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Aqqaluk Lynge is right

Aqqaluk Lynge, the Greenland vice-president for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, made yet another pitch last week for one of Greenland's long-cherished dreams - a common, pan-Arctic writing system for the Inuit language.

In an interview with CBC in Iqaluit, Lynge, in Iqaluit for a meeting of ICC's executive council, tried to reassure Canadian Inuit radio listeners that ICC does not want to replace the syllabic writing system - only supplement it.

Despite the clarity and sincerity of Lynge's proposal, it's likely to go nowhere, just as it always has. Inuit leaders in Canada and abroad have been banging their heads against the writing system issue since the late 1980s, when the ICC first raised it.

Some Inuit leaders, such as John Amagoalik and Jose Kusugak, have long advocated a common writing system, and even a move from syllabics to Roman orthography. But such enlightened suggestions are always smothered by the conservatism of Canada's eastern Arctic communities, where attachment to the syllabic system is deep.

As a poet and politician, Aqqaluk Lynge knows the power of the written word. He knows that a language without a common writing system will eventually sicken and die, as history has demonstrated repeatedly. He knows that different writing systems create barriers to communication and unity among people who otherwise have much in common.

In Nunavut, advocates for better Inuktitut programming within the schools are crying out for more curriculum material, and more things to read. In Greenland, a well-funded publishing system has produced books, magazines and newspapers in the Inuit language for more than 150 years.

But this vast storehouse of written material is not accessible to most readers of the Inuit language in Canada. Similarly, if Greenlanders want to communicate in writing with their Canadian cousins, they are usually obliged to do it in English, now standard for international communication everywhere on the planet.

It's impossible to believe that this is what ICC's founders had in mind when they created the organization in 1977.

The development of common language standards is always a difficult, lengthy process. But whenever it's raised in Nunavut, it's always put off until later. The danger is that it will be put off one time too often, when it will be too late to serve any useful purpose. JB

Why Nunavut is floundering

Minerals. Oil and gas. Royalties. Northerners controlling their own natural resources.

In 1979, when the Nunavut project started moving forward, those words were on everyone's lips - because that's a big part of what the Nunavut project was all about in those days.

Everyone assumed that after the division of the Northwest Territories, the Nunavut government wouldn't have to worry about finding enough money to serve the people of Nunavut. That, Nunavut leaders thought, would come from special taxes - called royalties - on the revenue generated by mining and by oil and gas production.

Most of them also assumed that any future Nunavut agreement would give Nunavut the right to do that.

In September, 1979, at a meeting of Nunavut leaders in Igloolik, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada handed out a paper called Political Development in Nunavut - a kind of early blueprint for a Nunavut territory.

In his coverage of that meeting, Art King of CBC radio in Iqaluit (then called Frobisher Bay) quoted Nunavut leaders as saying that Nunavut would have "a long-term revenue base that is probably as good as or better than Alberta."

Today that looks like the fanciful product of an LSD-inspired hallucination.

But it wasn't. In the late 1970s, many informed people believed Nunavut would soon become a source of enormous wealth - with good reason. Drill ships were slipping through the waters of Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, and the High Arctic islands, searching for natural gas and oil under the floor of the ocean. With the help of the federal government, one company was already shipping token amounts of oil from a site near Little Cornwallis Island.

Peter Ittinuar, then the member of Parliament for Nunatsiaq, said, in an interview in 1979, that it was essential for a new Nunavut territory to gain control over its natural resources.

"Taking out the the economic resources of Nunavut would undermine Nunavut, it would undermine the natural political evolution of that territory, of the geography and its people," Ittinuar told CBC radio in a 1979 interview.

Itinnuar meant that, to make the Nunavut project work, Nunavut must have control over its natural resources, and the money those resources would produce.

He was right. Though the Arctic oil and gas boom of the late 1970s soon turned into a bust, the Nunavut process went ahead anyway, without the rich, resource-based economy once thought to be just around the corner.

On April 1, 1999, the Nunavut territory was born - with no economic base.

And guess what? The Nunavut government is now unable to keep up with the demands of its people for social housing, jobs, better schools, better health care and... well, you can add your own items to that much-recited list. Nunavut isn't working, and it's painfully obvious.

The idea that Nunavut would have "a long-term revenue base that is probably as good as or better than Alberta" was long forgotten. Even now, the Nunavut government still has no control over Nunavut's natural resources and has no power to collect special mining taxes or royalties - after all these years.

And so Nunavut is floundering, and powerless to do anything about it. Voters know that now too, and in this election, but will nevertheless ask election candidates to do a lot of things for them that the Nunavut government cannot afford.

