September
24, 2004
Small communities are the key
It's ironic that the strongest grassroots lobbying for a credit union system
in Nunavut is in Iqaluit — the community where such a service is least needed.
Despite the Bank of Montreal's unconscionable decision to dump its Iqaluit
branch, Iqaluit residents, after all, still enjoy access to branches maintained
by the Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
This is much more than what residents in nearly every other Nunavut community
have ever had. Except for Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay, the country's chartered
banks have never opened branches in any Nunavut community outside of Iqaluit.
In most of these places, people still use an inadequate, extremely limited
range of financial services offered by co-ops and Northern stores. There, most
people hand over their pay cheques to be kept as account balances, earning no
interest, unprotected by deposit insurance. Those are the places where people
face the greatest barriers in getting small business loans and mortgages.
It's people living in Nunavut's small communities, clearly, who need the kind
of access to banking services that a credit union network could provide.
So when Greg O'Neill, a consultant who works for Arctic
Co-operatives Ltd., earlier this month urged credit union backers in Iqaluit
to reach out to Nunavut's smaller communities, he was making a vital point.
A single credit union based only in Iqaluit is a non-starter, unlikely to win
much support from the Nunavut government and other bodies. If Nunavut is to
have this, then it must be a credit union network with outlets located in a
range of communities, and with a presence in each of the three administrative
regions.
That is what Arctic Cooperatives Ltd. proposed about 15 years ago: a system
that would start out in its first year with credit unions in six to eight communities,
supported by a credit union centrally based in the territorial capital. After
that, more communities would be added to the system.
Iqaluit is home to 20 per cent of Nunavut's population. There are as many people
residing in Iqaluit right now as there are in the entire Kitikmeot region. Iqaluit
is, without doubt, an important place.
But the heart and soul of Nunavut is to be found in the small communities.
Those are the people who elect most of our MLAs, and other political leaders.
That's why the Atuqtuarvik Corp. and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., in their own entirely
separate search for a new banking system, are placing a high priority on service
to the small communities. As we have reported in past issues of Nunatsiaq
News, these two Inuit organizations are now examining a variety of proposals
for an alternative banking system.
With its emphasis on financial education and member ownership, combined with
the support it would likely get from Nunavut's current system of community-based
co-operatives, a credit union system is an attractive alternative. But it's
not the only one. It's likely that NTI will also look at proposals for a territorial
savings and loan bank, or some type of territorial trust company.
NTI's decision on which alternative to support won't be entirely decisive,
but it will be highly influential. Their final decision, which won't be made
until the organization's annual general meeting is held in Rankin Inlet later
this fall, will be based on their assessment of which system best meets the
needs of Inuit living in Nunavut's small communities.
The needs of the small communities are key to whichever alternative banking
system finally emerges. Without those needs, there would really be no other
reason for creating one. JB
September
17, 2004
From the ground up
All the Iqaluit residents
who took part in last Friday's "walk for life" deserve praise, not
only for drawing attention to the curse of youth suicide, but for showing youth
that there's a better way.
The parents, teachers,
young people and other residents who marched along the Ring Road and then gathered
at Nakasuk School to hold hands and form a circle also showed us something else
— suicide is a preventable cause of death that cannot be fought only by
governments.
Governments certainly have
an essential role to play. Only governments have the means to provide professional
mental health services, expensive multimedia information campaigns, and research
efforts aimed at gathering statistics and other vital sources of knowledge.
To that end, at least some
of the new federal money that Prime Minister Paul Martin announced this week
for the creation of a national aboriginal youth suicide strategy will likely
find its way to the Government of Nunavut.
But governments alone cannot
do the job. In the end, the top-down work of governments cannot — by itself
— prevent the occurrence of suicide. To be successful, suicide prevention must
start from the ground up, within communities and families.
When communities are willing
to do this kind of work, the best thing governments can do is to offer encouragement
— then get out of the way and let communities get on with it.
Young people need to know
that sadness is always temporary — and that with all its wonder and delight,
there is no substitute for life. JB
September
17, 2004
Canada should lead
The eight-nation Arctic
Council's 1,400 page report on global warming and the Arctic, known as the "Arctic
Climate Impact Assessment," won't be formally released until Nov. 9, at
an international symposium in Reykjavik, Iceland.
