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December 15, 2006

A wasted opportunity?

When Jim Prentice started work last February as minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, he ended up in charge of a messed-up file that presented him with a priceless opportunity.

That messed-up file, inherited from the Liberals, was the failed process for producing a new contract to implement the Nunavut land claims agreement.

The last contract expired in 2003. Talks aimed at a new one, which began in 2001, have so far failed, even after conciliation efforts led by Thomas Berger. It’s a difficult, complicated issue.

But it gave Prentice a chance to improve on the outgoing Liberal government’s record in Nunavut, because he could have used it to take credit for doing what the Liberals couldn’t. That opportunity is now slipping from Prentice’s grasp.

This is due, in part, to the lawsuit that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. filed last week against the federal government. But it’s also due to an absence of action by Prentice’s government in the months following the last federal election.

There are things that Ottawa could have done, but didn’t, that could have persuaded NTI to hold off on its lawsuit.

Prentice, for example, could have appointed a new negotiator for talks on an implementation contract. He also could have found a way for his department to sign off on the many issues where the two sides were close to agreement, a gesture that could have created momentum and goodwill.

He also could have provided some response to the two reports filed by Thomas Berger, the conciliator appointed by the Liberals in 2005.

Berger’s final report – devoted mostly to Article 23 and Nunavut’s education system – received enormous attention after its release this past March. Unfortunately, it led some people to forget that Berger was actually hired to help create a new implementation contract between NTI and the federal government, not a new education system for Nunavut.

His interim report, issued in the fall of 2005, is at least equally, if not more, important and has been unjustly ignored – because it contains the basis for agreement on almost all the outstanding issues that divide the two sides, except for Article 23.

This is revealed by an appendix tacked on the end of his lengthy final report. In it, Berger said, based on advice contained in his interim report, that the two sides reached virtual agreement on one of the biggest issues that until then had separated them: a new funding scheme for Nunavut’s co-management boards, such as the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, the Nunavut Impact Review Board and so on. He also reported consensus on two other big issues: a new way of using the Nunavut Implementation Panel to resolve disputes and a proposal creating a general monitoring plan.

This demonstrates that except for Article 23, NTI and the federal government were inches away, earlier this year, from a new deal. But that golden opportunity was wasted.

For Nunavut land claim beneficiaries, and for that matter, for business, especially the mining industry, this is not a happy turn of events.

For some time now, mining companies have complained that it takes too long for Nunavut’s regulatory bodies, such as the Nunavut Impact Review Board and the Nunavut Water Board, to conduct environmental screenings and reviews and to issue recommendations for mining permits and licences.

Nonetheless, bodies like the NIRB and the NWB, despite crushing workloads, have done a pretty good job so far. But it’s difficult to see how they can continue this if they don’t get the money they need to handle the ever-increasing work that will come their way in the near future. That includes a controversial uranium mine in the Kivalliq, a massive iron ore project in North Baffin, and possible diamond mine proposals in the Kivalliq region and the Melville Peninsula.

If these projects are delayed because underfunded regulatory boards can’t review them in a timely fashion, it will not only hurt Nunavut’s economy, it will also hurt the national economy. If that doesn’t attract the Tory government’s attention, we don’t know what will.

In Jim Prentice, the Tory government gave us a DIAND minister with more substance and more stature than any of his Liberal predecessors in recent memory. He ought to be capable, then, of figuring out why this dispute must be resolved and how it should be resolved.

First, Prentice should appoint a new negotiator. NTI should do the same. Then they should work out a process that gets the easy issues out of the way so they can devote all their attention to the one or two questions that seriously divide them – especially how to pay for Inuit training for Article 23.

Both sides, of course, should avoid hysteria, embrace realism and above all, seek a compromise. For NTI this means a recognition that Thomas Berger’s work on education is at most a guide to discussion, not a non-negotiable blueprint for utopia. For the federal government, this means a recognition that the Inuit of Nunavut really do need more money for training and education – certainly, more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars over 10 years.

