April 25, 2008
Non-profit societies face big hurdles
SANDRA OMIK
Special to Nunatsiaq News
I've read with interest the recent news of the YWCA considering having a women's shelter for Iqaluit.
Digressing from this possible good news, I have been wanting, for quite some time now, to point out another underlying problem for those non-profit societal organizations in Iqaluit and Nunavut that provide philanthropic services, such as the women's shelter or the homeless shelter.
The difficulty is that it is quite hard to understand the administrative aspects of maintaining a society.
The registration and filing of official documents at Nunavut Legal Registries according to the territorial Societies Act requires that a society follow certain minimum operating requirements, such as having a registered office and adopting a certain minimum number of bylaws.
This registration requirement is often confused with obtaining charitable status under the Income Tax Act, which is a federal responsibility. A society must register itself with Revenue Canada to receive certain tax exemptions. This process is separate from the Societies Act and subjects the society to different rules and obligations.
Often societies have to hire employees. This requires knowledge of the Income Tax Act for the tax obligations that the society as an employer is liable for, such as deducting taxes, employment insurance premiums and Canada Pension Plan premiums and obtaining Workers Compensation Board certificates for safety.
Societies are subject to Nunavut's Human Rights Act and the Labour Standards Act, laws that govern employer-employee conduct and set minimum standards.
It is not often understood how well these laws are applicable to societies. Once a society is registered, it must be able to find funds to maintain itself as well as provide money for its philanthropic activities. Budgeting itself is a daunting task, requiring expertise in fundraising, making projections, estimating operational costs, knowing about audits and annual filing deadlines, as well as what rules should be followed to legitimize the spending of money, such as money received from contribution agreements.
This is apart from knowing how to obtain banking services for a society, or understanding municipal rules for raising funds through bingos or lottery tickets, or any insurance requirements.
The YWCA and the Salvation Army have been more successful in Iqaluit because they are in a better position to operate and organize philanthropic services, acquired from years of expertise and knowledge in maintaining their non-profit organizations. They are also organized into chapters, where they are able to obtain guidance from their extensive national networks.
In the past, there has been quite a bit of name-calling and mud-slinging in the media between the general public, the societies, or funding contributors with respect to Iqaluit or Nunavut societies. This may or may not be legitimate. I don't know.
But aside from all that, it often made me wonder, because non-profit society organization is an enormous task that only a few dedicated volunteers have the time to do. They have to read and understand English-only forms, procedures, rules, deadlines, and different legislative requirements, on top of attending meetings.
One of the reasons a society often ends up in difficulty is the lack of administrative and organizational support.
Societies are run by volunteer directors who are elected annually, which may result in high turnover rates for directors and a loss of consistent organization. That's aside from difficulties in retaining or attracting competent administrative workers or being able to hire one of the few scarce accountants in Nunavut to keep track of their budgets, or lawyers to obtain opinions on charitable status, tax exemptions, employee tax implications or employee and human rights laws.
Too often, only a handful of volunteers end up dedicating time and energy to a society, which creates burnout and the inability to follow up on compliance procedures or budgeting tasks. In the end, it seems circumstances beyond the control of any particular individual or agency usually contribute to the difficulties that a society faces.
I myself became a member of a Nunavut society, and my account stems from my personal trials and errors and not from my capacity as a lawyer with knowledge in this area.
I suggest that a solution for understanding how to organize a society would be to provide a comprehensive guide that provides explanations for the concepts behind each regulatory scheme and how to go about meeting their requirements.
I wouldn't know who to suggest though, because societies are not under any particular authority. Even though societies are regulated to comply with different schemes or are heavily funded by government, they are essentially autonomous and self-made.
I suppose I could set up a society called "How to set up and maintain a society" and then provide courses and seminars, but I don't have the luxury of time to volunteer as a director.
I hope I have not dissuaded anyone from becoming a volunteer member of any society in Nunavut. Once properly constructed, societies can do philanthropic wonders.
I should know. I was able to become a lawyer as a result of the Akitsiraq Law School Society - a group of Iqaluit volunteers - and not from a government agency or program.
April 18, 2008
The little accord that wasn’t
As many readers may know already, Paul Martin, the former prime minister, is still engaged in a one-man crusade to reinstate a set of political promises issued on Nov. 24 and Nov. 25, 2005 by the Liberal government that he once ran.
