July
30, 2004
Kiviaq's lonely quest
In 2003, Statistics Canada released numbers showing that more than 10 per cent
of Canada's Inuit people now live outside the Arctic.
Ten per cent may not sound like a lot of people.
But it concrete terms, it now means that about 5,000 Inuit reside in southern
Canada at any given time, outside of Canada's four Inuit land claim settlement
areas - and outside of those areas where they're able to exercise the rights
and benefits set out in their land claim agreements.
Census takers - who did the count in 2001 - found that about 1,380 Inuit live
in the province of Ontario, while at least 3,145 Inuit are scattered throughout
British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia
and Prince Edward Island.
Look at a map of Canada and point a finger at any spot - chances are Inuit
now live there: in small southern towns and cities such as Abbotsford, B.C.
and Leamington, Ont., and in large centres such as Yellowknife, Ottawa-Gatineau,
Montreal, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver.
These numbers are still small, but they're growing. As the quality of life
continues to deteriorate in the Arctic, it's reasonable to assume that more
Inuit will head south in search of better housing, health care, education and
jobs.
But when they get there, many Inuit get a rude surprise. They discover that,
when compared to status and treaty Indians, their aboriginal "rights"
don't count for much.
They discover that, as far as Ottawa is concerned, they lose their Inuit identity
as soon as they leave home. Though they're subject to the same forms of stereotyping
and racism faced by other aboriginal peoples, they can rarely claim the same
rights and benefits. In the provision of government services, Inuit in southern
Canada are usually treated as if they were non-aboriginal people.
Everyone knows the stories: The woman in Ottawa who resides outside of Nunavut
for more than a year and discovers she doesn't qualify for Nunavut's student
financial assistance program. The man in Vancouver who must pay the full price
for the expensive prescription drugs that his Inuit kids need to survive, unable
to persuade the pharmacist that his kids are covered by the NIHB - and so on.
These experiences reveal a serious flaw within the four land claim agreements
that Canadian Inuit have negotiated with the federal government. That flaw is
that, for the most part, beneficiaries may only gain access to the rights and
entitlements set out in those agreements if they reside within their land claim
settlement area.
The federal government, the Supreme Court of Canada has found, bears what lawyers
call a "fiduciary" responsibility for aboriginal people - a duty of
care. What this fiduciary responsibility consists of is a subject of much dispute,
but it is commonly understood as including free health care, free post-secondary
education, and, perhaps, forms of low-cost social housing.
Aside from the paternalism that is inherent in the concept, and which is an
important, but entirely separate discussion, this fiduciary responsibility is
now recognized in law. And for treaty and status Indians, it's more or less
defined. That's why status Indians can get free prescription drugs and post-secondary
schooling right across the country.
But not Inuit. Kiviaq, who in 1936 was born in Chesterfield Inlet but grew
up in Edmonton, has been pointing that out for nearly 20 years. The issue lies
at the heart of the lawsuit that Kiviaq's lawyer, Terry Glancy, recently filed
with the Federal Court of Canada in Edmonton.
Kiviaq's complaints have not only been ignored by the federal government, but
also by Canada's official Inuit organizations, who have been slow to acknowledge
the needs of Inuit living in southern Canada. The only exception is Nunavut's
premier, Paul Okalik, who is at least offering moral support.
But neither Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, nor Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., nor the Makivik
Corp. have offered Kiviaq any help in his lonely quest for Inuit rights. Perhaps
it's because their leaders still have trouble wrapping their minds around the
idea that large numbers of Inuit want, or need, to live in southern Canada and
at the same time retain their Inuit identity.
But as the guardians of Inuit rights, its astonishing that they still don't
have any coherent position on the issues that Kiviaq is raising. Now that Kiviaq's
case is before the courts, it would be shameful if they did not at least join
as intervenors. JB
July
23, 2004
The GN's invisible politicians
For more than a year, Nunavut's embryonic fishing industry has been under attack,
mostly from commercial fishing interests in the Atlantic provinces. They don't
like the federal government's decision in 2001 to give Nunavut a 100-per-cent
quota for turbot in northern Davis Strait, and they don't like the way the Baffin
Fisheries Coalition is developing Nunavut's turbot resource.
Their attack on Nunavut is two-pronged.
