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Editorial

March 7, 2003 - The worst job in Iqaluit
March 14, 2003 - Anawak gains new political life
March 21, 2003 - The dumbing down of Nunavut?
March 28, 2003 - The unseen powers behind the throne

March 7, 2003

The worst job in Iqaluit

If anyone were ever to hold a contest for "worst job in Iqaluit" there's one position that would surely be ranked as a leading contender: manager of the Iqaluit Housing Authority.

It's a job that's impossible to do without having to say "no" to hundreds of people who desperately want you to say "yes."

The waiting list for public housing units in Iqaluit usually contains between 70 and 100 names at any given time. The number of new units built each year — that is, when there's money to build them — is enough to fill only a tiny fraction of the real need. If you're the manager of the Iqaluit Housing Authority, you have no choice but to say no to scores of desperate people in genuine need of housing. That's no way to win a popularity contest.

Another unpleasant but necessary task is to oversee the eviction of tenants who cannot or will not pay back rent and damage charges, a process that often ends up in court. Throwing people onto the street, even if they're incorrigible deadbeats, is no way to win a popularity contest either. But it must be done to ensure the housing authority collects the rent money it needs to pay its bills every year.

Iqaluit is, perhaps, the most dysfunctional community in Nunavut, home to many of Nunavut's most dysfunctional people. So whoever runs the housing authority must also deal with the continual headache of maintaining a housing stock that's constantly being damaged by things like vandalism, arson and various forms of recreational mayhem.

It's a tough job, the kind of job that takes a special person to do well, and the kind of job that would be tough to fill it ever became vacant.

So why did the board — or former board — that oversaw the housing authority decide to fire the organization's manager for what, at the most, was a minor transgression?

We'll never know for sure, and perhaps it doesn't matter anyway. Perhaps the understandable stress of managing Iqaluit's public housing system at a time of dwindling supply and rising costs caused everyone to lose their perspective.

But one thing is certain. Kelvin Ng, the minister responsible for the Nunavut Housing Corp., had no choice but to remove the housing authority's board when they dismissed the housing authority manager for no apparent just cause. Wrongful dismissal lawsuits can produce very expensive settlements, and it would have been foolish to have exposed the cash-strapped Iqaluit Housing Authority to such a liability, and would have been contrary to the public interest.

Housing authority boards aren't elected anyway. They're appointed by the minister, and serve at his pleasure. The appointment of an interim board, and the impending appointment of a new permanent board really changes nothing as far as tenants and the larger community are concerned.

Before 1985, Iqaluit did have an elected housing association, like most other Nunavut communities. But it was a corrupt and ineffective organization, and the territorial minister ended up dissolving it and appointing a housing authority in its place. Since then, there's been no evidence that an elected housing association would work any better now than it did then.

Ng's exercise of ministerial authority was necessary and correct. It was a tough decision that may not have been popular with some people — but it was the right one.

JB

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March 14, 2003

Anawak gains new political life

When Paul Okalik and his supporters in the legislative assembly removed Jack Anawak from cabinet last week, they did more than any of Anawak’s closest friends could have done to ensure that the MLA for Rankin Inlet North will be a powerful political force after the next election.

As soon as Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo introduced his motion to remove Anawak from cabinet, Okalik and those who support him had no choice but to ensure that the motion passed. But in doing so, they gave Anawak a platform to talk about things that resonate deeply with Nunavummiut.

Sometimes Anawak’s positions are contradictory, and not always supported by concrete fact and detail. But in politics that doesn’t matter. In Nunavut politics, it’s emotion that usually matters, and Anawak’s appeal is aimed at all those who feel that, so far, Nunavut has not lived up to its promise. Right now, that likely includes the vast majority of Nunavummiut.

In his remarks in the house last Friday, Anawak didn’t even bother to talk about the issue that led him to defy cabinet and provoke Okalik into stripping him of the CLEY portfolio last month. That’s the proposed move of some petroleum products division jobs from Rankin Inlet to Baker Lake. Few other MLAs bothered to talk about it either.