Those promises - announced during a two-day meeting of federal, provincial and territorial premiers in Kelowna, B.C. - are contained in a 19-page press release entitled "Strengthening Relationships and Closing the Gap."
Many people now refer to that press release as the "Kelowna accord," a term that came into use about a month or so later.
Whatever you want to call it, the Kelowna press release appeared to contain good news for many aboriginal people in Canada. In it, Martin's government promised to spend $5.1 billion in new money over 10 years, mostly to improve aboriginal health and education, as well as political relationships between governments and aboriginal organizations.
Some of that money would have been given to provincial and territorial governments and some of it would have been given to national aboriginal organizations, whose leaders were part of the consensus. As we all know, many of those promises fell by the wayside when Martin's government was replaced by Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
But Martin, now a regular member of parliament, is still plugging away at a campaign aimed at embarrassing the Tories into carrying out his defeated government's Kelowna plan.
In 2006, Martin introduced a private members' bill called "An act to implement the Kelowna Accord." The House of Commons recently passed that bill, which now sits before the Senate, dominated by Martin's Liberal party. It's but guaranteed that some time soon, Martin's bill will become law.
This doesn't mean much, actually. Under parliamentary rules, a private members' bill may not be used to authorize the spending of public money.
However, Martin's bill has attracted a fair bit of news coverage and has helped to sustain public interest in the promises that Martin's government made at the Kelowna gathering.
The use of the word "accord," incidentally, implies a signed, binding agreement. But there was no signed contract or agreement. It was just a set of political promises from a Liberal government that went down to defeat soon after making them. No document called the "Kelowna accord" ever actually existed.
Nevertheless, it's worth taking one last look at what the so-called Kelowna accord actually was and what it was not, including what it could have meant for Nunavut.
For Nunavut, only one clear, worthwhile measure emerged from the Kelowna gathering: a promise to give the three territorial governments $300 million worth of new social housing.
But even that announcement was shrouded in confusion. Officials with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami declared soon afterwards that Inuit would get 1200 housing units. However, when Premier Paul Okalik arrived back in Nunavut that week, he couldn't say how many new units Nunavut would get. That's because details were to be worked out later.
Fortunately, Stephen Harper's new government did honour that particular promise. In their first budget, they re-announced the $300-million territorial housing commitment, $200 million of which went to Nunavut.
But as everyone knows, Nunavut will get about 725 units, not 1200. Strictly speaking, this never was an "aboriginal" measure. It was public government money, intended for social housing that's allocated according to need and income, not ethnicity, even in Nunavut, where most but not all social housing tenants are Inuit.
This illustrates the biggest problem with Paul Martin's honourable and well-intentioned Kelowna spending promises: the absence of detail. Given his rhetorical commitment to "clear goals" and "measurable targets," this is a cruel irony.
At the Kelowna gathering, Martin's government also promised to spend large new sums of money on aboriginal education and health, much of it in co-operation with provincial and territorial governments. That included $1.8 billion in new spending aimed at bringing schools on First Nations reserves up to the same standard as schools run by provincial governments- a worthy goal, but irrelevant for Nunavut and the other Inuit regions in Canada.
There did, however, appear to be some money that could have been distributed to the territories, including Nunavut, for aboriginal education. But we'll never know how much, because there were no detailed answers to questions about how such money would be divided up among provincial and territorial governments.
In the same, there appeared to be some new money in Martin's plan that could have been distributed to the territories for health care. Again, we'll never know how much because the details just weren't there.
Given how little Nunavut, with its tiny population, gets from federal spending programs that are distributed on a per capita basis, it's always wise to be wary of big federal funding announcements, including those made at the Kelowna gathering.
To be fair it's likely that many of those details would have been filled if Paul Martin's Liberals were re-elected. But they weren't and we'll never know for sure. For that reason, territorial government and Inuit leaders would be wise to stop grieving for the dead myth of the Kelowna accord.
There's still a rational case to be made for more federal spending on infrastructure, health, education and housing. That's what northern leaders must work on now. JB
April 11, 2008
DFO’s whale research debacle
We don't know if the marine biologists who work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are blushing yet - but they should be.
That's because, this past March, they unveiled a fresh set of bowhead whale population estimates to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board that may reveal one of the worst wildlife research fiascos in recent memory.
As many readers know, DFO officials insisted for decades that eastern Arctic bowhead stocks stood on the brink of extermination, about as endangered as any endangered species can possibly get short of outright extinction.
