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October 31, 2003

It's about health care, stupid

Did Nunavut cabinet members make a dumb decision in June when they gave the Rankin Inlet health centre contract to a firm that will cost them at least half a million dollars more than the lowest bidder?

Yes - but only if you care about irrelevant issues like financial responsibility, or respect for written rules and policies. Because if you care about the realities of political power in Nunavut, none of the above really matters.

As politicians, Nunavut cabinet ministers know it's a decision they will easily get away with.

It may be the kind of thing that will one day get them into trouble with the auditor general of Canada, but who cares? Never will such decisions ever get them into trouble with the only people who really matter to them - Nunavut voters.

And even if the whispered, unproven rumours turn out be true about Sanajiit Construction, or its parent company, the Evaz Group, exerting political influence on cabinet to get the health centre contract, that won't matter either. For voters in the small communities, "local" is the only concept that counts, and if it feels good to them its the right thing to do politically.

So to the untrained eye, Premier Paul Okalik may have looked highly evasive over the past week and a half while fielding questions about it from Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo.

But it's more likely that Okalik was actually being honest. It's more likely that Okalik simply can't explain why cabinet made the decision - except to say that it felt good at the time.

So if it felt good, why not? To explain how many local jobs and training positions the government actually bought with the extra $500,000 they're spending requires the use of a lot of complicated arithmetic - which never goes over well with voters.

The same applies to the Nunavummi Nangminiqaqtunik Ikajuuti, or "NNI" policy. The NNI, which consists of a set of arithmetical formulas, is equally tiresome to explain to voters.

That's why no one will ever care whether the government actually violated the NNI policy when it awarded the Rankin health centre job to the Clark-Sanajiit joint-venture - no one will ever do the arithmetic. And if someone else does the arithmetic, most eyes will glaze over before anyone will ever get a chance to understand it.

At any rate, all eyes will now be fixed upon Clark Builders and its smaller "locally based" partners, Sanajiit Construction, owned by the Evaz Group of Grimsby, Ont.

Now that the pressure is on, the two southern, but "locally-based" companies have no choice but to actually hire and train Inuit to work on the Rankin Inlet health centre - that is, if anyone still cares about that issue by the time construction supplies make their way off the barge next summer.

Once upon a time, the stated purpose of building three new health centres in Nunavut- total cost, approximately $90 million - was to somehow improve the quality of health care provided to Nunavut residents.

How naive. As we can all see now, their actual purpose, apparently, is to create three juicy make-work projects for Nunavut's ailing construction industry.

At least, that's how it looks. Since 1995, when the planning process began, how much energy has been spent debating the health care benefits of building three new health centres in Nunavut? Almost none. On the other hand, how much energy has been spent debating which companies will get the lucrative contracts to build them?

The same attitude prevails in discussions about the use of medical travel money, whether emergency medical evacuations, or scheduled patient travel.

At one time, these discussions seemed to be about moving sick and injured people to places where they can get health care. As we can all see now, it's actually about creating make-work projects for Nunavut's ailing airlines.

For example, Nunavut's Inuit organizations are pressing the GN to give more medical travel business to Canadian North, which runs a money-losing North-South service from Iqaluit to Ottawa in competition with First Air. In the Kivalliq region, we have been treated to an endless, and often hysterical, chorus of whining about how the big bad GN drove Skyward Aviation out of the region by giving a medevac contract to Keewatin Air.

Officials with the federal government - that would be the body that actually supplies health care money to Nunavut - must sometimes wonder what they were thinking when they ever allowed the northern territories to run a health care system in the first place.
JB

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October 24, 2003

To the bottom and back

Just two years ago, the Qikiqtani Inuit Association hit bottom.

That year, QIA, the largest regional Inuit association in Nunavut, had lost its president, its executive director, and numerous other employees. At around the same time, its business arm, the Qikiqtaaluk Corp., suffered the sudden departure of several key employees, and a variety of internal disputes that spilled into the public domain.

But that was then, and this is now.

At its annual general meeting in Apex this week, QIA showed that it is now a totally different kind of organization - open, professional and stable. It's now a strong, credible organization that Baffin region beneficiaries can be proud of.