Instead, he conducted a lengthy attack on the current government, saying that so far it’s given us "nothing better than the same old departments, directives, positions and processes and maintaining all the same systems that had always seems to be foreign to Inuit."

Anawak talked a lot about how Nunavummiut want a government that’s "new" and "different," but provided few specific examples to illustrate the alternative ways that he would prefer.

The term "Inuit Qaumjimajatuqangit" isn’t used in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, Nunavut Act or any of the other legal documents that gave life to the new territory. But in Nunavut’s electoral politics, that doesn’t matter anymore.

And the notion that government itself is alien to Inuit is still a big vote-getter in small communities.

Several of the MLAs who voted in support of Anawak last Friday have complained loudly and passionately about government itself.

"We have a government today that has so many laws and legislations that it is overwhelming. Even as individuals we are scared to express our feeling because of being afraid to break legislation or laws," Amittuq MLA Enoki Irqittuq said in a member’s statement earlier that day.

That, incidentally, was part of a much larger statement that attacked the "Canadian human rights law," and how it prevents Inuit from practicing their culture.

Another traditionalist MLA, David Iqaqrialu of Uqqumiut, said the same thing later on that day: "Whenever we say anything as Inuit, and when we’re talking about traditions and culture, we’re told that this is not the procedure. That’s how suppressed that we have been as Inuit by the government."

There is a deep reservoir of traditionalist, anti-government and anti-modernist feeling that resides within the hearts of many ordinary people in the small communities, especially middle-aged men who have seen their status eroded by social workers, teachers, police and numerous other government officials. It’s likely that many will respond to Anawak’s appeal in the next election.

But dissatisfaction with the new territory runs wider and deeper than that, and appears to range across ethnicity, age, class, gender, community and level of education. So it’s possible that the next territorial election will produce a group of MLAs who may be inclined to put Jack Anawak into the premier’s job.

Paul Okalik has already said that he plans to run again for the legislative assembly and contest the premiership. A few months ago he looked like a shoo-in.

Although it’s not what he intended when he acted against Anawak to preserve cabinet solidarity, Okalik is no shoo-in now.

JB

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March 21, 2003

The dumbing down of Nunavut?

The Government of Nunavut has endorsed a bold new way of evading reality.

On March 13, Peter Kilabuk, the minister of human resources, told MLAs that his department has hired two staff members to "review" and rewrite about 800 GN job descriptions.

The purpose is to make it easier for Inuit beneficiaries to get government jobs by removing what Kilabuk calls "artificial barriers in job descriptions." In plain words, the government wants to change its job descriptions by dumbing them down.

This dumbing-down scheme is aimed at helping the GN comply with Article 23 of the land claims agreement. That’s the section that says the territorial and federal governments must help Inuit get government jobs.

This is an immensely popular idea. Most of the public will support it, and so will most, if not all, MLAs. Many people have demanded it for years, and there’s no doubt that Kilabuk is expressing the will of the majority.

It’s also the wrong thing to do.

First, it removes yet another reason for young people to stay in school long enough to graduate, and to make the difficult move into either post-secondary vocational training or higher education.

Some of the "artificial barriers" Kilabuk referred to include various degrees, certificates and diplomas that you can get only by going to a training school, college or university. "Many of the current job descriptions being used within GN demand education and experience qualifications more suited to areas outside our system," he said in his minister’s statement last week.

Kilabuk is also the minister of education. He and his department’s employees routinely urge young people to stay in school until they graduate. Granted, schooling isn’t everything. The world is full of morons with master’s degrees and geniuses who never graduated from high school. And though Nunavut’s school system may indeed be the weakest in Canada, on balance, young people are still better off staying in it than dropping out.

But why bother? Most of the best-paid and perk-laden jobs in Nunavut are those offered by the territorial government. The GN now says that, in the future, you won’t need any schooling to get them.