In 1996, for example, DFO biologists supplied the wildlife management board with an estimate claiming an eastern Arctic bowhead population of 345 animals. The board used this figure to set the total allowable harvest that's been in effect ever since - about one whale every two years.
Even after the publication in the year 2000 of the NWMB's Inuit bowhead knowledge study, based on interviews with 252 Nunavut hunters and elders, DFO's approach did not change. Though the traditional knowledge study suggested that bowhead whales were thriving in the eastern Arctic, DFO essentially ignored its findings.
There's evidence that they did so even after new information from the department's own aerial surveys, done between 2002 and 2004, confirmed that Inuit hunters were right.
But in 2004, a DFO press release announcing a conservation strategy and 100-year "recovery" plan for eastern Arctic bowheads, the department had this to say:
"Recovery is expected to be slow because their reproductive rate is relatively low compared with other mammals."
And late as 2005, DFO told the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, the body known by the acronym "COSEWIC," that the Davis Strait-Baffin Bay bowhead population stood at only 3,000 animals, while the Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin population stood at only 300.
What a difference four years makes. After analyzing all the data gathered in its aerial surveys, DFO scientists now say the eastern Arctic bowhead population may be fully recovered - about 100 years ahead of schedule.
No, we're not making this up. DFO scientists, in documents tabled before the NWMB this past March, say at least 14,400 bowhead whales now swim happily throughout the bountiful waters of the eastern Arctic - and that after more analysis, that estimate could rise to 43,105, a figure that's about 15 times greater than the 2005 estimate.
This means that in the eastern Arctic, bowhead whales are now as plentiful as they were before commercial whaling began in the late 18th century. Under the wildlife provisions set out in Article 5 of the Nunavut land claims agreement, this might mean that no state-imposed harvesting quota is justified.
Is it any wonder that Inuit don't trust scientists? With a track record like that, even scientists shouldn't trust scientists.
To be fair, there are no absolute truths in science. Science is about skepticism, continual revision and keeping an open mind. It's not unusual for old theories to be refreshed and updated in the light of new and more accurate observations. And all wildlife population estimates are based on probabilities, not certainties.
But these new revelations suggest that the science produced by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on bowhead whale numbers has been dead wrong for at least 30 years.
The only wildlife research failure that may be worse than this occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Canadian Wildlife Service grossly underestimated the size of the Kivalliq region's caribou population. Older readers will remember when, in 1980, caribou biologists declared that the population of the Qamanirjuaq caribou herd stood at only 36,000 animals. They ignored the observations of Inuit hunters and proposed a punitive system of harvesting quotas.
In 1982, new surveys revealed that the old numbers were wrong. To add to the embarrassment, the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories passed a motion reprimanding the wildlife biologists who conducted the wildly inaccurate caribou surveys of the 1970s.
That's what happens when scientists combine sloppy research with contempt for aboriginal knowledge: bad science that leads to a loss of faith in the credibility of scientists.
But when wildlife biologists do give credence to aboriginal hunters, they expand the range of observations from which valid inferences may be drawn. Taking the time to talk to people who spend their entire lives observing animals isn't just a convenient political gesture. Enlightened biologists will tell that it's a common-sense practice that can only lead to better science, not to mention harvesting policies that may be legally justified.
In any event, the bowhead population research debacle will surely produce far-reaching consequences. Inuit hunters are now likely to question scientific assessments of other marine mammal populations, such as beluga and polar bears. This, in turn, may lead to greater resistance against government-imposed harvesting restrictions
In Nunavik, for example, beluga hunters in five communities have either been charged or threatened with the seizure of their hunting equipment, part of an intractable, longstanding dispute between hunters and DFO officials.
We don't know enough about this issue to judge who's right and who's wrong. But most Nunavik hunters don't believe DFO's beluga population numbers and they insist that the department's actions violate their aboriginal right to hunt. Given DFO's record on bowhead research, you can't blame them. JB
April 4, 2008
The assembly’s pre-election delusions
After passing their goody-laden pre-election budget last month, Nunavut MLAs must have been feeling pretty good about themselves when the house rose March 14 for a break that will last until May 22.
After all, various MLAs jump-started their re-election campaigns by voting to spend public money on a rather interesting list of pet community projects. Finance Minister Louis Tapardjuk's budget speech was supposed to be about operations and maintenance spending, not capital projects, which are supposed to be dealt with in the fall. But new capital spending items ranked among this budget's juiciest highlights.