But its main findings have
been known for many months — Nunatsiaq News first began reporting on
them in February, and provided updates as recently as last week. And those findings
confirm not only that the Arctic is getting warmer. They confirm that the Arctic
is getting warmer at a faster rate than anyone previously thought possible.
The 250 or so scientists
who did the work found, for example, that annual average temperatures in the
Arctic are rising five to 10 times faster than average temperatures elsewhere
on the planet. They predict that the treeline will move north, glaciers and
sea-ice will retreat, and that new species of wildlife will move in to replace
species that Arctic peoples are used to, and depend on, for their livelihoods.
Political leaders around
the world are beginning to take notice. This week, the British prime minister,
Tony Blair, called for "a green industrial revolution for the 21st century"
to head off the human catastrophes that might occur if global warming doesn't
slow. Blair said the G8 group of nations — of which Canada is a member — should
play the lead role in making this happen.
But where is Canada in
all of this? As usual, playing follow the leader. It's true that Canada has
agreed, grudgingly, to sign the Kyoto Accord. But as a country that has stewardship
over one-third of the planet's Arctic region, Canada should be a bold leader
on this issue, not a follower. JB
September
10, 2004
Recycle this
As if they didn't have enough financial problems on their agenda, the city of Iqaluit now has another: how to pay for a garbage recycling program.
This problem is partially self-inflicted. Earlier this year, confronted with wildly escalating costs for its recycling scheme, the city was poised on the edge of making the right decision: shelve the program.
It was the right thing to do for two reasons. The first is that the current Iqaluit city council has no political mandate to run an expanded recycling program. That is not what they were elected to do. Check the platforms that most candidates ran on last fall. The issues in the last election were public safety, infrastructure improvement, taxes, and development planning.
The second reason is that they do not have enough information to make an informed decision about its recycling scheme. There is no evidence that they even had answers to most of these essential questions:
- What is the cost per tonne of pouring garbage into a dump?
- What is the cost per tonne of pouring garbage into a recycling system?
- What is the difference in cost between those two methods?
- Who is willing — and able — to pay the difference?
Instead, council members caved to emotional pressure from an unelected lobby group that claims a handful of members. Instead of postponing recycling until they have figured out how to do it, they decided to cross their fingers and hope for the best. They will continue the program, and at the same time try to find ways of reducing its costs.
We wish them the best of luck. Municipal governments all over North America have already discovered that it costs 10 to 20 times as much to pour garbage into a recycling scheme than it costs to pour garbage into a hole in the ground.
Take Toronto, for example, Canada's largest municipality. Three years ago, it cost them about $15 a tonne to pour garbage into a landfill site. At the same time it cost them about $120 a tonne to recycle garbage. And their recycling costs were low in comparison to others. In that same year, 2002, recycling cost the city of Guelph a whopping $308 a tonne.
These costs are real. Mouthing shallow platitudes about saving the planet will not make them go away. In a small town like Iqaluit, the high price of recycling is compounded by the high cost of transporting recyclable material to markets in the South.
And when it reaches those markets, Iqaluit's thrown-away glass, plastic, and rubber doesn't fetch a very high price, and certainly not enough to pay for the cost of collecting it, separating it, and then sending it there via air cargo.
What was city council thinking when they set aside only $5,000 for recycling in this year's budget? Why are they surprised that the real cost is turning out to be between $250,000 to $300,000 for this year alone?
The city's biggest environment liability right now is its festering sewage lagoon, and the botched sewage treatment plant built to replace it. Over the past 10 years, the Department of Fisheries of Oceans has twice laid charges over the leaking of disease-laden effluent from the sewage lagoon into the bay. The first time, the territorial government paid the fine. The second time, the municipality paid. If the city is charged and convicted again, a fine would cost the city many hundreds of thousands of dollars. That makes the sewage treatment plant a higher environmental priority than a recycling program.
The city's biggest political liability right now is the sorry state of the
road system, the absence of sidewalks, and unexplained problems with the contractor
hired to carry out its road-paving scheme. That is a higher political priority
than a recycling program.