So go ahead. Drop out. In the future, your government will reward your weakness of character by hiring you over all those boring drudges who worked and struggled to get the degrees and certificates the government says you don’t need any more.

Another reason this is the wrong thing to do is it doesn’t guarantee that the proportion of Inuit in the workforce will increase anyway.

After the government finishes dumbing down its job descriptions, many non-Inuit will also be able to take advantage of the government’s lower standards. Within the old Government of the Northwest Territories, more than a few non-aboriginal officials, possessing little more than high school diplomas, were able to rise to the commanding heights of the territorial civil service. They did this by taking advantage of in-service training and the application of "equivalencies" to formal education.

The same thing is likely to happen in Nunavut. When the bars are lowered, previously unqualified non-Inuit will be able to leap over them too, and the ethnic balance of the workforce will not change.

A third reason is this measure threatens to weaken the quality of public services in Nunavut. The GN’s services are only as good as the people who provide them. Lower employment standards mean lower job performance — at the end of the day, that means poor service for you.

In the health-care debates of last month, Premier Paul Okalik berated the federal government for failing to recognize the people of Nunavut deserve services equal to those enjoyed by other Canadians. He’s right, of course.

But that principle applies also to the GN. The GN has an obligation to provide its residents with services equal to those enjoyed by residents of every other territory and province. Can they do that by dumbing down their entrance requirements?

At the same time, there’s no doubt the proportion of Inuit within the territorial public service is falling, and governments must do something about it. Even if the legal requirements contained in Article 23 did not exist, governments would still have a strong obligation to help more Inuit get government jobs.

As of Dec. 31, 2002, there were 2,861 jobs within the GN’s departments and boards. Only 950 were held by beneficiaries, about 40 per cent of the total. That’s down from the 42 per cent recorded in March 2001. Non-beneficiaries held 1,401 jobs, while 510 positions lay vacant.

This means even in the extremely unlikely event that every remaining vacant job were to be filled by a beneficiary, the number of Inuit working for the Nunavut government would rise to only 1,460 — slightly more than 50 per cent of the total.

In Iqaluit, where a venomous stream of racial resentment bubbles just below the surface of everyday life, only 28 per cent of Nunavut government jobs in the community are held by Inuit beneficiaries, who make up 57 per cent of Iqaluit’s population.

So even the 50 per cent Inuit employment target agreed to by the three parties to the Nunavut accord in 1998 remains a virtually unreachable target. And the long-term goal of a workforce in which 82 per cent of the employees are Inuit remains a utopian fantasy.

But the answer does not lie in a dumbing down of the government’s job descriptions. That policy represents a surrender to the notion that the people of Nunavut will never be equal in ability to people from other parts of the world.

The answer lies in education, training and continuous social reform. Nunavut requires massive investments in basic adult upgrading, vocational training, and higher education, coupled with a reform of the K-12 school system, and backed by renewed efforts to combat substance abuse, youth crime, mental illness, and all the other things that cause Nunavut’s human potential to be consistently wasted.

JB

TOP

March 28, 2003

The unseen powers behind the throne

The legislative assembly’s recent decision to let the cabinet remain at seven members between now and the February 2004 election ought to have little or no impact on the workings of the Nunavut government.

The only question it raises is why MLAs decided to create an eight-member cabinet in the first place. If the legislature can function with a smaller cabinet over the next year, then why not after the next election? That’s a prospect regular members ought to welcome, since a smaller cabinet puts more votes, and therefore more power, into their hands.

Besides, this is a government in which an enormous amount of day-to-day administrative — and political — work is done quietly by those mostly unseen powers behind the throne, Nunavut’s deputy ministers.

A strong deputy minister can make a weak and inexperienced minister look good. Conversely, a weak deputy minister can cause no end of trouble for even a strong, experienced minister.

Given the relative inexperience of Nunavut’s cabinet — four of the seven are rookie MLAs — it’s essential that Nunavut maintain a strong cadre of deputy ministers and other senior managers.

