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OTTAWA – The federal government will apologize to the Inuit of Quebec’s Nunavik region for the slaughter of sled dogs between the mid-1950s and late 1960s.

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

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

Anandasangaree told the room that the apology will not erase the past, but it is hoped it will provide some comfort to the remaining survivors “as we rebuild this very important relationship.”

For years, the Makivik Corporation, which represents Inuit in Nunavik, pushed for federal and provincial governments to recognize the harm caused by the dog slaughter, as well as reparations.

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

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

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

Croteau found that the federal government’s role in this was to not intervene or condemn the actions.

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“Federal agents and officials did not intervene on behalf of the Government of Canada in its fiduciary capacity when agents and officials of the Government of Quebec took their operations to the extreme,” Croteau wrote in his report, noting that in some cases, killed dogs due to a perceived threat to the public after being bitten by non-Inuit people.

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

In 2011, then-Quebec Premier Jean Charest formally apologized to the Inuit of Nunavik for the role played by the province and reached an agreement with Makivik for $3 million to promote and protect the Inuit language and culture. .

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

A final Qikiqtani Truth Commission report on the issue found that the RCMP shot hundreds of dogs out of fear of the dogs being loose or the spread of disease.

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

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

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