May
28, 2004
A tale of
two trades schools
The Nunavut territory does not have a trades and technical training school.
When the Northwest Territories divided in 1999, the old NWT Arctic College system
divided along with it, and the new Nunavut Arctic College lost access to a well-equipped
trades training centre at Thebacha College in Fort Smith.
Even before division, many thoughtful Nunavut residents drew attention to this
loss, but their warnings were ignored.
That's too bad. Within the next two to four years, at least three mining projects
in Nunavut are likely to be either operating, or under construction: the Tahera
Corp.'s Jericho diamond mine, Miramar's collection of gold deposits at Hope
Bay, and Cumberland Resources' proposed Meadowbank gold mine near Baker Lake.
These companies will need qualified Inuit trades people. At the same time, Inuit
throughout Nunavut, but especially those who live in the Kitikmeot and Kivalliq
regions, expect to get good, well-paying jobs on these and other projects.
Now, the Nunavut government has at least two proposals in front of it for the
creation of trades training centres.
One, made by the Hamlet of Arctic Bay, would see the creation of a trades centre
at the old Nanisivik town site. People in Arctic Bay have been asking for this
since the fall of 2001, when Breakwater Resources announced the closing of the
Nanisivik mine. On the surface, the idea makes a lot of sense. Nanisivik's mothballed
town site contains enough infrastructure to house a small community - there's
single family housing, a recreation centre, and buildings that once held a school,
a Northern store and other services.
But Arctic Bay residents have received little help and support in advancing
their proposal, and their aspirations are now drowning in bureaucratic inertia.
The GN still hasn't even finished studies aimed at assessing the condition of
the buildings at Nanisivik and figuring out the cost of running a training school
there. At the same time, Breakwater is preparing to bulldoze most of those buildings
this summer as part of its clean-up plan.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Ed Picco said in the legislative assembly last
week that early estimates put the cost of upgrading the Nanisivik site at about
$5 million, and the cost of running a training school there at about $5 million
a year. The idea of a training school at Arctic Bay "doesn't make any sense,"
Picco said, meaning that the government can't afford it.
The Nanisivik training school proposal is a lost cause. We hope the Nunavut
government - which likes to pretend it cares about the economic health of so-called
have-not communities that do not benefit from decentralized government jobs
- soon finds a way of breaking this news to the people of Arctic Bay.
The second proposal, made by the Kitikmeot Corp. and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association,
involves another abandoned site: the Lupin gold mine near Contwoyto Lake in
the Kitikmeot region. Lupin's current owner, Kinross Gold Corp., will spend
this year scooping up the last remnants of gold-bearing ore contained in rock
pillars left behind within the mine shaft, and then close it in mid-2005.
Unlike their counterparts in the eastern part of Nunavut, the Kitikmeot's Inuit
organizations aren't waiting for the government to do something for them. They've
proposed to buy the Lupin site from Kinross for use as a trades training school,
and they're now seeking the GN's support for this idea.
It will be far more difficult for the GN to ignore this proposal.
Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson told MLAs last week that the Lupin site already
contains trades shops and classroom space. He pointed out that it's also a vital
piece of transportation infrastructure, with a 6,000-foot runway and a weather
observation station. It's located at the end of a winter supply road that stretches
all the way to Yellowknife, and sits only 25 km from Tahera's proposed Jericho
mine.
Perhaps because they lost faith in the Nunavut government a long time ago,
the people of the Kitikmeot know that if they want something done, they'll have
to do it themselves. That's a lesson that other communities and regions may
also soon learn. JB
May 21, 2004
Nunavut needs
special inquiry on suicide
BILL RIDDELL
Concerned Citizen and Elder
I am not writing this in any official capacity as the Fair Practices Officer
or Rental Officer for Nunavut, nor is this submitted in my capacity as the chairperson
of the Illitiit Society.
This is from me personally as a concerned and informed citizen of Nunavut.
In this past month, April 2004, there have been seven suicides, all male. Since
April 20, we have suffered through five suicides, and six since April 18, 2004.
The total for the first four months of 2004 in Nunavut now stands at 12, which
is the same figure as last year at the same time.
