Mine boss backs building pledge
Agnico Eagle chairperson passionate about building Nunavut university
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Monday, November 9, 2015
NUNAVUT
Talk of a university in the territory has gone on for years, but the landscape changed when, in 2014, Jim Nasso, the chairperson of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. board of directors, pledged $5 million for a building fund.
Kivalliq Inuit Association president David Ningeongan, left, accepts an impact benefits agreement payment from Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. chairperson Jim Nasso, who is passionate about the establishment of a university in Nunavut. - photo courtesy of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. |
He is even more passionate about the need for a university now and backs a move by the territorial government to have a feasibility study completed.
"We're the only circumpolar nation amongst eight that doesn't have a university. And we're a G7 country. It's scandalous. There isn't any reason for it," he said by telephone from Toronto last week.
When Nasso uses the word "we," and he uses it a lot, it's sometimes difficult to figure out if he means "we, the company" or "we, Nunavut" or "we, Canada." That may not matter, because his mantra is, "tamatta, tamatta, tamatta, together."
He recognizes that his company's success depends on the well-being and success of Nunavummiut. His ideal is to one day see "Inuit run (the Meliadine) mine like the Mexicans do," Nasso said this past summer in Rankin Inlet at the conclusion of 40-month Inuit Impact Benefit Agreement negotiation. He was referring to Agnico Eagle's three Mexican gold mines - Pinos Altos, Creston Mascota and La India - all three of which are 100 per cent Mexican managed and operated.
But that won't happen in Nunavut without education options. The company carries out substantial job training with its Inuit employees, including in literacy, and he acknowledges Nunavut Arctic College and Piqqusilirivvik are fine learning streams but, he says, they're not a university.
"Nunavut needs professional people, and they should be Inuit," Nasso said.
"We have, according to what I've been told over the years, about 350 students (in Nunavut) in secondary education from coast to coast. And some go away and they make it. And a lot of them don't. They get discouraged, they come home. Or they've fallen off the rails in Winnipeg or Ottawa or wherever it is," said Nasso.
"I remember speaking to a high school teacher from Chesterfield and he had three students who were down at that time, it was September. They were away for less than a week and they phoned him and said they were homesick. They wanted to come home."
Nasso, who chose to speak to Nunavut News/North himself rather than allow his communications team to do so for him, is very clear on why he cares so much whether or not Inuit can attend university on their home turf.
"Underlying the whole thing very, very simply, and what drives me, really, is the children and the future. That's the whole moving force. They have to have somewhere to go, and they don't have anywhere to go at the moment," he said.
"It's just missing. Look around you. You're in Iqaluit? Look around at the little kids. Walk by the schoolyard at recess, which I've done. All these little kids in Grade 3, Grade 4 they're going to go through school and they will have nowhere to go. All that latent intellectual capacity just lying dormant, and that shouldn't happen. It shouldn't happen.
"It's really incumbent on us that this gets done. And we have support from the south here. We have banks already ready to contribute money. Leaders that are saying this is a great idea. Leaders saying its time has come."
Nasso reaches for a myriad of facts to support his passionate plea, from economics, specifically economic forecasts for Nunavut, history and popular publications. And make no mistake, the man is passionate - his voice over the telephone intensifies by the minute.
On the future of Nunavut, he says: "According to the Conference Board of Canada some statistics say that over the next 25 years $65 billion will be invested and I think that's rather low. We ourselves at the end of 2019 will have invested $5 billion in Nunavut. That's one company."
Regarding questions about a viable university-student population in the territory, Nasso refers to an article he recently read.
"Our oldest university, Laval, in 1663, they had 3,000 people in New France," he states.
"Arviat has got a population of 3,000, of which 60 per cent are under 20. That's 1,800 jobs, and where are they going to go?"
He continues: Carleton University started as a three-storey residential building in the Glebe section of Ottawa. Today, it has 20,000 students.
"The one I graduated from, St. Francis Xavier University in (Antigonish) Nova Scotia was founded maybe 150 years ago by miners, farmers and fisherman."
Nasso also mentions a newspaper piece, an interview with Shelby Steele who is an African-American author and documentary filmmaker specializing in the study of race relations.
"He said, 'We have a flat freedom in the United States.'" According to Steele, "flat freedom is simply that we all enjoy the same rights and privileges and freedoms, period."
"In other words," said Nasso, "if you want to go to high school, if you want to go to university, the stuff is there and available. We do not have flat freedom in the Arctic. We have the large component that builds societies missing.
"These children should be allowed to take their rightful place and they won't do that unless they're educated."
Nasso offers one of many possible future scenarios:
"Think of this. Move the clock forward. We have a political science department. And we have a government. And they have an issue they've got to deal with. These (graduates) will be PhDs and political scientists and economists and so on. That's a resource."
Nasso has slowly been chipping away at Nunavut governments for almost a decade, first when Paul Okalik was premier, then again when Eva Aariak took the top leadership position.
"Absolutely, it's necessary progress," he said about the feasibility study. "They'll get all the statistics and all the things they need to move forward."
He adds, "Money's not a problem. Land is not a problem. Students aren't a problem. It's just the political will to do it. And I must say about this premier, he's an education premier and he's also an economic premier."
As Education Minister Paul Quassa noted, the GN has a lot of work to do to fulfill obligations in the lands claim agreement.
"(A university) will help us follow the lands claim agreement and all the things that are going to come out of the lands claim agreement, especially Article 23."
Once again, Nasso pulls out his now infamous mantra, which drew laughs of appreciation in Rankin last summer.
"We're doing this together, which you've heard me say, my favourite word, tamatta - together, together we'll get this done. I'm not going away. I'm going to give them a headache. We just have to get this done. It doesn't matter what KPMG come up with, we're going to do it anyway. That's all."
