Ian Scott Public Interest Internship Program - Osgoode Hall Law ...

The Ian Scott Fellowship allowed me to make a valuable contribution to my employer, the
Nunavut Department of Justice. In addition to my energy and enthusiasm, I have research,
writing and analysis skills which are relatively rare in the territory. By applying them even to
relatively simple tasks I was able to ease the workload of the regular employees. Although not
strictly law-related, I also undertook several translation assignments, thereby saving the
Department the high cost and long timeline of working with an external translator.
Nunavut is probably the Canadian jurisdiction most in need of innovative law making, yet due to
its human resource difficulties it is ill-equipped to generate them. There have been a number of
ideas generated which haven’t been followed up on simply because there is no employee with
the skills or time to do so. My work on civil forfeiture is a good example of this. The possibility of
introducing civil forfeiture as a tool to combat the territory’s powerful bootlegging network was
conceived of years ago, but no action had been taken on it prior to my arrival because there was
no one able to do it. It was a privilege to contribute to such an important project.
I am writing a supervised independent research paper for credit based on primary research
(semi-structured interviews) I conducted while in Iqaluit. The topic of the paper is the
consultation process which occurred prior to the creation of Nunavut’s Family Abuse Intervention
Act. In addition to converging with my personal interest in women’s issues, this topic is of clear
and urgent relevance to Nunavut communities which face the worst rates of domestic violence in
Canada. It is a privilege to be able to make my own small contribution to the field, and one which
I could not have made had I not spent time in the territory on the Ian Scott Fellowship.
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