There is still room for hope though. At least three new mines - in the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions - may start producing within the life of the next Nunavut government. That's why it's important for the Nunavut government to get control over non-renewable resources and a share of resource revenues through what is now called a "devolution" agreement. It would be a major step towards creating the Nunavut that Nunavut's founders actually envisioned back in the 1970s.

Devolution won't be much of an election issue on Feb. 16 - but it should be. JB

Nunavut's powerlessness

As the Feb. 16 territorial election approaches, Nunavut voters will once again hear endless talk about the "issues," from the candidates, from the media, and from each other.

And once again, they'll elect a group of legislators who will face most of those issues from a position of near total powerlessness.

Based on the territorial department of finance's projections in the main estimates last March, and on Finance Minister Kelvin Ng's fiscal update this past fall, Nunavut's second legislative assembly could find itself in a major cash crunch.

Since 1999, the territorial government has reaped a financial windfall at the end of every year, in the form of unspent salaries and benefits created by its numerous staff vacancies.

It has used that windfall routinely, to balance the operating deficits posted at the end of each fiscal year. Normally, governments that produce operating deficits for several years in a row end up with big long-term debts. Nunavut, despite its financial problems, is fortunate in having avoided that fate.

But by April 1 this year, all that surplus will be spent - most of it on badly needed capital projects, such as new schools and health facilities, and on extra appropriations for its perennially underfunded health department.

The Nunavut government will likely be forced, therefore, to find other, less pleasant ways to balance its budget.

The most obvious place to start is with capital spending - it's entirely possible that capital spending could shrink to what it was in 1999-2000.

But it may not stop there. If capital spending cuts aren't enough, then program cuts and even staff layoffs aren't out of the question either. At the same time, the Nunavut Employees Union has just thrown an expensive set of demands onto the bargaining table for a new collective agreement that would replace the one that expired last April.

For the freshly elected MLAs who will emerge from the Feb. 16 election, all set to find ways of bettering the lives of their constituents, this is bad news.

Take housing for example. It's a certainty that every candidate in every constituency will tell the voters that if elected, they'll fight for more housing. The more subtle candidates will hedge a little, saying they'll make housing "a priority."

That's as it should be. Nunavut's affordable housing shortage is a disgrace. The recent aboriginal people's survey revealed that overcrowding in Inuit communities is worse than for any other aboriginal people in Canada. In Iqaluit, and, in some small communities, it's a catastrophe.

And if you think that's an exaggeration, just spend a few minutes talking to someone who can't find a place to live - a battered woman with young children, let's say. For people in that kind of situation, Nunavut's no promised land. It's a hell-hole. As for the latest, one-shot-only housing agreement with Ottawa, announced last fall in Rankin Inlet, that will only distribute about two or three units to each community for each of the next two years.

So with no extra social housing money, and no method of raising that money, MLAs are powerless, even if they spend the next four years doing nothing but "fighting" for more housing.

The next assembly, and the next government, then, should not forget to work on the sources of their own powerlessness. The first of those is Nunavut's relationship with Ottawa, which must be completely re-thought, in both Nunavut and Ottawa.

The land claim agreement that triggered the creation of Nunavut's public government may be seriously flawed. But the federal government still signed it, and Ottawa must take more than a minimalist approach to supporting the young territory that exists because of it. Their real moral obligation is not to Nunavut Tunngavik or any other organization- it's to the ordinary people who insist on making Nunavut their home, sometimes against all odds.

The second, of course, is education, education, and more education. In time, and it will take a lot of time, it's education that will lift the people of Nunavut out of poverty and hopelessness. Sadly, the people of Nunavut will walk over a lot of dead bodies before they get there. JB

The passing of a generation

In 1936, when Graham Rowley first set foot in the Canadian Arctic, the world was a vastly different place than it is now.

That year, an Italian army, sent by a dictator named Benito Mussolini, started a war in Ethiopia. In Germany, another dictator by the name of Adolf Hitler created a new air force that year, called the "Luftwaffe." Yet another dictator, Joseph Stalin, was terrorizing the entire population of the Soviet Union. In Canada, an odd little man with a squeaky voice, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was elected prime minister for the third time. All of those people, like the times that produce them, have been dead since before most of us were born.

But nowhere has the quality of life changed more completely than in the eastern Arctic.

In the 1930s, the Canadian government "governed" the Arctic by doing as little as it could possibly get away with it. Except for two small church-run hospitals in Pangnirtung and Chesterfield Inlet, there was no health care. There were no schools. There were no social workers, unless you count the handful of RCMP members stationed at a few scattered detachments. In the entire eastern Arctic, the total non-Inuit population consisted of no more than about 50 people. There was no "government," as we would understand that term today.

During the four years he spent exploring and doing archaeological research in the Foxe Basin area, Rowley made life-long friendships with the Inuit of the region, especially with the people of Igloolik. He maintained those ties almost until his death on New Year's Day.