At the same time, the city has run into unexpected financial shortfalls. As usual, they are less than forthcoming about exactly how bad it is, but the problem seems to be related to lower than projected cash reserves, which would have provided some of the money needed to pay its share of Iqaluit's $50 million infrastructure program.
On top of all that, there are the inevitable contingency expenses that the city must also pay, such as the $100,000 they have agreed to spend on a consultant to find out why the new arena is sinking into the tundra.
So is the city now dipping into its reserves to pay the unbudgeted operating costs of recycling? Will the city now produce a deficit at the end of the year?
If the city of Iqaluit is not ready to answer the question of how it will
pay the extra costs of recycling, and who will pay them, then the city of Iqaluit
is not yet ready to run a recycling program. JB
September 3, 2004
A better way
Using foot soldiers, aircraft and a couple of ships, the Canadian armed forces suffered only slight embarrassment last week during their military exercise near Panniqtuuq.
Given the large scale of the operation, the Department of National Defence
is justified in deeming it a success. Two people got lost in the fog one night,
mainly because no one bothered to have them accompanied — and protected
— by Inuit Rangers. But in the end they suffered no harm that couldn't
be undone by a warm blanket and a hot breakfast. The forces had problems with
their Griffon helicopters, but until those notoriously worn-out machines are
replaced, that is to be expected.
It certainly wasn't as much of an embarrassment as last spring's much-hyped
snowmobile marathon from Resolute Bay through Eureka to Alert, when two members
of the armed forces were medevaced out after suffering serious injuries before
reaching their destination. One of those two men had to abandon his special
role — the collection
of Peary caribou droppings — but national security was not threatened.
And to make that trip, the armed forces had to a fight a real war first, with Parks Canada bureaucrats. And they lost.
As the Canadian Press revealed last week, parks officials didn't want Rangers
driving snowmobiles through Quttinirpaaq National Park, claiming possible damage
to the delicate ecology of Ellesmere Island. The military first wanted the Rangers
to take between 20 and 50 snowmobiles, but Parks Canada forced them to settle
for seven, and only five of them made it.
So what's all this fuss about Arctic sovereignty? It seems the federal bureaucracy's
control of the Arctic is so complete, even the armed forces can't get in.
All joking aside, it's the maintenance of Canadian sovereignty — especially
in the Northwest Territories — that provides the official political justification
for these exercises.
But to what end? The harsh reality is that in international law, Canada's claim
to the Northwest Passage is weak. We all know that the United States considers
it to be an international waterway. What is not so well-known is that most of
the European Union's member nations also do not recognize Canadian sovereignty
in the Northwest Passage, along with most other nations with an interest in
the issue. If the Northwest Passage were ever opened at both ends to commercial
vessels, it's likely that the international court would rule against Canada's
claim.
Similarly, Canada's claim to that over-publicized rock between Ellesmere
and Greenland, Hans Island, is even weaker. There, its continuous use by Greenlandic
Inuit would seem to give Denmark a stronger claim — as if it really mattered.
All the same, Canada's armed forces have a legitimate and crucial role to play
in search-and-rescue operations, protection against environmental threats, and
however unlikely this may be in the Arctic, guarding against terrorist and other
criminal infiltrations.
Sovereignty over the Northwest Passage? Legally, that's already a lost cause,
but the so-called 'threats' to sovereignty are probably overstated. Climate
change experts tell us that shipping conditions in the Northwest Passage will
likely remain dangerous even after global warming.
There's a better way for Canada to exercise its claim over the Arctic — and that is to work with the people of the Arctic to make our home a better place to live.
Prime Minister Paul Martin suggested as much last month during his visit to Iqaluit. He said sovereignty is “manifested in a multitude of ways,” including the quality of life enjoyed by people who live in the Arctic, environmental protection, and economic development.
Martin was speaking off the cuff. There's no sign yet that his personal vision has made its way into federal government policy, or ever will.
But it's a fruitful path for the federal government to follow, should
the will be there. Canada badly needs a coherent unified policy vision setting
out what it wants to do with its Arctic regions, a vision that must include
the economic, human development, political development, environmental protection,
and circumpolar affairs. JB
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