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Editorial

October 4, 2002 - As usual, nothing for Nunavut
October 11, 2002 - "Promoting" Nunavut, you say?
October 18, 2002 - Government should withdraw Education Act
October 25, 2002 - The right person gets the prize

October 4, 2002

As usual, nothing for Nunavut

You can say one thing about the Chrétien government’s treatment of Nunavut — it’s consistent.

Since they came to power in 1993, the Chrétien Liberals have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to two principles: one, deprive the government of Nunavut of the means required to meet its people’s basic needs, and two, lie about it to the rest of the world.

This week’s throne speech continues their unbroken record of neglect. The only real difference from past efforts is that they’re putting less effort into lying about it.

For example, in the last throne speech, delivered on Jan. 30, 2001, the government said that it would "bring the benefits of our prosperity to all communities, whether urban, rural, Northern or remote.

"Too many continue to live in poverty without the tools they need to build a better future for themselves or their communities. As a country, we must be direct about the magnitude of the challenge and ambition in our commitment to tackle the most pressing problems facing aboriginal people."

Yes, some people in Nunavut and the other northern territories actually believed that this was a real promise, and not just a ruse intended to sustain a long-standing perception management campaign.

But by May of that year, DIAND Minister Bob Nault at a meeting of aboriginal affairs ministers in Winnipeg was already dodging questions about when the federal government would do what it promised only five months before. At a meeting a month later, Canada’s western premiers, including Nunavut premier Paul Okalik, formally complained about the federal government’s unfulfilled promises on aboriginal and northern issues.

You can hardly blame them. After all the January 2001 throne speech said the federal government would "ensure" that aboriginal people’s employment, health care, education, housing and infrastructure needs would be met.

"This commitment will be reflected in all the government’s priorities," were the words that Jean Chrétien’s speech-writers put into the mouth of Governor General Adrienne Clarkson back in 2001.

This time around, they put similar words into her mouth, words like these: "We can close the gap in life chances between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians."

When they wrote that, were they thinking, perhaps, of Nunavut’s life expectancy numbers? This week’s national health indicators report tells us that an infant born in Nunavut in 1999, the year of the territory’s creation, can expect to live at least 10 years less than an infant born just about anywhere else in Canada.

Or perhaps were they thinking of Nunavut’s rapidly escalating tuberculosis infection rates, which public health officials say are directly related to Nunavut’s ever-worsening housing crisis. That crisis, of course, has been caused by Ottawa’s callous refusal to reinvest in a northern social housing program, and by their boneheaded failure to ensure that the Nunavut government was supplied with enough staff housing for its new employees.

Whatever. This time around, there’s no danger that anyone will believe even those ambiguous parts of this week’s throne speech that might give some hope to the naive.

This time around, the federal government specified that any new efforts aimed at helping aboriginal and northern people will go toward First Nations people living on reserves. Its fiduciary responsibility for Inuit appears, in their minds, to have evaporated. The people of Nunavut now know that they are alone, and that their "federal partner" is content to stand idly by while Nunavut society continues to deteriorate.

Given all of this, its remarkable that Inuit leaders, such as Jose Kusugak, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, are able to remain so polite.

Kusugak may not have Jean Chrétien’s power to make government policy. But at least he has a better speech writer.

Here’s what Kusugak had to say, after hearing this week’s throne speech from a front-row seat in the red chamber:

"For Inuit, the first strike was the 2001 Throne Speech. Strike two was the last budget, and today’s speech is strike three. Send in the next batter."

To that, we dare add nothing.

JB

TOP

October 11, 2002

"Promoting" Nunavut, you say?

We don't doubt that many Nunavut residents will for the rest of their lives nurture fond memories of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Iqaluit last Friday.

By turning out in droves to see her, ordinary Iqaluit residents showed that the British monarchy still commands enormous respect in the eastern Arctic.

And it's safe to say that Nunavut residents instinctively understand the central function that the British monarch, as our head of state, still performs in our system of government. He or she confers legitimacy upon the democratic institutions, within which our elected representatives make law and run our government.

Her presence in Nunavut's legislative chamber, therefore, conferred symbolic legitimacy upon Canada's newest democratic institution - the Nunavut legislative assembly. The idea that a European aristocrat should become Canada's head of state as an inherited privilege may look like a hopelessly old-fashioned leftover from Canada's colonial days - and perhaps it is.

