Two more complaints about NWT MLAs from the last assembly have been dismissed by the territory’s integrity commissioner.
David Phillip Jones was asked to examine a complaint about Paulie Chinna’s conduct in Inuvik’s airport café and, separately, an allegation that Katrina Nokleby was rude and abusive to someone camping in a vacant lot near her home.
Chinna was the Sahtu MLA and a minister at the time of the café incident last summer. Nokleby was the Great Slave MLA at the time of the complaint against her in October. Both were defeated in November’s election.
Jones said the complaint against Nokleby was “frivolous, and vexatious, and not made in good faith,” noting that the person raising the complaint had taken it to RCMP – who closed their file with no action taken – and then taken it to the media.
The complaint that Chinna made rude remarks about someone sat near her at the café was dismissed as Jones felt there were “insufficient grounds” for further action, particularly as Chinna was no longer an MLA.
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“There would be no practical purpose in inquiring further into this complaint,” he stated, though he cautioned that incidents must be treated on a case-by-case basis and a failure to be re-elected may not always excuse MLAs from scrutiny.
The integrity commissioner’s two reports were made public on Tuesday, adding to the pile of reports Jones was asked to create while the 19th Assembly’s MLAs were sitting.
The best-known of those was his investigation into the actions of Steve Norn, who broke the NWT’s Covid-19 isolation rules while serving as the MLA for Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh.
Jones also investigated multiple complaints about Nokleby, dismissing one in September last year but upholding another in which he found she had “improperly returned” to Yellowknife mid-evacuation.
