NWT minister resigns

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A Northwest Territories cabinet minister has been fired after telling the legislation he attended a national conference and later admitted he did not go.

Municipal Affairs and Renewable Resources Minister Titus Allooloo handed in his resignation Nov. 22 at the request of Premier Nellie Cournoyea. The resignation caps a turbulent week for Allooloo, who had come under harsh criticism for dissolving the town council in Iqaluit and appointing an administrator to oversee the town's severe financial difficulties.

Iqaluit MLA Dennis Patterson demanded to know why he had not been told before the council was dissolved Nov. 12. Allooloo replied he had trouble getting hold of Patterson and that he had been very busy that week with obligations, including a meeting of provincial and federal environment ministers in Saskatoon , Sask.

Cournoyea discovered Allooloo had not been in Saskatoon when she drew up a chronology of events surrounding the Iqaluit affair for Patterson. Allooloo admitted he missed his plane to Saskatoon and spent the weekend in Jasper, Alta. He said he joined a conference call with the people at the meeting. Cournoyea said that was no record of such a call.

"The House and the public must be able to rely on the truthfulness of statement given by the Executive Council," Cournoyea told the legislature Nov. 22. "It is a principle that I am not prepared to compromise."

Allooloo's spouse, who holds a senior government position told a Yellowknife newspaper they spent two days vacations in Alberta after a meeting she was supposed to attend was cancelled at the last meeting.

After resigning, Allooloo said in an Inuktitut interview with CBC that he was being made a scapegoat for cabinet's decision to dissolve the Iqaluit council. Cournoyea said she fired him for misleading the legislature, not for his actions as minister of Municipal Affairs.