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QIKIQTARJUAQ/BROUGHTON ISLAND
A longtime Northerner has given up on teaching in Nunavut after a catch-22 school board policy blocked him from being considered for a full-time job with Qikiqtani School Operations. Wendell Sampson's date of birth, July 18, 1974, is the same as that of someone on the national sex offender registry, so he must get a fingerprint check to prove he is not the offender.

Fingerprint scanning technology, such as this LiveScan machine available in Iqaluit, could have helped Wendell Sampson get a job if he knew about it, but instead the teacher had to leave the territory. A fingerprint proving he wasn't on the sex offender registry came too late for him to be considered for a job in Qikiqtarjuaq. - NNSL file photo

"The requirements are a bit bizarre because the time allotment they give you isn't even within the time period the RCMP can produce the checks," he said after being excluded from a job in Qikiqtarjuaq.

All job postings with the board say applicants must have a criminal record and vulnerable sectors check no more than 60 days old. RCMP use date of birth as the flagging method because many provinces allow offenders with pardons to change their names. If a date of birth flags, fingerprints are required to prove identity.

"Normally, 60 days should be enough time," he said, but "it's simply not enough."

That's because the RCMP in Qikiqtarjuaq have to send ink fingerprints to Ottawa to check against the registry, Sgt. Chuck Duncan said from Iqaluit, and that takes "a minimum of six to eight weeks," or about 60 days, Const. Denis Lambe added.

"We have no control over the guys in Ottawa to get our fingerprints done quickly," Lambe said of the identification services office in Ottawa.

Sampson arrived in Qikiqtarjuaq in September with his wife, who already had a job with the hamlet.

"I've made a career of working in the North in short stints," over the past seven years, he said, "checking the board late in the teaching year to see where there are difficult to fill positions. It allows me to travel, and I like the challenge of teaching classes that are difficult to fill."

As the conflicting date of birth was a new addition to the sex offender registry, this is the first time he encountered the problem. He thought the criminal record check would come in before the closing date for applications for the full-time job he was hoping to get in Qikiqtarjuaq.

"They closed the job on a Friday," he said, "and my criminal record check came in on the Monday."

But this wasn't the first time it had happened to him there.

"They posted the job three times and they discarded my application three times because my criminal record check wasn't less than two months old," he said. "I was really hoping on the last reposting that it would sit there until my paperwork came in. As they hadn't started interviewing, and the superintendent knew my situation, I thought he would shortlist my application, but no go."

Someone else got the job, and Sampson was out of luck. He's moved back to Nova Scotia to wait for his wife to finish her contract.

"The school board set up an impossible barrier for me," with the 60-day rule, he said. "There really is no way to push them (the RCMP). I applied in Nova Scotia and couldn't get it in eight weeks. I applied in Yellowknife and couldn't get it in eight weeks."

He's looking at a career change. Even working as an RCMP officer has fewer tests to clear, he said. He knows, because he worked for the police part-time in Qikiqtarjuaq.

"It's time for a different career where I don't have to prove who I am. I know it's set up to protect kids, but it's not very user friendly."

New technology that speeds up fingerprint checks to a one-day turnaround is now available in Iqaluit, but Sampson was not aware of its existence until after he had already left the territory. Fifty people used LiveScan in the period from August 30 to November 30, Duncan said.

"We have a lot of them (teachers) applying," Lambe said of fingerprint checks. "My advice is for someone coming through Iqaluit to get it done while they're here."

Qikiqtani School Operations executive director Trudy Pettigrew directed a request for comment to the Department of Education, but no one from the department was available to comment by press time.

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