The Chief Coroner of Nunavut has been reporting suicide statistics since the
creation of Nunavut in April 1999. You can see from the statistics that for
last year, 2003, there was a huge jump in the number of suicides, from 24 in
2002 to 37 in 2003.
At the present rate for the first quarter of this year, it appears as if all
of our efforts to stop or prevent these suicides have failed, and by the end
of this year there is a good likelihood that we will see the same number or
more for the year 2004.
Many efforts have been made by people working in the care delivery system to
train front-line workers in suicide intervention and prevention, but all these
efforts are obviously not enough. I do not think that we know what we are doing.
What appears to be even more of a concern is that the ages of those who are
killing themselves is no longer mainly in the 14-to-24-years age group. Now
more older males are committing suicide.
In the past, the majority of suicides were done by hanging, however this past
quarter has seen completed suicides by self-inflicted stabbing and one that
was completed by personal stabbing and then burning. What a horrible and painful
way to end one's life.
Why is this happening? I suggest we just do not know, and we are afraid to
ask.
I know that you are aware that the rate of suicide in Nunavut has always been
eight or 10 times higher than the national average and it is definitely getting
worse, not better. It is time to take notice.
I strongly urge that the Nunavut government consider assigning a special investigator
to the Coroner's Office to investigate every suicide and to report through the
coroner his or her findings. We need to know why this is happening.
Another alternative to get to the bottom of all this is to establish a public
inquiry that has all of the powers necessary to subpoena witnesses and to make
a report to the Legislative Assembly on the findings of the inquiry.
We need to explore personal, family, community and systemic barriers that stand
in the way of understanding and preventing suicides.
We cannot go another day without taking action. People's lives are at stake.
Editor's note: This guest editorial is adapted from a letter that Mr.
Riddell sent to Premier Paul Okalik, Education Minister Ed Picco and Health
Minister Levinia Brown on April 30. He has yet to receive a reply. As of Nunatsiaq
News press-time this week, the number of completed suicides for 2004 had
risen from 12 to 14.
May 14, 2004
A firebug's paradise
You can't blame Nunavut's community government minister, Peter Kilabuk, for
saying in a press release last week that "Nunavut's schools are still safe."
It's the only good thing he could have said, given the grim facts that Fire
Marshal Gerald Pickett laid out in his report last week on Iqaluit's Joamie
School fire.
The July 4, 2003 fire started as a small blaze that smouldered within a crawl-space
under the building for two or three hours after a passing taxi driver noticed
it some time after five that morning. But it grew into a raging inferno, consuming
the entire building and producing a $10-million replacement bill to be tacked
on to the territorial government's shrinking capital budget.
In this case, public safety was not issue. Classes had ended for the summer
and no one was in the building. Even if there were, any occupants would have
had plenty of time to get out.
And the fire marshal's conclusion about the likely cause of the fire - a faulty
heat trace element attached to a utilidor line — is unremarkable. Investigators
ruled out arson only a few days after the fire.
Pickett's most serious findings are contained in an add-on section near the
back of his report. There he tells us that — following a recent evaluation
— every single hamlet fire department in Nunavut fails basic national standards,
and suffers from inadequate training, shoddy equipment and limited access to
quantities of water needed for firefighting.
The territory is a firebug's paradise. When a fire starts somewhere, chances
are that it will burn until the building's gone. It's no wonder the insurance
industry won't touch Nunavut.
Unless Nunavut gets its act together on fire safety and firefighting preparedness,
these costs will suck money out of important programs and services that people
need.
For the past many years, the Government of Nunavut, and the Government of the
Northwest Territories before it, got away with neglecting these issues. They
shouldn't be allowed to get away with it much longer. JB
May 14, 2004
A weakened public service
Nunavut's public service got a lot shakier last week with the sudden departure
of Nora Sanders, the deputy minister of justice, who left her job just before
May 6.
Sanders was liked and well-respected by her staff, other senior managers, and
nearly every member of the public who dealt with her. She enjoyed a reputation
for competence, integrity and wisdom that stretched far beyond Nunavut's borders,
especially in criminal justice circles.
