April 11, 2008
Does Ottawa’s northern focus look backwards?
MARY SIMON
Prime Minister Harper visited Yellowknife last month at the opening of the Arctic Winter Games. Later in the month he visited Kuujjuaq, his sixth trip to the North as prime minister, to announce that the Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement will take effect in May or June.
The prime minister is to be congratulated for spending so much time in the Arctic. His interest in the northern part of Canada is no doubt genuine and justified.
Newspapers and magazines around the world are awash in unprecedented coverage of the circumpolar world. News stories range from the rapid shrinkage of multi-year sea ice, to speculation about new sea routes from East Asia to Europe, to a new European Union report suggesting that global warming in the Arctic may create new security issues for Europe, such as energy wars, mass migration, failed states and political radicalization.
But while the federal government's attention to the Arctic may be genuine, it is eerily backwards-looking in its focus. Speeches and interviews by ministers have a Diefenbaker era "roads to resources" tone to them. There appears to be a central assumption that a massive expansion in large-scale mineral and oil and gas extraction projects should drive everything else; that helping Canada become a mineral and energy "superpower" should be the North's new vocation; that the state should get out of the way by reducing regulatory controls; that the trickle-down effects of new wealth creation can be relied upon to help the poor.
The Arctic has the country's worst housing, health and education indicators. This cannot be allowed to continue. Notwithstanding last October's Throne Speech promise of "an integrated northern strategy", a quick review of the recent federal budget shows where the federal government priorities rest at the moment: sizeable new funding for mineral development alongside earlier big ticket commitments to military facilities and hardware, with a "hold-the-line" approach to endemic social problems.
In this backwards-looking focus, the aboriginal realities of the Arctic - our demographic majority, our aboriginal and treaty rights, our distinct languages and cultures - are effectively pushed out of sight.
Public pronouncements on northern policy priorities rarely mention Inuit and other aboriginal peoples, and, when they do, the references are footnotes and afterthoughts. The views and suggestions of representative aboriginal organizations are sidelined. The Auditor-General's repeated criticisms that northern land claims agreements are not being implemented properly by the Crown are left unanswered. Former B.C. Supreme Court Justice Thomas Berger's comprehensive 2006 report, "The Nunavut Project," is put on a shelf.
There is a core fallacy that threatens to take hold at the heart of the federal government's emerging northern and Arctic policies: that the top third of Canada can be managed and developed as if its aboriginal history, demography, and its aboriginal values and character, are peripheral and transitional. Policies built around such a misleading notion will be unsound in concept and unsustainable in practice.
The "integrated northern strategy" promised in last year's Throne Speech is, at least notionally, still under construction. There is now an opportunity to get things rights. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has taken the initiative in developing a proposal for an Arctic strategy, and sent it to the Prime Minister two months ago. It is built around a careful selection of key themes, including:
Creating economic and environmental win-wins
Treating economic and environmental policy choices as mutually exclusive is debunked by experience everywhere on the planet. Leaving large parts of the population mired in intractable social problems is as poor a long-term economic decision as it is an affront to collective conscience and citizenship. Further, too much Arctic policy-making has been a function of short-term thinking and strategies that change with changes in government.
Respecting cultural distinctiveness
The Arctic is at least as distinctive a region as any other part of Canada. There are no factors that can be recited in support of Quebec as a nation that cannot be recited for Inuit Nunaat, the four regions that make up our Inuit homeland. Federal policies should work with Inuit cultural reality, not deny it. It is not acceptable, for example, to create and fund school systems that give full respect to English and French language minorities while treating the Inuit language of the majority as doomed to oblivion.
Relying on the home team on home turf
Federalism belongs to all of us: the front line role of managing the Canadian Arctic should be entrusted to the peoples of the Canadian Arctic.
Arctic foreign and domestic policy
The Arctic will always be a high cost area. Public investments need to be chosen carefully so as to enhance both the state of civil society in the Arctic as well as international objectives in relation to sovereignty and security. Our starting goal should be the defusing of international tensions, the creation of institutions and processes that enhance cooperation on environmental protection and navigation, and the search for collective wins.
Getting the geography right
Past federal government definitions have been, quite literally, all over the map. Confusion abounds. We need a clear and complete geographic definition that unites all the arctic regions, including Arctic Quebec, Arctic Labrador, and the huge marine areas around the Arctic Archipelago.
As always, the Inuit of Canada invite the Government of Canada and fellow Canadians to work with us. In reaching out to Canadians I have seen ready support for Inuit priorities in the faces and comments of the people I have been meeting. It is a positive development that the Arctic is finally occupying the place it deserves in the minds of political leaders, but the cliché of the "the Great White North" must give way to an Arctic strategy that builds from the ground up.
The Inuit and other northern aboriginal peoples will prove willing and constructive partners in the governance of Canada's part of the circumpolar world. They also promise to be equally committed opponents of anything that falls short of genuine partnership.
October 12, 2007
Why I support an AEC for Cambridge Bay
VICKI AITAOK
I support an Alcohol Education Committee, or "AEC," for Cambridge Bay because I want to make it as hard as possible for bootleggers to stay in business.
An AEC for Cambridge Bay won't have any negative impacts on the community in any way. It won't get in the way of the social drinker by stopping him or her from getting his or her weekly bottles. It won't stop the Elks and other special users from getting their permits for fundraising activities and functions. However, it will put the crunch on the bootleggers.