But having lived through the failures of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional accords, most thoughtful Canadians realize that changing our constitution to create a nationally elected head of state would be more trouble than it's worth - and probably impossible to accomplish without tearing the country apart.

So it's worth remembering that the Queen's tour through Canada this month in celebration of her 50th year as our monarch is a constitutional gesture - and that a lot of it is about her, not us.

However, that didn't stop a lot of local and regional leaders in Nunavut from portraying the royal visit as a chance to "promote" Nunavut to people around the world.

They should be careful about what they say, however, when they throw that term around. Used in that sense, the word "promote," in English, means "to sell." It means the act of putting a certain object or commodity on display to persuade others to buy it.

So "promoting" Nunavut literally means turning its land, culture and people, and their products, into commodities to be bought and sold. It means selling Nunavut the same way that commodities like beer, tampons and luxury cars are sold in television commercials.

Since Nunavut's economy badly needs more tourists, and more people willing to buy products made here, such as sealskin clothing, country food and art work, this kind of "promotion" is essential. But only if it's done right, and by people who know what they're doing.

nd, of course, the promotional message must somehow get through to the intended audience, and have a clear, specific purpose.

Judged by that standard, the Queen's visit was a lousy promotional event for Nunavut.

Contrary to what many believe, there was little international news coverage. In contrast to the April 1, 1999, celebrations in Iqaluit, there were no broadcasters or print reporters from the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark and so on.

The British Broadcasting Corporation did send a reporter to Iqaluit, but except for a photographer from Agence-France Presse, no other non-Canadian news organizations were represented here. And except for a few small articles that some American newspaper readers may have found in their daily papers, it's unlikely that anyone outside of Canada or the British Isles even heard of the Queen's Iqaluit visit.

So it's not true, as the CBC reported Iqaluit mayor John Matthews as saying earlier this week, that "people around the world were able to visit Nunavut by watching the royal visit on television." The truth is, most people around the world still don't know any more about Nunavut than they did before.

And the international coverage was so brief, and so inaccurate, it's unlikely that anyone who did see the event will remember much of any value anyway.

For example, the BBC posted a photograph on its Web site showing Premier Paul Okalik escorting the Queen to the sport-utility vehicle that she used on her Iqaluit visit.

The words underneath the picture said: "The Queen meets a local man wearing seal skins."

In a well-intentioned gesture aimed at promoting Nunavut seal products, Okalik wore an elaborately designed jacket made from pieces of dyed sealskin. Given his interest in opening the U.S. market to Nunavut seal products, it's understandable why he would turn himself into a human clothes-rack for the purpose of displaying such a product. It represents one of his major political priorities.

But it's unlikely that his message made it through all the background noise.

Another well-intentioned, but naive, attempt to "promote" Nunavut was a cultural event held at the Unikkarvik visitor's centre on Oct. 3, sponsored by the government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tourism. Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and her husband, John Ralston Saul, were among the invitees. Those who were allowed into the restricted event got to eat samples of country food prepared by a local caterer while they watched a sealskin fashion show and a drum-dancing demonstration.

Did the message get through to the intended audience? No, it didn't. The event received little news coverage in any media outside Nunavut. As an attempt to "promote" Nunavut, it was a total flop.

And why should it have been otherwise? Those few reporters who did make it to Iqaluit did so because their employers assigned them to cover the Queen - not to provide free advertising to Nunavut's various government-subsidized renewable resource enterprises.

So if there's a lesson to be learned from these experiences, it's that if Nunavut's land, people, culture and so on are to be commodified and put up for sale in a promotional event, then it should be done in a planned, targeted manner.

If that happens, Nunavut's producers might actually sell something to somebody some day.

JB

TOP

October 18, 2002

Government should withdraw Education Act

It’s time for the government of Nunavut to admit the obvious.

Bill 1, which if passed would become Nunavut’s new Education Act, is badly flawed. And it’s so badly flawed that its appears unlikely that departmental officials and MLAs will have enough time to fix it before Nunavut’s next territorial election, which almost certainly will be held about a year from now.

Nunavut’s commissioner of official languages, Eva Aariak, pointed out recently that the bill doesn’t provide any clear legal requirement for Inuktitut and Inuinaqtun to be taught in Nunavut’s schools. That, on its own, ought to make the education bill unacceptable to an overwhelming majority of Nunavut residents.

At the same time, Dyan Adam, Canada’s commissioner of official languages, along with lawyers representing Nunavut francophones, has said the bill may be illegal — because it violates education rights guaranteed to francophone minorities in the Charter of Rights.