For example, Sanikiluaq and Qikiqtarjuaq will get new schools. Repulse Bay and Arctic Bay will get new health centres. Cambridge Bay will get an expanded airport. Arviat will get a new runway lighting system. The Government of Nunavut's 2008-09 operations budget appears to contain as many new capital items as its actual capital budget. And behind each one, there's an MLA sticking out his chest and shouting "vote for me this October."
Don't forget the Iqaluit West MLA and premier, Paul Okalik. John Baird, the federal environment minister, injected a big dose of Viagra into Okalik's flaccid re-election prospects earlier last February, in the form of a $1.6 million handout to build a bridge across the Sylvia Grinnell River.
And should Okalik decide to go back home to Pangnirtung this fall and contest that seat instead of Iqaluit West, he's still covered, because he can claim credit for the $8 million port that Ottawa will pay for there.
Nunavut MLAs obviously believe that Nunavut voters are easy marks. Maybe they're right.
But if they think they're leaving the territorial government in good shape in advance of the Oct. 27 election, they're deluding themselves.
Delusion number one is financial. The budget that MLAs voted for last month projects a tiny surplus of $4.5 million, with the GN expecting to spend about $1.16 billion while receiving about the same amount in revenues.
But three big pieces of impending legislation threaten to blow a big hole in the middle of that break-even budget. The new Education Act, if passed, will require another $14 million a year. And the two new language laws, if passed, would raise spending by $12 to $15 million a year.
That adds up to $30 million in new spending not accounted for in the recently passed budget. And even if these new laws aren't implemented until the 2009-10, it means MLAs are about to impose a big new burden on a legislative assembly and government that has yet to be elected.
At the same time, the GN must find a way of paying for a new collective agreement with the Nunavut Employees Union. In this year's budget, they've set aside about $80 million for unanticipated contingencies, which ought to cover them in the short term.
But it's clear that GN wage scales are not competitive with other jurisdictions, and in future years the GN will be forced to pay its workers much more than they pay them now. Our prediction? In future years, the GN will either post big deficits or impose unpopular spending cuts.
Delusion number two is social. Nunavut is in the grip of a worsening social crisis, as revealed by numerous incidents of mindless gun violence and other forms of mayhem, driven by poverty, ignorance, uncontrolled boozing and the proliferation of new addictions to crack cocaine and crystal meth. MLAs have responded to all this by sitting around with their thumbs stuck up their rear ends. Our prediction? More people will die for no reason and no one in authority will care.
Delusion number three is administrative. The GN, at only 77 per cent of strength, does not employ enough people to serve the public and many employees who do work there don't know what they're doing.
The Nunavut Business Credit Corp. fiasco revealed that the Department of Economic Development is a black hole of incompetence and mendacity. The GN's own employment statistics reveal that the Department of Finance, the department that holds the entire administration together, is dangerously understaffed, with 49 vacancies in Iqaluit alone.
Overall, 839 GN jobs lie vacant, while 2,932 jobs are filled. But the situation is even worse than what those numbers seem to say. Of the filled positions, a whopping 1,197 are occupied by casual workers, 70 per cent of whom are Inuit. It's clear that the GN is using casual employees, who enjoy little job security and fewer benefits than full-time workers, to fluff up its inflated Inuit employment numbers.
What's worse, in the latest collective agreement talks, GN negotiators propose to strip many casual workers of the benefits that they do enjoy right now. Since more than half of all Inuit who work for the GN are casuals, this represent a direct attack on the Inuit component of the GN's workforce.
The Department of Health and Social Services is the most dangerously understaffed of all GN units, at only 66 per cent of strength, making a mockery out of the GN's grandiose "Care Closer to Home" scheme.
As every one knows, the three health centres upon which that strategy is based - built at a cost of at least $90 million - sit mostly empty, while thousands of patients continue to be flown to southern centres. MLAs spend a lot of time whining about patient travel costs and all the inevitable patient travel screw-ups, but since 2004 they've had little to say about the root causes of ill-health in Nunavut. Our prediction? Nunavut's health care crisis will get worse.
Will the quality of government improve after this fall's election? Well, one can always hope. It's virtuous to be hopeful. But we see no reason why the next assembly will be any better than this one. Be prepared for more of the same. JB
