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September 15, 2006

Embracing life: an Inuit priority

We all have a role to play

MARY SIMON
President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

Sunday Sept.10, 2006 marked the third annual International Suicide Prevention Day, or as our National Inuit Youth Council (NIYC) proclaimed it, “Embrace Life Day.”

Although it is important to recognize the importance of this day, we all know it will take each one of us working together and taking responsibility everyday to build healthy Inuit communities. We must continue to be persistent in overcoming mental illness, and promoting mental wellness.

As I thought about “Embrace Life Day,” it occurred to me that it is important to use opportunities to recognize and celebrate the work that is being done in communities and the contributions being made, both individually and collectively. At the same time we must recognize the gaps in services and the needs that are expressed that still remain to be addressed.

Our well-being, both physical and mental are a result of many factors, including but not limited to the fact that there have been significant changes to the Inuit nomadic way of life over the past last 50-100 years.

Despite significant progress being made in communities, Inuit continue to confront the highest cost of living with the lowest national income. Our health system continues to face major challenges related to lack of adequate funding so that Inuit can provide quality health services for their people.

Much more needs to be done in the mental wellness sector. Many Inuit face mental illness with no services to turn to. We are slowly building our capacity to provide diagnostic services as well as the capacity to provide counselling services, both on an individual basis or for group therapy. These types of services are critical for the well-being of our people.

Despite the fact that the suicide rate for Inuit in the Canadian Arctic is more than 11 times higher than that for all Canadians, it is still rare to have access to comprehensive mental health services in communities across the Arctic.

We continue to need support for crisis intervention and prevention and follow up services. We can’t give up and if we persevere we will demonstrate that with sufficient resources and recognition of the importance of mental wellness that we can make a difference.

My work with the Arctic children and youth has shown me that Inuit throughout Canada are struggling with issues that they share with other Aboriginal peoples throughout the world. Our goal to promote wellness throughout the communities in order to provide our children and youth with what they need to achieve their goals is something shared by all. Inuit are working to heal ourselves.

It is the community members and grassroots organizations that take the initiative to increase awareness and support, and whose efforts to attack this Arctic epidemic, that are really making a difference.

During the Healing Our Spirit Worldwide conference in Edmonton last August, participants had the opportunity to share Inuit healing efforts across Canada.

The Inuvialuit demonstrated northern games, which make an important contribution to whole health. A presentation of Nunavut’s Qauma Mobile Treatment Project showed how Nunavut is addressing needs of residential school survivors, families and communities. Nunavik representatives described a project that is addressing sexual abuse. Nunatsiavut reported on a pilot project for a community based addictions treatment project.

The contributions of youth are also essential in promoting community mental wellness. Jonathan Epoo, president of the Saputiit Youth Association in Nunavik, reported on the recently completed qajaq suicide prevention trek in northern Nunavik, which took place in August.

Yes, we need to mark Sunday, Sept. 10 every year as a day to celebrate lives, and also a day to remember those who have passed. But we need to remember this not just one day a year, but every day.

So let’s talk to others, speak to your children or peers, be there for a friend in need, get help if you need it - try a friend, or the health centre, or a teacher or one of the crisis lines. We all have a role to play in making sure our communities are healthy, happy places to live and celebrate life.

September 8, 2006

Don’t blame the boundaries

Whenever members of a public body in Nunavut set out to “consult” people, their most common practice is to hold public meetings in as many communities as they’re able to get to.

Depending on the issue, however, what they hear may or may not represent an accurate reflection of public opinion. Even when it does, if it’s ill-informed public opinion, it may not be very useful for the creation of public policy. At some public meetings, the agenda may end up being set by the biggest loud-mouth, or by some community power clique. In others, people may simply not know enough about the subject under discussion to offer any useful comments.

Members of the Nunavut Electoral Boundaries Commission should take this into account before recommending any radical changes to Nunavut’s electoral districts.

This is not to say that these public hearings are not needed. The commission’s work will determine the shape of the Nunavut legislative assembly for years to come, and it’s essential that they hear what people have to say.

In public hearings, commission members have no doubt heard people talk about their alienation from government, especially in small communities, and they’ve no doubt heard from people who say they’re alienated from their MLAs. And from people in constituencies made up of two or more communities, they’ve no doubt heard complaints from people who don’t like sharing an MLA with other communities with whom they believe they have little in common.

They’ve also heard from people who say that Iqaluit has too much “power” and that Iqaluit shouldn’t get a fourth seat, even if Iqaluit’s population grows. That’s a predictable sentiment. As the seat of an unpopular government, it’s natural that Iqaluit is a target of resentment.

The commision ought to be aware, though, that it’s not unusual for people to use public meetings as a place to disgorge negative feelings about whatever it is they happen to be angry about that day. In Nunavut, where many people don’t like government at any level, it’s the government that often becomes the favoured target.

But when deciding on their recommendations, the commission must not only take public opinion into account. They must also give weight to other factors, especially population growth in communities, and long established principles of equal representation.

Right now, Nunavut’s 19 electoral districts are designed to be roughly equal in population size, each one varying no more than 30 per cent from the average. This means no matter where you live, the weight of your vote is roughly equal to everyone else’s, and no area is either under or over represented.

The only exception to the 30-per -cent rule is the Hudson Bay constituency, where Sanikiluaq, because of its extreme geographic isolation and northern Quebec dialect, gets its own seat.

So with only 373 registered voters as of 2004, Sanikiluaq gets an MLA. If that ratio were applied to Ammituq (958 registered voters in 2004) or to Iqaluit East (940 registered voters), then Ammituq and Iqaluit East would each get three MLAs. If that ratio were applied to the entire city of Iqaluit, then Iqaluit would deserve at least seven MLAs.