She's one of only a tiny handful of senior managers left from among Nunavut's
first group of deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers, most of whom
were hired in April of 1998, one year before Nunavut's creation. In leaving
her job, Sanders takes with her an irreplaceable store of experience and institutional
knowledge — qualities that Nunavut's inexperienced and understaffed public
service desperately needs.
It's a lot to give up for the sake of a $215 fine.
That's how much money the legislative assembly's former speaker, the former
MLA for Arviat, Kevin O'Brien, paid this past January for illegally possessing
liquor in Arviat, where liquor has been prohibited since about 1980. The charge
was laid in July of 2003.
There's no evidence that O'Brien supplied liquor to anyone else, or was bootlegging.
So stupid though it may be, O'Brien's Liquor Act charge — a relatively minor
offence only a little more serious than a speeding ticket — was not his
worst sin. His greatest display of poor judgement was in failing to inform the
legislative assembly — and the public. MLAs learned of O'Brien's indiscretion
long after the time when they could have done anything about it.
Such minor offences don't often appear on the criminal dockets that are made
available to the public, and they're often dealt with by local justices of the
peace. It's not surprising that O'Brien managed to bury it for so long.
But embarrassed MLAs now have an urgent need to cast blame. Last week, Paul
Okalik, the minister of justice, has apparently found a likely scapegoat — his
own deputy minister. But his office has not explained what she did, exactly,
other than a vague reference to the "handling of an RCMP investigation."
Did he know what he was doing when he accepted her resignation? Right now,
that's an impossible question to answer. JB
May 7 , 2004
An Inuit-run housing program?
Now that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Government of Nunavut have taken on
the job of putting together a proposal for the reinstatement of a social housing
construction program for Nunavut, it may be a good time to take a serious look
at an idea whose time may have come: an Inuit-run social housing program for
Nunavut.
Unlike First Nations people in Canada, especially those who live on reserves,
Inuit are effectively treated just like non-aboriginal people in the application
of federal government housing policies.
As everyone knows, the social housing money that's given to the Nunavut Housing
Corporation every year through the federal Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
to operate and maintain Nunavut's existing social housing stock is public government
money, not Inuit-specific. Because of that, social housing units are supposed
to be allocated on the basis of need, not ethnicity.
But about 98 per cent of all tenants living in Nunavut's 3,900 social housing
units are Inuit. It's Inuit families, for the most part, who suffer the greatest
damage as Nunavut's housing crisis worsens. That includes appalling rates of
infectious respiratory disease, family violence, suicide, and depression, all
of which are related to Nunavut's overcrowded housing conditions.
And it's Inuit who are systematically denied what First Nations people have
come to regard as a birthright - subsidized affordable housing. If a social
housing program is reinstated for Nunavut on the basis that the federal government
has a fiduciary responsibility to fund housing for Inuit, then it only makes
sense that it should be built and managed by Inuit, for Inuit.
At a recent press conference with DIAND Minister Andy Mitchell, Nunavut MP
Nancy Karetak-Lindell said territorial leaders should start "thinking outside
the box." Simply put, this means thinking thoughts that have never been
thought before.
For Nunavut, the idea of an Inuit-run housing program is such an idea.
But it's potentially controversial. And if it's adopted, officials will want
to move carefully. In some communities, especially Iqaluit, there are still
substantial numbers of low-income non-Inuit, most of them long-term residents,
who live in social housing and can't afford to live anywhere else. Many of them
fall into the category of "working poor." This means that some form
of public housing accessible to non-Inuit will have to be maintained by the
territorial government.
But Nunavut's Inuit organizations and development corporations now have the
capacity and the desire to build and manage new housing for Inuit in Nunavut.
And NTI has decided to play a major role on Inuit housing issues.
Federal and territorial leaders should, therefore, give serious consideration
to an Inuit-run, Inuit-specific housing program for Nunavut within their deliberations
on new housing over the next weeks and months.
Who knows? Perhaps an Inuit-run body might have better luck when dealing with
painful issues like tenant arrears and unit allocations. JB
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