The first tactic is to divide and conquer the BFC — by exploiting various grievances
within its eleven member organizations. They hope that HTOs and small community-owned
fishing companies will abandon the BFC, and then apply for and receive small
fragments of the now-unified turbot allocation in northern Davis Strait, or
division "0A." After that, southern companies like Davis Strait Fisheries
Ltd., Clearwater Fine Foods, Seafreez Foods Inc., along with numerous others,
would only be too happy to step in and fish it for them — paying a few dollars
for Nunavut's fish, then taking the value-added wealth, including most of the
jobs, back to Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.
That's the way it's done in southern Davis Strait, or division "0B,"
where 73 per cent of the turbot quota is allocated to southern interests, and
the remaining 26 per cent is fragmented among a collection of small Nunavut
operators.
The second tactic is political: to exploit public opinion in the Atlantic provinces,
and to lobby political bodies in Ottawa, such as the Senate standing committee
on fisheries, which held hearings on Nunavut's fishery last fall and then issued
a 49-page report this past April.
The exploitation of public opinion got well underway last week, when Gus Etchegary,
a former executive at Fisheries Products International got himself on CBC radio
and television on a slow news day in St. John's last week to huff and puff about
the BFC's use of a "foreign" — or Greenlandic — boat this summer and
next.
Before he went on the air to make a fool of himself, somebody should have told
him that from Nunavut's point of view, Greenland is our Inuktitut-speaking circumpolar
neighbour. However, because many Newfoundlanders blame European trawlers for
destroying their cod fishery, braying and ranting about foreigners arouses deep
emotions in that province.
But there's nothing new about Etchegary's allegations. Disgruntled southern
firms who can't get into the northern Davis Strait fishery, and who can't persuade
the BFC to charter their boats, brought the same complaints to the Senate committee
hearings last fall.
But there's a good reason why the BFC won't use a Canadian boat. They can't
find one that's big enough and at the same time uses an environmentally-friendly
hook-and-line method of catching fish. Unable to find a suitable boat in Canada,
they've gone out and found one that used to be owned by the state-owned Royal
Greenland firm, which they have the option of buying in two years' time.
The BFC, don't forget, is an instrument of Nunavut government policy. It was
created through the work of a Nunavut fisheries working group that GN bureaucrats
participate in and support.
So throughout the entire time that Nunavut's interest in the fishery has been
under attack, what have the Government of Nunavut's elected politicians been
up to? As far as we can tell, hiding in the nearest bolt-hole.
Instead, non-elected officials like Ben Kovic of the NWMB and Gerry Ward of
the BFC have gone on the radio this week to do the kind of work that elected
politicians are supposed to do — speak out on behalf of Nunavut's interests.
The most informed and articulate defence of Nunavut's interests so far has
actually come from Nancy Karetak-Lindell, and from John Efford, a federal cabinet
minister from — guess where? Newfoundland.
And isn't that the same Nancy Karetak-Lindell who, just more than a year ago,
was being attacked by territorial politicians for not defending Nunavut? Now
it's the territorial politicians who are sleeping, and Nancy who is doing the
work.
What an embarrassment for the GN. There are far too many territorial politicians
who think politics is all about big trucks, cell phones and pretty sealskin
vests, with a few boring weeks of legislative assembly meetings to get through
as fast as you can. It's time for Premier Paul Okalik and his cabinet to start
doing their jobs. JB
July
16, 2004
Credit unions for Nunavut?
The Bank of Montreal may not be very good at telling the truth or keeping a
promise.
But give them credit for owning at least one highly-developed skill: the effortless
propagation of finely-honed bullshit.
Consider, for example, the BMO's mission statement on corporate responsibility:
"Building on a tradition of social accountability, we remain committed
to being actively and generously involved with the communities we serve."
Right. Tell that to the BMO's 5,000 or so clients in Nunavut. They found out
from a sign posted on the door of its Iqaluit branch that BMO's bosses will
dump its Iqaluit operation in about four months.
The BMO Financial Group earned $602 million from its operations across Canada
in February, March and April of 2004, the second quarter of their fiscal year.
That's a 47 per cent increase from its performance over the same three-month
period in 2003.
Only a tiny portion of that profit, of course, was earned from its activities
in Nunavut. But we do know that its Iqaluit branch wasn't a money-loser. Even
Ralph Marranca, the BMO's professional mouth-piece in Toronto, said so in an
interview last week.
Here's another BMO nose-stretcher, taken from a document called "Our Community
Vision": "We strive also to build trusted relationships with the communities
where we do business."
