Editorials
February
25, 2000
Good news
from Arvaluk
Education Minister James Arvaluk's announcement this week that
his department, at the beginning of Nunavut's next school year,
will be able to offer an Inuktitut language arts program at every
grade level is welcome news for Nunavut residents.
The idea of giving the Inuit language the same status as English
within Nunavut's school system is a long-cherished dream. Inspired
by the example set by nearby Greenland, many Nunavut residents
have long-believed that the Inuit language is equal to English
in its capacity to become a language of law, business, politics
and education.
However, there are still many challenges to be overcome before
this dream can become real.
The Nunavut government must soon confront the difficult and
sensitive issue of orthography, and the related issue of language
standardization.
They must also grapple with the seemingly perennial problem
of producing the Inuktitut learning materials that teachers need
to actually teach what is set out in the curricula they are given
by the education department.
And, of course, the department must deal with a host of other
issues that are affecting the quality of education in Nunavut
schools. These include overcrowded classrooms, a looming shortage
of teachers, and a long list of health and social problems that
previous generations have inflicted upon Nunavut's young.
But this week, Arvaluk has demonstrated that he has been able
to at least point the education department in the right direction.
That's a good start. JB
February
25, 2000
Resist the
urge to spend
Last week, some Nunavut community leaders and MLAs have suggested
that the Nunavut government should provide Nunavut's community
health committees with more money to help them deal with health
care issues after Nunavut's three health boards dissolve on April
1.
It's understandable why some of the more active health committees
might make such a request. In some Nunavut communities, it's to
be expected that well-intentioned health commitee members or other
community leaders may feel the need to do research, policy analysis,
or even conduct their own health promotion projects within their
communities. They may also feel that they need more resources
to fill the advocacy role that health boards once played.
Sincere though these requests may be, however, the Nunavut government
has no choice but to turn them down.
A major rationale for the territorial government's decision
to dissolve Nunavut's health boards last year was to simplify
the administration of health care in Nunavut. Another was to save
money.
Neither of these principles will be served by shoveling money
into 26 new community health commitees that would presumably emerge
in the place of the three outgoing health boards. It make no sense
at all for the Nunavut government to divert money from primary
health care and health promotion into support for community health
committees.
Nunavut should spend its health care money on health care, not
honoraria. JB
February 18,
2000
Bringing
the assembly to the people
Is it wise for the Nunavut legislative assembly to hold expensive and risky sittings in communities outside of Iqaluit?
Wise? Perhaps not. As we've seen this week, the Arctic's powerful climate can play havoc with the most carefully constructed plans. But for the short-term, the idea still has much merit.
In the early 1980s, the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories adopted a practice under which they held at least one sitting a year in a community outside of Yellowknife.
This was an expensive, elaborate undertaking. But it exposed many Northwest Territories residents to a new institution that many could not otherwise have witnessed first-hand. For example, many Iqaluit residents will still remember the sitting of the NWT legislative assembly held in the fall of 1980 at the Gordon Robertson Education Centre, as Inuksuk High School was then called. For many Iqaluit residents, this was the first time that many residents had a chance to see their legislature.
In those days, before the widespread use of fax machines, before the arrival of the Internet, before organizations such as CBC North, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and APTN's predecessor, Television Northern Canada, were able to carry pan-Arctic news and current affairs broadcasts, the territorial legislature was a remote institution for many NWT residents. The sittings held outside of the capital were, therefore, of great educational value in those days.
Do such sittings have the same value now? Yes, they do, as long as MLAs don't get carried away with the idea, and as long as they don't use them as substitutes for other means of communication. This week and next, the people of Rankin Inlet will be able to see the human side of their MLAs, and Nunavut's fledgling legislature will have been demystified in their eyes.
However, the legislative assembly, as well as the government of Nunavut needs to do much more than they have done until now to disseminate public domain information about the Nunavut government, especially on Nunavut's public broadcast media, as well as on the Internet, which is a cheap and efficient medium for distributing written documents to large numbers of people.
They are hampered, of course, by the sluggish pace at which communities are being connected to Nunavut's new digital communications network, and by the need for more skill development among their staff.
The delayed television broadcasts of assembly proceedings that are due to start next week on APTN are good move in the right direction. But surely, the Nunavut legislative assembly also ought to be able to produce daily Hansards for distribution on the Internet, along with electronic copies of major policy papers and other important documents.
Meanwhile, the Nunavut legislature should continue to meet in communities outside the capital. But next time, perhaps, at a time of year when the weather is better? JB
TOP
February
11, 2000
Image versus image?
Should the Nunavut government fight the animal rights movement
with the same weapons that the animal rights movement have used
so successfully over the past 30 years against Newfoundland sealers,
aboriginal people and other powerless, marginalized peoples?
That is a difficult question to answer.
But with the release last week of "Waiting at the Edge,"
a 48-minute video on Inuit seal hunting financed by Nunavut's
Department of Sustainable Development, it is a question that
Nunavut residents must think about carefully.