They are now fully staffed and financially stable, producing a tiny deficit of only $51,000 on revenues of about $5.6 million a year.

QIA's president, Thomasie Alikatuktuk, and its executive director, Terry Audla, along with several other key employees, deserve a lot of credit for leading the way toward QIA's transformation.

They've done it by instituting a new board governance policy, recruiting new staff to fill all vacant positions, creating a new social development department, and adopting an attitude of openness and accountability to beneficiaries.

At this week's meeting, the organization's officials provided full reports on QIA's finances and activities, and made them available for anyone to see.

This is the kind of model that other, more troubled organizations ought to follow. If QIA can do it, so can everyone else.
JB

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October 24, 2003

What were they thinking?

Nunavik's Innulitisivik Health Centre is a financially troubled organization, not unlike many other health-care providers in Canada these days.

The centre, based in Puvirnituq, is one of two small hospitals in Nunavik. This fiscal year, they're facing a deficit of $17.6 million, on revenues of $57 million. The Nunavik health and social services board, of which Innulitisivik is a component, now carries a $67-million debt.

As might be expected, health centre staff have been asked to cut costs and reduce their use of supplies.

All this makes one wonder what the health centre's board members were thinking about when they spent $11,500 to hold a board meeting at a hunting and fishing lodge from Aug. 25 to Aug. 29.

The lodge, "Les Entreprises Aliva Tulugak," is owned by Aliva Tulugak, the brother of Harry Tulugak, who happens to be the chair of the board that runs Innulitisivik.

Asked to comment on allegations raised by union members about the perceived impropriety of the trip, Harry Tulugak had this to say:

"I'm too much of an old guy to be sucked into an interview like this. I refuse at this point to inform you.... I will not feed that animal, that gossip animal."

We're not sure what planet Tulugak lives on right now, but on Planet Earth, people expect more from public officials.

When a debt-ridden health-care organization blows $11,500 on a meeting at a holiday camp, it sets a bad example for the entire organization - and it's no surprise that morale at the health centre has hit rock bottom. That's a sign of bad management, plain and simple.

JB

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October 17, 2003

When numbers tell whoppers

Why are statistics important to your well-being?

Because governments use them — or ought to use them — to decide how much money they should spend on your needs, or whether or not you need their help at all.

Population statistics are supposed to help governments predict, for example, how many classroom spaces their citizens might need for upcoming school years, or how many new jobs might have to be created to stave off higher unemployment in the future.

In Nunavut's case, the federal government already uses them to figure out how much cash to give the territory every year for things like health care and infrastructure. That's the basis for the so-called "per capita" or "per-head" funding schemes that Nunavut leaders complain about so much.

The financing formula that Ottawa's financial geeks use to figure out how the annual grant used to run the Nunavut government also uses population Statistics. As Nunavut's population figures rise, so does the amount of money that flows in to the Nunavut government from Ottawa through the formula financing agreement.

So, you see, those quirky little numbers called statistics have a direct impact on your life.

That's why it's important that those numbers be gathered correctly and carefully. It's important to know how those numbers have been gathered and by whom. And it's important, above all, to know how to interpret numbers, based on all your knowledge about how they've been gathered.

Recently, Statistics Canada released a big package of numbers that attempt to provide information about the quality of life among aboriginal people in Canada.

Called the "Aboriginal Peoples Survey 2001," it's a follow-up to the 2001 census. StatsCan did the survey in partnership with most of Canada's national organizations.

In this release, StatsCan provides numerous statistics related to the use of aboriginal languages in Canada. They show that among aboriginal peoples living outside the Arctic, aboriginal languages are in decline. No big surprise there.

But in the Arctic regions, including Nunavut, the survey produces astounding results.

The numbers that report the proportion of Nunavut Inuit who speak and understand Inuktitut are so high, in fact, that they could actually hurt Nunavut. The Aboriginal Peoples Survey reports, for example, that a whopping 99 per cent of Inuit in Nunavut speak or understand Inuktitut.