This means a ballot cast by a Sanikiluaq voter carries roughly three times the weight of a ballot cast by a voter in Ammituq or Iqaluit East. It’s the constituencies with the smallest populations whose voters are most powerful. Those who complain that Iqaluit is too “powerful” should keep that in mind.

But before deciding if Iqaluit should get a fourth seat, the commission should wait for the latest population statistics from the 2006 census. If the new numbers justify a fourth seat based on the 30-per-cent principle, then so be it. If the numbers don’t justify it, then Iqaluit should continue on with three MLAs.

As for complaints about alienation and poor communication, especially from people in smaller communities, the commission should take care not to jump to hasty conclusions.

There are many obvious reasons for voter dissatisfaction, and none of them are related to electoral boundaries. These include under-performing MLAs, incompetent GN officials who can’t return phone calls, and worsening social and economic conditions.

The biggest reason is likely that most GN officials are either too frightened or too ignorant to know when or how to communicate even the simplest pieces of information. Fiddling with electoral boundaries won’t change that.

In Akulliq, some people complain that their consituency straddles two administrative regions: the Kivalliq for Repulse Bay, and Kugaaruk for the Kitikmeot. But in the 2004 territorial election, the turnout in Akulliq was 96 per cent. Not much sign of alienation there.

Indeed, the 2004 turnout everywhere in Nunavut, though not as high as in February of 1999, was healthy: a high of 100.7 per cent in Nattilik, a low of 61 per cent in South Baffin, with most other communities recording turnouts of between 70 and 90 per cent. Compared with the woeful numbers produced in elections for municipal councils and Inuit associations, that’s remarkable.

Those numbers show that although people may be alienated from their government, they still have faith in the democratic process. So in framing their recommendations, boundary commission members must be careful not to wreck an electoral system that already works well. :JB

September 1, 2006

School daze

For more years than most Nunavut residents ever spend in high school, the Government of Nunavut has been working on a new education law.

It was in the fall of 1999 that James Arvaluk, then the minister of education, announced the GN would create a new Education Act for Nunavut, replacing the one we inherited from the Northwest Territories. (The GN’s “old” act, by the way, is actually fairly new, passed in the late 1990s.)

Within a year, there was an inevitable “consultation,” followed by another one a couple of years later. The GN’s first education bill went belly-up anyway.

In 2004, a new education minister, Ed Picco, stepped up to the plate. Like his predecessors, he’s had a long at-bat. As of this fall, Operation Education Act, northern Canada’s longest-running exercise in bureaucratic inertia, will enter its eighth year.

This means the people of Nunavut will have had eight years in which to talk to each other and to their government about education. It’s curious then, that after all this time, the elected members of Nunavut’s community school committees – now called “District Education Authorities” – should have waited so long to tell the world about what they want in a new education law.

It’s even more curious that they waited so long to say so little.

After meeting in Iqaluit for several days last month, representatives of Nunavut’s education authorities declared that they want more power and responsibility. They suggested that if the GN were to give that to them through a new education law, the school system would suddenly get a whole lot better.

But what do they want the power to do in the future that they can’t do now? They didn’t answer that question. What new responsibilities do they want? They didn’t answer that question. Do they want more money to pay bigger honoraria and support staff salaries? They didn’t answer that question.

They say they want community control of schools, but they said nothing about what they mean by such “control.” Does it mean the power to hire and fire teachers? The power to decide what is taught or not taught in classrooms? The power to decide how students are disciplined? The power to manage budgets? They didn’t say.

One thing is clear: until they do provide specific answers to specific questions, the education authorities need not be taken seriously. Even if the GN were sympathetic to the idea of communities gaining more power over their schools, the education authorities have done nothing to advance that idea. They have given the GN nothing to work with.

Most education authority members are ordinary people, well-meaning volunteers whose hard work is generally unappreciated within their communities. In some communities, education authority members gain their seats by acclamation – because so few people are interested in serving.

But they are also elected officials, and they are accountable to the public. It cost a lot of public money to fly their representatives to Iqaluit last month and accomodate them for four days. So far, the public has received little benefit from this investment of public funds.

They did, apparently, spend time making lists of all the good stuff they want to see happen in the future. This often happens at public meetings in Nunavut when people go wild with flip charts and magic markers. They say they want more high school graduates with “qualifications on par with the rest of Canada.” They say they want “more trilingual students.” They say they want better informed parents and community leaders. They want more qualified Inuktitut language instructors, and so on.

It was, however, an exercise in redundancy. GN officials, along with just about every other informed person in Nunavut, already know that large numbers of people already want such things.

The problem, as always, is how to get them. And to do that you need the wisdom to distinguish between what can be done now, what can be done only over many years, and what can never be done because it’s too impractical. It also means the wisdom to know that diverting money and energy away from classrooms and teachers, and into 25 separate administrative fiefdoms, may not be the best use of public money right now.

As for the Nunavut Education Act, version two, there’s no reason, other than shallow political symbolism, for the GN to be in any hurry about introducing a bill and getting it passed through the house.

A new education law will not make the school system any better or worse than it is now. A new education law will not provide the GN with more money for education, it will not provide the GN with better qualified teachers, and it will not provide the GN with better curricula.

Whatever improvements we need to make – and there are many – can already be accomplished through bigger budget allocations, better administrative decisions, and more productive work inside the education department, all of which can be done now under the authority of the current education act. – JB

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