How touching. Such is their dedication to Iqaluit, they've offered to transfer
customer accounts to the nearby community of — Pembroke, Ont. Don't worry, we
don't know where Pembroke is either.
To be fair, Canada's much-hated chartered banks have actually built a fairly
stable system, compared to many other countries, but that's only if you live
in big cities and large towns in the South. If you live in northern, rural or
remote regions, the banking system sucks.
Even now, there are charter bank branches in only three Nunavut communities:
Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet. Canada's chartered banks have failed
Nunavut, and the rest of northern Canada. In most Nunavut communities, people
still use a primitive range of financial services offered by co-ops and Northern
stores. People give them their pay cheques to be kept as account balances, unprotected
by deposit insurance, and earning no interest.
With no place to save it, many Nunavummiut still don't save their money. This
makes it harder for people to establish credit ratings, which in turn makes
it harder to get loans for major purchases, or to finance new businesses. When
economic activity is lost because loans are not available, a community's entire
economy suffers.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the lack of informal financial education. People
who rarely have to make out a cheque, fill out a deposit slip or read a bank
statement are at an overwhelming disadvantage when they try to start their own
businesses and discover they lack the financial experience to qualify for bank
loans or government loans and grants.
About 16 years ago, the government of the Northwest Territories put a lot of
work into figuring out what's wrong with northern Canada's banking system.
In response, Arctic Co-operatives Ltd. and some other groups produced a detailed
proposal for the creation of a northern credit union system. For those who have
never heard of them, credit unions are community-based banks run like co-ops,
member-owned, placing a high value on service and financial education.
In other regions of the country, rural credit union systems, such as the Caisse
Populaire Desjardins in Quebec, which is now a financial powerhouse, have been
a spectacular success.
ACL's credit union proposal needed $7 million in one-time-only start-up funds.
After that, the system would have been self-sufficient. But governments, and
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., did not embrace the idea, and ACL was never able to
put together a start-up fund for its proposal. In 1996, the federal and territorial
governments pulled their already lukewarm support and ACL shelved its proposal.
Now might be a good time to revive it.
Last month, the Atuqtuarvik Corporation, an Inuit-owned body set up as an instrument
for lending Nunavut Trust money to Inuit businesses, issued a request for proposals.
In it, they say they want someone to produce a feasibility study for "a
new financial institution for Nunavut."
Because of decentralization, at least 11 communities now play host to relatively
large numbers of well-paid GN workers — potential depositors who did not exist
in 1990, when ACL prepared its credit union proposal.
If it was possible to make a viable business case for a credit union system
in 1990, then surely it must be possible now. With their stated interest in
training and economic development, the Government of Nunavut and all other organizations
cannot afford to let the idea lapse again. JB
July
9, 2004
Nunavut's rat's nest
It's too bad more Nunavummiut didn't sit in on the four-day hearing held last
January in Iqaluit to deal with Robert Ayalik's racism allegations against the
Government of Nunavut.
If they had, they could have caught a rare glimpse into the bush-league rat's
nest within which far too many of the Nunavut government's senior bosses ply
their trade. This comparison is, of course, highly unfair to rats, who, unlike
many GN managers, know how to co-operate with one other — and are cleaner in
their habits.
Consider the findings of Sarah Kay, the Yellowknife lawyer who ran the hearing,
in explaining why Ayalik lost his job after asking a few legitimate questions:
o Ayalik's bosses, the health department's erstwhile deputy minister, Andrew
Johnston, and his underling, assistant deputy minister Keith Best, produced
"a clear breakdown in basic human resource management;"
o Johnston failed to brief Best about why he ordered that Ayalik be sent back
to Iqaluit — a community that, for family reasons, Ayalik could not possibly
move to;
o Tom Thompson, an assistant deputy minister of human resources, wrote a letter
to Ayalik canceling his job assignment in Kugluktuk without saying why;
o Keith Best, the second-most powerful bureaucrat in the health department
at the time, could not see or understand the connection between primary health
care, and the shortage of Inuit employees in the health care system.
The only person who Kay saw fit to praise in her decision is — Robert Ayalik.
"Mr. Ayalik's testimony made it clear to me that his views were very much
imbued with a fundamental underlying belief that a Nunavut government had to
be more inclusive of Inuit when it came time to research, develop and implement
programs and services that affect Inuit so fundamentally ... In my view, Mr.