On top of that, the bill contains governance provisions that appear to take various small powers and responsibilities away from Nunavut district education authorities — the current name for Nunavut’s elected school advisory committees — and give them to the minister of education.

For example, right now the Education Act allows district education authorities some leeway in deciding at what age children should start school. But the new bill would make school attendance mandatory for all children aged five to 18, no matter where they live.

So, at the lower end of the age scale, district education authorities lose a little bit of power. And at the other end of the age scale, the government may end up enshrining a well-intentioned unenforceable school attendance rule.

Like many of the issues that Bill 1 raises, the age-range at which children should be compelled to go to school is a legitimate political issue, and reasonable people may hold a variety of different opinions about it. Similarly, reasonable people can be expected to hold different opinions about whether local school committees should exercise more or less power, or if they even should exist at all.

But the Nunavut government’s long, confused process for developing the education bill has made little room for that kind of discussion. The government has been either unable or unwilling to communicate what’s in the bill, what makes it different than the current education law or why we need a new law in the first place.

And where the new bill differs from the current law, the government has done nothing to explain why those changes are in the bill, or even what purposes they’re intended to serve. The department of education has attempted to change a major piece of legislation without the benefit of a communications strategy, and without the benefit of a political strategy to win the support of the public — or the support of those MLAs whose votes will be needed to turn the bill into law.

When asked why Nunavut needs a new Education Act, the government usually responds with a shallow slogan — that we need a "made-in-Nunavut" act.

But why do we need a "made-in-Nunavut" Education Act? Right now, the government can’t answer that question — which probably explains why Bill 1 is such a weak and incoherent piece of legislation.

Until it can answer that question, it should withdraw the bill from consideration in the legislature, and not re-introduce it until after the next territorial election.

In the meantime, the education department should try to figure out what it wants the school system to do, then communicate that vision to the public and ensure that it’s reflected within a new Education Act. This is particularly important for Inuktitut-language education and literacy issues. Thoughtful Nunavut residents are getting tired of endless preaching about the sanctity of the Inuit language from a government that seems unable to find a way to either teach it or support it in new legislation.

JB

TOP

October 25, 2002

The right person gets the prize

There are many awards, honours and medals that governments and quasi-government organizations bestow upon those whose work has improved the quality of our lives.

Sometimes they go to the right people; sometimes they don’t.

When undeserving people win them, it’s usually because of some shallow political motive — such as an insincere desire to give token acknowledgment to an ignored group or a ploy aimed at elevating the reputation of a dysfunctional institution.

Last Friday, however, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson presented an award to someone who actually deserves one: Elisapie Ootoova of Pond Inlet. For this, the governor general and the committee that made the selection deserve our praise.

The award has an unwieldy title — "Governor General’s Awards in Commemoration of the Person’s Case" — and a simple purpose. The purpose is to honour people who have contributed to the equality of women. The "person’s case" refers to a famous decision made by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1929 that said women must be considered "persons" — as men always had been. The award was created in 1979, to mark the 50th anniversary of the person’s case.

In presenting this award, the governor general is reminding us that the real heros of Nunavut society aren’t necessarily among the small but highly visible clique of professional bigshots who are continually re-elected to the same positions year after year. Unlike many Nunavut award-winners, Elisapie Ootoova has never held high office, or wielded power as a member of a political organization or government.

But she has made bigger and more lasting contributions to the quality of our lives than many better-known public figures.

For example, her encyclopedia of traditional Inuit knowledge, published by Arctic College in 1990, uses the Inuktitut language to record her generation’s special knowledge on paper, before it is forgotten. It’s an important practical document — and an expression of cultural pride.

Another written work is her Inuktitut dictionary of the Tununirmiut dialect. In the English-speaking world, people who make dictionaries, such as the great Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century author of the first English dictionary, are revered as towering geniuses. Inuktitut dictionary-makers, who go through the same laborious process of recording and defining words, deserve the same kind of recognition, and it’s refreshing for someone to get it.

Ootoova has also contributed to the health of her community and to improving the lives of women and their families through the work that she has done in organizing counselling groups for victims of spousal assault and child sexual abuse.

Though she may not own a bachelor of education degree, or any other such piece of paper, Ootoova deserves the title "teacher" more than many of those who actually practise teaching as a paid profession within the school system.

We’re sure our readers will agree that it’s a pleasure to see the right person get the right award. To Elisapie Ootoova, we offer our unreserved, and unabashed, congratulations.

JB

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