The video is a laudable attempt to provide the world with
some badly-needed pro-Inuit propaganda. There's no doubt that
the people of the world need to know that seal hunting is about
more than the killing animals and that it's also about the intangible
bonds that unite people, land, and wildlife in Nunavut. There's
no doubt that the world needs to know that the animal rights
movement is a dagger pointed at the heart of Inuit culture.
But is it good strategy for the government of Nunavut to join
a battle whose weapons are image, emotion, irrational distortion
of truth and mass hysteria?
The anti-seal hunt campaigns conducted by organizations such
as the International Fund for Animal Welfare have nothing do
with "debate" as that term is commonly understood.
Debate has to do with facts and logical arguments based on facts.
The animal rights movement, led by organizations like the
International Fund for Animal Welfare, bases its appeal on the
crude exploitation of visual images torn from their natural context
and then re-combined into new constructions intended to stimulate
powerful emotions and to suppress rational thinking.
Their use of video, film and still images, and their ability
to either buy or sneak these images into the mass media have
made the animal rights movement a powerful force. They have successfully
demonized a few hundred low-income people in Atlantic Canada
who spend a few weeks on the ice every year to supplement their
income with seal hunting. Eastern Arctic Inuit who can't make
a living anymore from selling seal pelts have been the collateral
damage in this irrational war.
The animal rights phenomenon is more than just a social and
political movement. It's also a powerful machine for extracting
cash from the pockets of the gullible. In an article in the January/February
2000 issue of Canadian Geographic magazine, Newfoundland journalist
Ray Guy reports that in 1998, 1.8 million people around the world
were members of the IFAW, and that in the same year, the IFAW
raised $62.3 million U.S. in donations.
So how can the cash-strapped Nunavut government compete with
an organization possessing that kind of mass appeal, capable
of raising $60 million a year? In deciding to fight groups such
as the IFAW on their own ground — image versus image —
has the Nunavut government begun a fight that it's too weak to
win?
The other danger is that the people of Nunavut may be too
honest to succeed in a war of image manipulation. The truth doesn't
matter much to groups like the IFAW, but it's a value that is
revered by the Inuit of Nunavut.
On the other hand, it would be churlish not too support an initiative
such as the "Waiting at the Edge" video. After all,
somebody has to tell the other side of the story. JB
TOP
February
4, 2000
The "city"
of Iqaluit you say?
Since 1982, we've called it a "town."
Now the government of Nunavut wants to call it a "city."
With the support of Iqaluit's town council, the territorial
government plans to change the official English word we use to
describe the municipality of Iqaluit's status. Just last week,
the Department of Community Government issued a 180-day notice
of the change, as required by the territorial Cities, Town's
and Villages Act.
What does it mean? Legally, very little. A change of status
from "town" to "city" would allow town councillors
to start calling themselves "aldermen," a semantic
distinction that is meaningless in Inuktitut, and these days
almost equally meaningless in English. But that's about it. The
change would not provide Iqaluit's municipal government with
any powers or responsibilities it does not already enjoy.
Symbolically, however, the change is loaded with significance.
The word "city" carries connotations of power and prestige
that we do not not normally associate with the humble word "town."
Cities are independendent and ever-expanding, rivalling the power
of states. Towns are modest, dependent entities, constrained
by narrow boundaries. That's why the capitals of nations, states
and provinces are called "cities" not towns. They are
the places where power resides, the seats of government.
So far, so good. It's normal and natural that the capital
of Nunavut should be called a "city." But in its current
state, is Iqaluit's municipal government really worthy of the
designation?
The best thing that can be said about the current Iqaluit
mayor, town council and senior administration is that they have
at least managed to avoid getting fired. That's a step up from
what the 1993 mayor and council accomplished during the infamous
"debenture debacle."
But the current town council, elected in the fall of 1997,
and its predecessor town council, elected in the fall of 1994,
have both failed to deal with the factors that lay at the roots
of Iqaluit's 1993 embarassment. Those factors are:
- weak and sometimes non-existent political leadership from
the mayor and council;
- incompetent, self-serving, and sometimes deceitful performances
from non-elected administrators.
On its worst days, the municipality of Iqaluit is one of Nunavut's
most dysfunctional organizations. But it doesn't have to be that
way.
First, the municipality should attach a full-time pay and
benefits package to the mayor's position. The mayor is supposed
to be the senior executive officer of the municipal corporation.
The mayor of a small, but rapidly growing capital city like Iqaluit
should therefore be paid at least as much as a member of the
legislative assembly.
This would attract better candidates for the mayor's position
at election time, and make it more attractive for educated people
to talke leaves-of absence from government jobs to run for mayor
of Iqaluit. The presence of a strong, well-paid, full-time mayor
would, in theory at least, provide some badly needed leadership
at the top.
Second, the municipality should create a ward system to strengthen
ties between elected councillors and the people they represent,
thereby improving accountability. Iqaluit has already been divided
into three constituencies for the purpose electing members to
the Nunavut legislative assembly. It should be just as easy to
divide the town into four wards for the purpose of electing city
councillors, each of which would elect two members to council,
for a total of eight. JB
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