But he was much more than a much-loved person who enjoyed the respect of the Inuit. After serving in the Second World War, he became a powerful and influential civil servant within the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources - the department we now know as DIAND.

Through most of the 1950s and early 1960s, Rowley served as secretary of the federal government's Advisory Committee on Northern Development. In that position, he was responsible for co-ordinating all government policy for northern Canada, and for co-ordinating all government research in the North.

That doesn't mean he was necessarily a key decision-maker on all issues. But it does make him part of what is now a distinctly unfashionable group - the federal civil servants of the 1950s and early 1960s who brought government to the Arctic.

It was those federal officials who reversed the do-nothing northern development policies of the 1930s. They oversaw the first schools, the first nursing stations, the first co-operatives, the first welfare programs and the often traumatic relocation of Inuit into permanent communities. Ralph Ritcey, another fondly remembered civil servant of that era who died recently in Ottawa, ran adult training and education programs for Inuit set up under a policy framework that Rowley and his colleagues would have helped create.

Despite all of the good things they brought, Rowley's generation is not always remembered fondly. Many regard them as arrogant colonizers, and not the well-intentioned public servants they really were.

Because we are still coping - sometimes blindly - with the painful changes brought about by Canada's long-delayed decision to modernize the Arctic in the 1950s, it's easy to blame history for our current social illnesses. That's especially easy to do when history is not well understood or remembered.

Take a quick look at who is running the Arctic now, in Nunavut, Nunavik, the Northwest Territories and other Arctic regions. Are they really more enlightened or humane than those of the 1950s and 1960s?

At 92, Rowley's death was neither unexpected nor untimely. But with his passing we have lost an irreplaceable memory, a vast storehouse of historic knowledge, and one of the last members of the generation that brought modern ways to the Canadian Arctic. He is the kind of person who streets and public buildings ought be named after. JB

Where angels fear to tread

Predictions are a mug's game, and everybody knows it. None of us have the capacity to predict what will happen next week, let alone next year.

But at the turning of the year, the temptation to do so is overwhelming.

Here, then, are our modest attempts to predict the future:

Nunavut, Canada, and the Arctic

• By the end of 2004, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami will be well on its way to a merger with Pauktuuit and the National Inuit Youth Council.
• Get set for much wailing and gnashing of teeth, as the Nunavut Power Corp. and the Utility Rates Review Council go to work on a new electrical power rate system for Nunavut, to replace a rate structure that hasn't changed since 1998.
• Team Nunavut will do well at this year's Arctic Winter Games, to be held in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Feb. 28 to March 6.
• The Bathurst road-port project will get a federal environmental assessment, much to the displeasure of most Nunavut organizations.
• Prime Minister Paul Martin will easily win the federal election that's likely to be held this May or June, but he will come out of the campaign diminished.
• Nunavut's next government will eventually get around to presenting a new language law to the legislative assembly - but it won't be another Bill 101.
• The Feb. 16 general election in Nunavut will produce some new faces, but the next legislative assembly will be similar to the last one - a large group of inexperienced MLAs dominated by a smaller, but more powerful group of experienced members.
• The love affair between Nunavut and Prime Minister Paul Martin's new government won't last much beyond the Martin government's first federal budget.
• Nunavut will get a new education act, but not before the end of 2004 - it will take at least three years to get there.
• The made-for-TV movie shot in Iqaluit last year, Sleep Murder, will bomb.
• Attempts to remove sexual orientation from Nunavut's human rights law will fail.
• The Supreme Court of Canada will uphold the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry, and Parliament will follow suit.

Nunavik

• Nunavik residents will grow weary of the dispute between the Kativik Regional School Board and the Makivik Corp. over Nunavik's new-government negotiations. They'll demand that both parties find an out-of-court solution to their problems.
• Quebec's labour unrest, prompted by Premier Jean Charest's plans to cut taxes and reduce the size of the civil service, will spill over into Nunavik.
• The Kativik Regional Government, the Sûreté du Québec, and federal officials will work out a badly needed search and rescue protocol for Nunavik, to improve communications, and to set out who does what and when.

Iqaluit

• Halfway through the year, somebody will ask the City of Iqaluit about why they haven't put up the city's new street signs - and no one will know the answer.
• The city's troubled street-paving project will turn out to be Iqaluit's next municipal boondoggle.
• Iqaluit's recycling program will shrink, but no one will notice.

The world of sports

• The Toronto Maple Leafs will finish first overall in the standings, then go on to win the Stanley Cup.
• The New York Yankees will bounce back from this year's loss to the Florida Marlins and win the World Series.
• Jordin Tootoo will not win the NHL's rookie of the year award - but his performance with the Nashville Predators during the 2003-o4 season will make him the most memorable NHL rookie in years. JB

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