Ayalik took his work very seriously and was proud of the contribution,"
Kay writes.
So why is this bright, committed young man — who, by the way, represented himself
at the hearing and held his own against a university-trained lawyer — not working
for the Government of Nunavut?
Ayalik believes that it's because he's an Inuk who believed that it was his
duty to remind his bosses of their legal obligations under the Nunavut land
claims agreement.
Kay, however, found that Ayalik did not suffer discrimination on account of
his race. Assuming that none of the witnesses suffered from bouts of selective
amnesia when they gave evidence at her hearing, this appears to be the legally
correct conclusion.
Nor is it surprising. GN bureaucrats are singularly adept at the production
of career-saving butt-covers, which explains why so many dunderheads make it
all the way to retirement.
Kay's findings do not get the GN off the hook. The affair has done serious
damage to the GN's reputation, and deservedly so. Her decision, and much of
the evidence presented at the hearing, raise serious questions about the territorial
government's organizational culture, and the people at the top who run it.
The fact remains that when Robert Ayalik asked legitimate questions about the
participation of Inuit in the design of GN policies that affect Inuit, he was
treated like a used piece of toilet paper — and they flushed him away.
It's no wonder that Ayalik honestly believed that he was the victim of racial
discrimination. Wouldn't you?
It's more likely, though, that the GN suffers from equal-opportunity incompetence.
If it practices discrimination, it's against decent, self-respecting human beings.
They're the kind of people who struggle the hardest to find their way inside
the GN's rat's nest. JB
July 2, 2004
The loudest voice of all
The voters of Nunavut spoke with their pencils and their ballot papers this
past Monday, and for a third time they sent Nancy Karetak-Lindell to the House
of Commons with — to no one’s surprise — an overwhelming share
of ballots cast.
More people — 51 per cent — voted for Karetak-Lindell than the combined
total of all those who cast ballots for her four opponents.
In a never-say-die campaign conducted mostly on the telephone, and on a shoe-string
budget, second-place-finisher Manitok Thompson did well to squeak out a mere
16.2 per cent of the vote, edging out the NDP’s Bill Riddell (15.3 per
cent), and the Conservatives’ Duncan Cunningham (14.6 per cent) for the
right to call herself the election’s top-drawer loser. And with 2.9 per
cent of the vote, the Green Party’s Nedd Kenney can at least say he showed
up for the fight.
But the loudest voice of all on June 28 was the voice of the disillusioned
and the disengaged.
More than 57 per cent of Nunavut voters gave the polling stations a pass on
June 28. In this election, their silence said more about Nunavut’s true
state of being than a year’s worth of political speeches and press releases.
Think about it. Nearly six of every 10 voters said no to the system. Our politicians,
and our institutions, are now being shunned by growing numbers of people —
a form of collective ostracism.
This is not how the people of Nunavut once approached elections and plebiscites.
In more optimistic times, Nunavut was admired for its high voter turnouts. In
the 1970s and 1980s, it was normal for elections at all levels to produce voter
turnouts ranging up to 85 per cent and beyond.
Those days are long gone. The trend now is towards non-involvement.
For example, in the March, 2004 election that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. held to
elect a president, voter turnout stood at only 38 per cent. That’s down
from the 45 per cent turnout registered in NTI’s December, 2001 election
for president, and comes after an NTI publicity campaign aimed at encouraging
the participation of young people.
Iqaluit’s municipal election last fall — in which four well-known
people contested the mayor’s job — produced a turnout of about 56
per cent, up from the woeful 40 per cent of eligible voters who turned out in
the 2000 municipal election. That’s not bad by today’s standards,
but still less than the 65-70 per cent turnouts that were normal in the 1980s.
Most other municipalities produce election turnouts ranging from 25 per cent
up to 50 or 60 per cent. The elections that regional Inuit associations hold
to elect officers now produce turnouts of 45 per cent or less.
Why is this happening? The most likely reasons are the spirit-killing feelings
of frustration and powerlessness. In the face of Nunavut’s multi-layered
dysfunctions, many of our political institutions have proven themselves to be
impotent. If no one has the power to do anything about poor housing, the crushing
cost of living, and all the suicide and violent crime, why bother to vote?
This is a self-defeating strategy. You may have good reason to feel powerless,
but refusing to vote will guarantee that you will stay that way for the rest
of your life. JB
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