After four years of turnover and occasional turmoil in which the Interim Commissioner’s original appointees have been either re-assigned, replaced or discarded, Nunavut’s senior executives are a more stable and competent group than they were four years ago.

As bureaucrats ought to be, they’re a discreet, self-effacing group. Non-elected officials are expected to keep their public profiles as low as possible, and allow their elected ministers to take credit for their work.

But in light of Premier Paul Okalik’s recent comments about the possibility of a cabinet shuffle, it’s worth taking a look at some of the relatively unknown people who actually run the GN.

• Anne Crawford, deputy minister of the executive and intergovernmental affairs:

As deputy minister of the executive, Crawford is the premier’s deputy minister. Her responsibilities include a major role in evaluating and directing other deputy ministers, and acting as secretary to cabinet. That makes her perhaps the most powerful non-elected official in the GN.

But great power often brings great vulnerabilities — those at the top of any organization often become special targets of exaggerated resentment and hostility. It may be unfair, but some MLAs, certain insiders, and other observers blame Crawford for many of the GN’s perceived shortcomings. Because of her close association with Okalik, their fortunes will rise and fall together.

On the other hand, the GN is a much stronger organization than it was in 1999, and Crawford deserves at least part of the credit for that.

• Bob Vardy, deputy minister of finance:

The department of finance is the only GN department to retain the senior managers it started with on April 1, 1999. That’s a sign that Vardy, along with assistant deputy minister Victor Tootoo, and assistant comptroller-general Rod Malcolm, have done an effective job running a difficult department. Yes, the Auditor-General of Canada found many shortcomings in the way Nunavut keeps its books — but it could have been a lot worse.

• Keith Best, acting deputy minister of health and social services:

The department of health and social services eats up deputy ministers the way a hungry polar bear eats up a den of motherless seal pups. But unlike most other departments, the elected minister, Ed Picco, has acted more or less as his own deputy minister, taking an aggressive, hands-on approach to the troubled, under-funded department. But Picco won’t be Nunavut’s health minister forever, and the question remains: Will the health department find a competent deputy minister who wants the job for good?

• Tom Rich, deputy minister of education:

The Education Act fiasco was a collective failure, so it would be unfair in the extreme to blame Tom Rich, or Minister Peter Kilabuk, for all of it. But human nature being what it is, it’s likely that blame-seeking fingers will point in their direction anyway. That means that if there are executive jobs to be shuffled around, the department of education may be where the shuffling starts.

• Pam Hine, President, Nunavut Housing Corporation:

Some insiders call her one of the GN’s "rising stars." Anyone who can breathe life into the under-funded housing corporation and find creative ways of doing more with less is an employee worth hanging on to.

• Ross Mrazek, deputy minister of public works and services:

Mrazek has stickhandled his department through some of the GN’s most difficult files over the past couple of years — the bad gas fiasco, the restructuring of Nunavut’s fuel and dry cargo resupply systems, and the awarding of many tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts without even the faintest whiff of corruption. At the same time, he’s provided ample help and protection for the GN’s newest and least experienced cabinet minister — Public Works Minister Peter Kattuk.

• John Walsh, deputy minister of community government and transportation:

Just this week, Baker Lake MLA Glen McLean was praising the direction that the community government department has taken under Walsh’s leadership, saying it is finally beginning to understand the needs of hamlet governments. Given the infrastructure woes suffered by most Nunavut municipalities, and the numerous vacant positions within the department, this shows that Walsh is performing well.

In addition to the people mentioned above, there are more than half a dozen deputy ministers and senior managers holding an equivalent rank who we don’t have room to mention. There’s also a large group of assistant deputy ministers.

Next February, the people of Nunavut may elect a strong group of new MLAs or they may elect a weak group. But whatever happens, there is now a relatively stable group of civil servants at the top, ready to provide continuity and stability to the administration of public services in Nunavut.

JB

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