Canadian government to apologize for Nunavik dog slaughter

The federal government will apologize to Inuit in Nunavik for the killing of sled dogs between the mid-1950s until the late 1960s.

In opening remarks at the Inuit-Crown partnership committee meeting in Ottawa on Friday, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree said the government is preparing to deliver an apology in Nunavik — the Inuit region of Northern Quebec.

The actual date of the apology is still being finalized but could come as early as the end of the month.

Anandasangaree told the room the apology won’t erase the past, but will hopefully give some solace to remaining survivors “as we rebuild this very important relationship.”

For years, the Makivik Corporation — which represents Inuit in Nunavik — pushed for an acknowledgement from the federal and provincial governments on the harm the dog slaughter caused in addition to remediation.

The organization has said the killing of the dogs caused Inuit dog owners to lose their means of transportation, preventing them from earning a livelihood by hunting and trapping, and eroding their way of life.

The province of Quebec has already apologized for its role in the killings.

A 2010 report from Jean-Jacques Croteau, a retired Superior Court of Quebec judge, found Quebec provincial police officers killed more than 1,000 dogs “without any consideration for their importance to Inuit families.”

The federal government’s role in it, Croteau found, was failing to intervene or condemn the actions.

“The federal agents and civil servants failed to intervene on behalf of the government of Canada in its capacity as fiduciary when agents and civil servants of the government of Quebec took their operations to an extreme,” Croteau wrote in his report, noting that in some cases dogs were killed because of a perceived threat to the public after non-Inuit had been bitten.

“Without investigation and without asking the owners about the importance of the dogs they wanted to kill, without inquiring whether the dogs they wanted to kill constituted a real, serious and current danger to the people.”

In 2011, then-Quebec Premier Jean Charest formally apologized to Inuit in Nunavik for the province’s role, and settled with Makivik for $3 million toward promoting and protecting Inuit language and culture.

In 2019, the federal government apologized to Inuit in Nunavut for the RCMP’s role in the killing of sled dogs there.

A final report from the Qikiqtani Truth Commission on the issue found hundreds of dogs were shot by the RCMP out of a fear of loose dogs or the spread of disease.

“It’s about time. What happened in Nunavik is so similar to what happened in my riding,” said Nunavut MP Lori Idlout.

“While it opened some wounds, I think it created a safe space for those impacted to share their stories. When they had that space, those that never had any direct experience with it understood their pain a little bit more.”