The alternative? Well, the federal government will likely file a statement of defence. After that, the case will likely languish inside the court system for many years, and a new implementation contract will never be reached.

But eventually, a judge will urge the two sides to settle their dispute out of court. The two sides can avoid all that by getting started now. JB

December 1, 2006

New prison is long overdue

Maybe it took some people by surprise – but the Nunavut government’s decision to build a new correctional centre in Rankin Inlet – announced, more or less, this past spring, and fleshed out in its 2007-08 capital budget – is long overdue.

It’s an essential piece of infrastructure. If the creation of Nunavut had been planned well, a new correctional centre would have been funded and constructed well before 1999 – as a reasonable incremental cost of creating the new territory.

But those responsible for planning Nunavut – including officials with the Nunavut Implementation Commission, the federal government, the Government of the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. – did not take a serious look at justice and corrections issues during the 1993-1999 planning period.

Even now, this is difficult to understand. In the early 1990s, reliable information on eastern Arctic crime rates was available to those who chose to look for it. Even then, researchers such as Curt Griffiths, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, were unearthing evidence that showed crime rates in Nunavut, especially the Baffin region, were as bad as crime rates in the worst U.S. inner cities. And even then, it was obvious that most Nunavut residents were deeply unhappy about their justice and corrections systems.

Nunavut planners knew, or ought to have known, the obvious: that upon its creation, Nunavut would be left with one small facility in Iqaluit – the Baffin Correctional Centre – and lose access to large numbers of correctional spaces in Yellowknife, Hay River and Fort Smith.

So because of the planning oversights of the 1990, the Government of Nunavut now pays dearly. Lawyers representing female inmates have already challenged the GN on behalf of clients who, due to the absence of a women’s facility in Nunavut, have been incarcerated in appalling conditions. It’s only a matter time before overcrowding at BCC leads to even more lawsuits. And because there’s not enough room in Nunavut, the GN ships large amounts of money to Ontario and the Northwest Territories to pay the cost of housing convicted offenders and remand prisoners in out-of-territory institutions.

Correctional centre inmates and employees pay the most, however – the stress brought on by unsafe working conditions and inadequate programs Correctional employees can’t offer rehabilitation programs if they don’t have the space to run them in, and overcrowded conditions at BCC are unsafe for inmates and employees alike.

The Office of the Interim Commissioner was the only planning body that ever took a serious look at justice and corrections issues during the pre-1999 period. It was under the OIC that the Nunavut corrections planning committee was set up, in 1998. Their final report, “Planning for Nunavut Corrections,” was tabled in the legislative assembly in the fall of 1999.

That 1999 report stated what should have been recognized long before then: that Nunavut’s high rate of violent crime – especially in assaults and sexual assaults – was producing large numbers of prison inmates that Nunavut had no room for. They found not only that BCC was overcrowded, but that overcrowding is itself leads to insufficient programs. For example, they found that, at the time, BCC had no programs for sex offenders, and no risk assessment system.

In response, the GN has made numerous improvements over the years. They’ve added trailers to the BCC complex, and they’ve improved programs. They’ve also created a healing facility in Kugluktuk for lower-risk offenders.

But until now, they have yet to respond the planning committee’s most important recommendation: build a new jail, a joint territorial-federal facility for a cost of about $50 million, to hold people serving territorial and federal sentences.

The plans outlined recently by Paul Okalik, the justice minister, appear to be strongly influenced by that report, even if the original recommendation has been modified. The GN is now talking about a $37-million facility that would hold 36 to 48 inmates, and the federal government is not part of the plan.

This could not have been an easy decision. The GN’s capital budget is shrinking. Territorial officials have been forced this year to defer badly needed school projects, disappointing the affected MLAs. And prisons are never as politically popular as schools, hospitals and recreation centres.

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