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September 30, 2005

CBC lockout leaves Inuit adrift on the radio dial

A guest editorial from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

JOSE KUSUGAK

As the CBC lockout drags on millions of Canadians are left without programming they are accustomed to. In southern Canada, there are many alternatives, and the lockout will likely be devastating mostly to the CBC’s viewership and listenership.

It’s an entirely different story in the Arctic. There are few if any alternatives to the CBC Northern Service broadcasts in Inuktitut and English.

Radio continues to be king in the Arctic, the medium of choice for an oral culture. Inuktitut rules the airwaves on the CBC, and regular hosts — who are a part of the daily lives of Inuit across the North — are sorely missed. They are missed not only for their humanity, but for vital survival information transmitted over the airwaves. As fall and winter loom inevitably on the horizon, that survival information becomes more critical. Flight information, medevacs, school closings, weather conditions, high tides, low tides, winds and sunrise and sunsets are no longer part of broadcasts. Inuit hunters rely on this information before setting out.

The daily morning radio programming broadcast from Toronto by CBC management staff is the palest of the pale in comparison with regular CBC Radio morning shows originating from Goose Bay, Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Inuvik, and Yellowknife (to name a few).

From those locales, regular programming provided critical information for each day, cultural sustenance in the form of the Inuktitut language spoken in a somewhat official “newspeak,” and more colloquially in current affairs interviews and on-air banter between regular CBC hosts (northern personalities) and their guests.

Gone are well known radio shows such as “Labrador Morning,” “Qulliq,” “Tuttavik,” and “Tausunni,” with no replacements. The sole CBC television news show in Inuktitut, “Igalaaq,” broadcast from Yellowknife, is also off the air. Inuit elders are literally missing the news. Local, national and international news has dropped off the radar screen. Each day world news was translated into Inuktitut, and was the lifeline to the global community for Inuit elders. The lockout has made major news events such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the spike in gas prices, the Gaza pullout, and the announcement of a new Governor General invisible for unilingual Inuit.

Current affairs in the Arctic covers the political developments taking place in the four Inuit regions, as well as the infinite variety of daily life, and the trials and tribulations of living in the Arctic. It’s frequently a lifeline in cases when emergencies develop. Radio is there to keep the community together, and communities within regions connected. This is lost. Events that would be part of regular newscasts are not being covered. One example is the signing of a recent overlap agreement between the Labrador Inuit and the Innu of Labrador. It went uncovered by CBC radio or television broadcasters.

The CBC lockout sets Inuit communities adrift into a broadcast vacuum unable to be filled by management replacement shows, regardless of their origin. The last time a major labour dispute hit the CBC in the Arctic many thought that the CBC in the Arctic should be deemed an essential service. This is still the case today. The CBC Northern Service is a vital lifeline for Inuit across the Arctic. It ties our communities together, it ties our regions together, and it ties our home and native land together.

This lockout needs to be settled soon for the sake of Inuit, and millions of Canadians who live in small and remote communities who rely on local broadcasts from the CBC. Furthermore, the CRTC should legislate that the Northern Service of the CBC is an essential service, a situation our national broadcast regulator may be oblivious to.

As MPs and Senators return to Parliament thousands of names of northerners will be on hundreds of pages of petitions from the Arctic demanding an end to the CBC dispute. These pages will land with a thud on the steps of Parliament and will be impossible to ignore.

September 23, 2005

Nunavik’s shame

The first duty of any government is to provide for the security of its citizens, a principle that’s recognized in Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights, which, among other things, states that “Everyone has the right to... security of the person.”

This protects individuals not only from the arbitrary whims of state officials; it also implies that citizens should be protected from dangerous acts of omission, neglect or incompetence that may be committed by agents of the state.

A report done this year by Quebec’s human rights and children’s rights commission, and recently leaked to Nunatsiaq News, reveals that in Nunavik, endangered children cannot count on their government to make reasonable provisions for their security.

“The youth protection system is not currently functional,” the report says. You can’t say it any plainer than that.