That's a number than many Nunavut Inuit will be proud of. But it's also a number that could prevent the Government of Nunavut from getting more federal language development money, and more recognition that the Inuktitut language will need help to survive.

After all, if 99 per cent of Nunavut Inuit speak or understand Inuktitut, why should the federal government, or any other government, spend anything at all on Inuktitut language development and promotion?

It's no wonder then that Eva Aariak, Nunavut's language commissioner, believes that those number overstate the degree of Inuktitut fluency in Nunavut. She has good reasons for believing this — reasons that are supported by other statistics.

The 2001 census, for example, found that only 78 per cent of Inuit reported Inuktitut as their mother tongue. And only 64 per cent of Inuit said that Inuktitut was the main language used at home.

Those numbers are closer to the reality of language use in Nunavut, where the use of Inuktitut is clearly falling off among the young, and where Inuktitut-language instruction in the schools doesn't exist much past Grades 3 or 4.

And even the Aboriginal Peoples' Survey shows that only 70 per cent of Canadian Inuit children speak or understand Inuktitut well.

Those are the numbers that ought to guide government policies on language in Nunavut - not the 99-per-cent figure cited in the Aboriginal Peoples' Survey.

That information, gathered in face-to-face interviews, likely includes people who wish they spoke Inuktitut, and perhaps people who are to shy to admit that they can't actually speak the language, but would like others to believe that they do.

If that's the case, it's still good news, because it shows the enormous value that the ability to speak Inuktitut has for Nunavut residents - even those who can't and wish they did.

JB

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October 10, 2003

Liberals buy goodwill in Nunavut

If there's anyone out there in the northern territories ready to contest the next federal election on an anti-Ottawa platform, last week's funding announcements ought to give them more than a few second thoughts.

In a blizzard of funding announcements, a small coterie of federal cabinet ministers have injected money into virtually every area about which Nunavut officials have long complained - notably housing and infrastructure.

In the short term, the chief beneficiary of all this spending is Nunavut's Liberal member of parliament, Nancy Karetak-Lindell, and her seat-mate from the Northwest Territories, Ethel Blondin-Andrew.

Thanks to cabinet ministers like Alan Rock, Steve Mahoney and Robert Nault, Nancy Karetak-Lindell now has a long list of comebacks to draw upon if any impertinent Tory or New Democrat candidate tries to attack her for ignoring Nunavut's basic needs.

The new spending includes:

• $20 million for affordable housing in Nunavut.
• $20 million for water and sewage treatment.
• $155 million in spending to subsidize the cost of satellite time, removing a barrier to broadband Internet.
• $15 million for municipal infrastructure - announced earlier in the summer - under a rural infrastructure fund.
• $500,000 to study a possible Nunavut-Manitoba road.

On top of that, Ottawa also announced $80 million for roads and other infrastructure in the Northwest Territories.

The next federal election is likely to be held early next year, in April, after Paul Martin gets his team organized and brings down his first budget.

When that happens, Karetak-Lindell - or someone else, in the unlikely event that someone else runs for the Liberals - will be sure to remind Nunavut voters about all the new money the federal government has announced over the last week or so.

The most important news for ordinary people in Nunavut is Ottawa's plan to spend $20 million in new money, on affordable housing. Depending on the source, this could bring between 160 and 400 new housing units to Nunavut over the next two years.

It's not the amount of money that's important, however. It's the simple fact that the federal government appears to be easing its way back into social housing in Nunavut. Because the federal government has contributed nothing to social housing construction in Nunavut since 1993, Nunavut's appalling housing shortage is the one issue on which Karetak-Lindell is most vulnerable.

However, it's a little too early for Nunavummiut to be celebrating. There are many questions that have yet be answered about how the money will be spent.

For example, it's not clear how much money of its own the Government of Nunavut will be able to put up to achieve the plan, which seems to require matching amounts of money from the territorial government.

There's also vague talk about bringing in the private sector, and the use of "P3" build-and-lease-back agreements. The latter may be a veiled reference to arrangements for Inuit social housing that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Nunavut Construction Corp. are now beginning to discuss.

