Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 29/99) - For what will be the first report of its kind, a trio of Northerners will scrutinize the implementation of the Nunavut Final Agreement.

Under a contract, awarded by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., federal and territorial governments, Bruce Knott, David Connelly and Louise Vertes will spend the next several months preparing a report on how implementation of the articles of the Nunavut Final Agreement has been developing over the past five years.

This is the only land- claim agreement that requires and independent review, implementation co-ordinator Terry Hall said. Other land claims have been reviewed by government and aboriginal officials, he added.

"Nobody has done this like this before. We are developing the analysis from scratch," Knott said.

The methods used could serve as a model and an exportable product for future land-claim reviews, not only in Canada but also abroad, Connelly added.

Their goal is to document developments on the implementation of the Nunavut Final Agreement. The agreement has a 20-year implementation period.

Contracting, parks, wildlife, water and Inuit employment are among the final agreement's 42 articles to be covered.

Knott is a certified general accountant with Avery Cooper & Co., Connelly and Vertes each run consulting companies. Their proposal was among seven bids for the contract.

The trio will review implementation of every article of the final agreement. They will visit most communities in the Eastern Arctic to conduct interviews in English and Inuktitut.

To assist with translation, Innirvik Services has been contracted. Innirvik, whose principal owner is Rhoda Arreak, is based in Iqaluit.

The review, which covers the first five years of the final agreement, is anticipated to be completed in late summer by the Yellowknife-based trio. Article 37 of the agreement requires a review every five years.

Seven proposals were submitted, including ones from big accounting firms KPMG and Deloitte and Touche down south.

"We were not low bid. I think we were middle of the pack on price range," Connelly said.

Asked what the Northerners had bid, Connelly preferred to give a broad price range of $250,000 to $500,000. The federal government is funding the review.