The report is the result of an investigation into complaints made in 2002 by two Nunavik residents, concerning 13 children who did not get adequate services from youth protection workers. The provincial human rights commission then conducted a lengthy investigation.

To be fair, social services are extremely difficult to deliver in northern Canada, for a variety of reasons: trained, well-motivated social workers are hard to recruit and retain; child welfare laws contain ideas that are often at odds with Inuit culture; and in many communities, a multi-generational history of substance abuse, domestic violence and sexual abuse is deeply embedded in many families.

And social work, by its very nature, is a highly intrusive practice, especially in child welfare. To do their job, social workers sometimes have to walk into people’s homes, take their children, or counsel the break-up of families. Because of this, social workers themselves can become targets of abuse in their communities. It’s easy to understand how a child protection worker could be tempted to look the other way rather than act on behalf of an endangered or neglected child.

But even measured by the standards of northern Canada, what they found is shocking.

Here are a few findings, picked at random:

• Children in foster homes who don’t get enough food or clothing, and in some cases not even a mattress or a blanket;
• Children in foster homes who are abused within the very foster homes that are supposed to provide a safe shelter for them;
• A children’s group home co-ordinator who showed up for duty drunk when on call;
• The widespread sexual abuse, and even rape, of children as young as three or four years;
• Some abuse complaints that are neither investigated nor evaluated;
• Some complaints that are not pursued if they involve families that are “friendly” with child protection staff;
• Staff who think that mental health problems in teenagers are caused by a “demonic spirit” that takes possession of a person.

Keep in mind that the report that fell into our hands only deals with the Ungava region, and is only part of a much bigger document that also includes the Hudson Bay region of Nunavik.

In response, the Youth Protection service has started to provide better training of its workers, more visits by child psychiatrists, a series of FASD workshops, workshops for parents, protocol changes at group homes and so on. They’ve also made some picky comments about some minor factual errors in the report, and they’ve pointed out that the Nunavik region does not get enough resources from the province to do an adequate job.

But there’s no sign that they have grasped the enormity of the scandal that the human rights commission has revealed, and little sign that they’re prepared to acknowledge the extent to which they’re accountable for it.

The report contains a strong core of truth. It shows that when criminal acts against defenceless children are revealed to the authorities, there’s no guarantee that they will be dealt with properly.

It’s interesting to note that Canada’s Inuit organizations announced this week that they’ve gone to court to seek compensation on behalf of people who were abused at residential schools when they were children.

It would be shame indeed, if, 20 or 30 years from now, the survivors of Nunavik’s Youth Protection service also had to go to court to seek compensation for the damage done to them by an incompetent system that is not protecting them. JB

September 16, 2005

A bold risk

The Government of Nunavut’s heavily subsidized workers aren’t likely to be too happy about their employer’s new staff housing policy when they read about it for the first time.

But in the long run, they might just learn to love it. In the long run, those who respond to the GN’s incentives — which include a yet-to-be-announced assistance program — will move into various forms of homeownership, which could include ownership of condominium units, townhouses and even co-operative housing.

This will benefit employees in two ways.

First, instead of paying rent to a landlord, homeowners will make mortgage payments to a bank that, in effect, are payments to themselves, thereby increasing their own wealth.

Second, GN employees will acquire more independence from their employer, and gain the freedom to switch jobs without having to worry about losing their housing. That’s just one of several reasons why having one’s housing tied to one’s job is, in the long run, not a healthy state of affairs.

And in the long run, the new staff housing policy is good for the public and good for the territorial public service.

Right now, the GN is a revolving door, staffed by too many itinerant cubicle-workers who never seem to stick with their jobs long enough to learn anything useful. A policy that encourages more GN workers to become homeowners could help turn that around, because the financial commitment required by homeownership usually turns into a long-term commitment to one’s job and to one’s community. It will help the GN develop a mature, experienced — and more competent — public service.