It's also not clear how much of the money will go to the actual construction of new social housing, and how much might go toward mortgage assistance for well-to-do middle-income earners. That's an important question, because the overwhelming need in Nunavut's high-unemployment, high-cost small communities is for old-fashioned public housing, with rent geared to income. For large numbers of Nunavummiut, that's the only option they will ever have.

Still, the federal government bought itself some much-needed goodwill in Nunavut last week. As usual, their Nunavut candidate will be tough to beat.

JB

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October 3, 2003

Let’s pretend it’s real

This worst thing about this month’s farcical “election” for president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami is not the cynical and dishonest manner in which ITK has managed it over the past five months.

The worst thing about it is that ITK’s board is too stupid to see how stupid they actually look to everyone else, a form of stupidity that is truly mind-numbing.

The process, of course, is not an “election.” It’s a job competition, run by the small committee of regional officials who constitute ITK’s board of directors.

But for now let’s humour them. For the sake of discussion, let’s pretend, as they do, that ITK’s arbitrary presidential selection process really is an election.

Until about four months ago, ITK planned to hold this election on June 12. Outgoing President Jose Kusugak’s term was expiring. Saying he wanted to spend more time with his family in Rankin Inlet, Kusugak announced that he wouldn’t seek another term.

Two legitimate candidates, Robbie Watt and Pitseolak Pfeiffer, filled out nomination papers, which ITK accepted by May 23, the advertised deadline.

Two weeks later ITK’s eight-member board — the eight people who actually get to vote in the election, which is to be held during their annual general meeting — decided that those two candidates aren’t good enough. They postponed their election, and their annual general meeting, until Oct. 23, in Puvirnituq.

At the time, Kusugak told reporters that ITK’s board did this to give themselves more time “to get a wider range of candidates.”

But now, Kusugak has had a change of heart. Kusugak was nominated by Makivik President Pita Aatami, one of those ITK board members who claimed to be seeking a wider range of candidates, and who also said they wanted more candidates from “the regions.”

But there’s more. It appears that, over the summer, Aatami and his fellow board members have cut a sweetheart deal with Kusugak to entice him back into the president’s job.

Here’s a direct quotation from the written statement Kusugak issued this week:

The Board has already agreed to provide several trips between Ottawa and North each year for whoever is the ITK President, should he or she choose to leave their family behind in the North as I have done for the past three years. In addition, the board has also agreed to review at this year’s AGM meeting in Puvirnituq the residency requirements for ITK President who is currently expected to live in Ottawa.

This, Kusugak said in his statement, is what helped change his mind. “Pita and other Board members, recognized my concern and need to spend more time with my family.”

In other words, ITK’s board agreed, over the summer, to enrich their president’s $100,000 a year compensation package by adding a few extra airfares. Would they have done the same for any other candidate?

All this adds up to one conclusion. The other six people whose nominations for the job were accepted this week are wasting their time. ITK’s board is interested in one candidate only, and his name is Jose Kusugak. As we said, the process is not an “election.” It’s a job competition, and Kusugak seems to have won it already.

That’s the only way of explaining why they negotiated the terms of Kusugak’s compensation — the extra air fares — even before he’s been “elected.” In an interview this week, Kusugak himself said they made him “an offer I can’t refuse.”

ITK is a private organization. If they want to put on a phony show and hold a pretend election, that’s their business. If they want to hold a rigged election, that’s their business. If they want to appoint a hand-picked candidate as president, that’s their business too.

They don’t appear to have broken any laws, and the Charter right to freedom of assembly guarantees their right to run their organization as they see fit — even when they’re doing it with public money.

Indeed, Kusugak, during his time in office, has been one of their better presidents. And we wish him the best of luck over the next three years.

But that’s not the point. Manipulation and double-talk will not give ITK what it needs the most right now — and that’s credibility and respect. Because of its board’s stupidity, ITK’s credibility has vanished.

There is no reason any more for anyone to offer them any respect whatsoever. ITK is now a crippled entity. It’s too bad their board is too dumb to notice, and too cynical too care.

JB

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