it requires "leadership at the highest level."

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