Having said that, it’s fair to point out that the GN’s high staff turnover rate is attributable to many other factors too, such as low morale produced by abusive managers, the botched implementation of decentralization in some communities, and competition from other government and quasi-government employers. These are all preventable problems that the GN must also deal with.

But fostering more homeownership among GN employees is still a necessary element in the development of a strong public service, and this policy ought to promote that.

The policy is good for communities, too, especially the big three regional centres, where the GN will entirely withdraw from the provision of staff housing. It will help Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay evolve into tax-based communities, giving their community governments more financial independence and giving their elected councils an opportunity to mature politically.

The policy is also good for the economy, because it will subject property developers to the discipline of the marketplace. In the long term, they’ll have to take more risks and become more entrepreneurial.

Many GN staff now live in housing complexes that were built under uncompetitive, no-risk, negotiated lease agreements that, in some cases, are costing the GN far more than the buildings are worth. In one of her reports on the GN’s finances, the Auditor General of Canada highlighted one such lease, for a building that cost the government a 50 per cent premium.

That particular building contained office space, not staff housing, but there are many office-apartment complexes in Nunavut where the GN has inherited similarly uncompetitive long-term leases from the Northwest Territories, many of them sole-sourced, and signed under dubious circumstances.

But in the three largest communities, property developers will soon have to market their projects to consumers, not to GN bureaucrats and politicians. It will get a lot harder for developers to sign over-priced, politically tainted lease-back agreements with the GN for staff housing, a prospect that promises to reduce corruption and sleaze.

The GN’s new staff housing policy is a bold risk — but it’s a risk that just might pay off in the long run. JB

September 9, 2005

Inuit embracing life all over the Arctic

A guest editorial from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

The last year has seen many Inuit taking control of their lives and encouraging others to celebrate theirs.

Tomorrow, Sept. 10, 2005, is World Suicide Prevention Day. It is a day to think of those who have passed, and to remember the lives they lived.

But more importantly, it is a day to engage in dialogue, to speak to our families, and to embrace our lives. And it is a day to remind ourselves that we should celebrate life all year round.

Groups across the Arctic have been doing just that. Taking a cue from the National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Walk from B.C. to Ottawa, 115 people held a 3-day camp and a Walk for Life in Baker Lake, Nunavut. One participant from Arviat used his bags as a metaphor for the weight of life. He carried the heavy bags to and from the camp, and by making it both ways showed us that perseverance and dedication can get you through even the toughest challenges.

Another tough challenge that six young Inuit set out on, to celebrate their lives, was beginning a multi-year project to visit Nunavik (Northern Quebec) coastal communities by qajaq. The trek, a grueling test of physical and mental strength, nearly forced the group to admit defeat and give up.

But just as they've embraced and enjoyed the challenges of life, they learned to embrace and enjoy the challenges of their trying journey.

Sara Matoo has been working for years in Coral Harbour, Nunavut, on suicide prevention. She recently organized a "Youth Celebration Camp" and hike, with the Coral Harbour Youth Celebration Committee. Sara's commitment to showing youth, including her five children, that their lives should be embraced and celebrated is admirable.

Sara's positive story was recently featured in Nunatsiaq News. But unfortunately, coverage in the media has tended toward the grim and sensational.

The ITK board of directors, and Inuit across Canada, call on the media to focus on the positive aspects of embracing and celebrating life. By showing our children that life is worth enjoying, they will come to their own conclusions about life being worth living.

ITK also calls on the federal government to speed the release of $65 million for the National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy, as they committed to in September of 2004. Our Inuit youth and Inuit community leaders, through grassroots movements, are showing that they care about the future of our children, and it's long past time for the Government of Canada to join our celebration of life.

Mark Saturday, Sept. 10th by spending time with those you love and care about. Talk to them, show them you are there for them, but above all, listen to them. We all have a role to play in preventing suicide.

Board of Directors, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami:
Jose Kusugak, President
Pita Aatami
William Anderson III
Nellie Cournoyea
Paul Kaludjak
Mary Palliser
Duane Smith
Jason Tologanak

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