I am realistic and I understand that having an AEC won't stop bootlegging completely; however, it will make it harder for bootleggers and that is a 100 per cent improvement from the way it is right now. With an AEC, people will no longer be able to order obscene quantities of liquor every week for the sole purpose of selling it door-to-door to the addicted.
Some people say that the bootleggers will go "underground" if there is an AEC. So what?
They are illegal and already underground so that is not a valid argument. Some people say that the price of a bootleg bottle will go up if there is an AEC, and again, that is not a valid reason to not have an AEC.
What is a valid reason is that the quantity of alcohol that the bootlegger will have access to will be greatly reduced by having an AEC. Undoubtedly the AEC will not approve one person ordering 20-plus bottles of alcohol per week, as this amount is not needed for personal consumption but is a sign of someone reselling it.
Sure, the bootleggers can fly down to Yellowknife every week and sneak alcohol back in their luggage, but that already likely happens with or without an AEC. Sure, they can have friends ship up booze in boxes and-or action packers labeled as food; but that already happens too. Having an AEC will hit the bootleggers where it will have the most impact - at home.
In my personal opinion, bootleggers are the scum of the earth. These people do not care about their community, they don't care about people, and they care only about preying on the weaknesses of their friends. Yes, bootleggers hurt their friends. If they had no "friends," bootleggers would not exist.
Bootleggers don't sit at home and wait for people to come to buy a bottle from them; they go door to door to their addicted "friends." They taunt the people wanting to stop drinking by flaunting alcohol in their face at all hours of the night. They make it very very easy for people to fall off the wagon.
Bootleggers drive around and "drop-in" at card games and homes so they can make a sale. They know all the tricks. Bootleggers show up at people's homes the day of graduation from an alcohol treatment program to show their support as a "friend."
Imagine if the only way you could get alcohol in Cambridge Bay was through the legal import permit system. Imagine if we all had to plan in advance to get our bottle legally. Imagine if each person could bring in a limited number of bottles per week that is a single digit number.
Would there be less drinking in the community? Probably not. Would there be less excessive drinking? Probably.
And that is an excellent start to a serious problem. I support having an AEC in Cambridge Bay.
September 28, 2007
No leadership for Nunavik’s children?
CAROLINE ANAWAK
I am deeply disturbed to read both the Quebec Human Rights Commission's report on the state of Nunavik's children and observe the rather unbelievably overdue and very sudden interest of the key Nunavik leaders, who now admit something might be wrong.
How did this happen, outsiders may ask? How did things get this bad in Nunavik?
The answers are obvious to all those in the know.
The Inuit leadership, in their key positions in Nunavik, always focused on other areas, chasing after buying airlines, building breakwaters, conducting image campaigns telling everyone how well Nunavik was doing, designing fashions, pandering to tourists, scoping out the next business project, chasing after more rights and more cash and more opportunities - all the easy, black and white stuff that would make everything look so much better than it ever was.
You let everything else run down and become totally dysfunctional for those communities who elected you.
The elders, in frequent meetings within Nunavik communities, have continued to speak with anger and outrage about their concern that they have been shut out, shut down or shut off, as they watch their children sink like stones. Meanwhile, you were completely consumed with all your money-making projects.
It really irks me that when the non-Inuit Quebec politicians, whom you would like to wrest control from, actually show more sincere shock and concern than you ever did, that suddenly, you say you notice that something is wrong.
Are you even up to speed on what is so wrong or will you now require endless briefings and homework to find out how your own people are really doing?
Turning your back on the real issues for so long while the Quebec government had to be the honest one and call a spade a spade and do something, says a lot about where your heads are at.
Still too busy searching for your next deal?
I am ashamed of all of you, well-paid, high profile, well-known people, who were too misguided and so out of focus that you did that to your own people.
I worry about government being put in your hands and what your priorities are going to be. Airlines? Business deals, caring more about the tourists? Endless meetings and photo ops?
More than 160 suicides occurred right under your noses over the past 10 years! Broken families, broken spirits, molested children everywhere, murders, rapes, spousal violence, drugs becoming common everywhere, poverty, marginalization, all forms of trauma and crisis, stand-offs, addiction, and sexual assaults - and you don't get worked up about this?
Just too distracted by your own pet interests and pursuits? Travel schedule too busy?
Can you finally get your head on straight about what you have done, be honest enough to admit it to the people and vow never, ever, to get so badly off-track with them again? Which is it going to be?
The people need you to prioritize social issues as the absolute number one focus in Nunavik, and not slough it off on another group or organization.
If not, you better resign quickly and get out before you get voted out by a far more credible, capable, sincere and realistic group with the ethics and the staying power to clean up the mess.
So, what's it going to be leaders?
September 21, 2007
Health survey should measure toxins
Burning garbage releases poisonous chemicals into the air our children breathe. Yet the practice persists in Nunavut. Why aren't the territorial and federal governments enforcing safe air quality?
NEDD KENNEY
When the coast guard ship Amundsen arrived last week in Pangnirtung for the Nunavut Inuit Health Survey, researchers did an admirable job to understand the health status of community residents, but they did not get the full picture.
Inuit children under five years of age were not tested for the range of toxic contaminants spewing into Pangnirtung fiord from the regular dump burns. They were only tested for mercury levels.
This leaves Inuit parents in the dark as to the levels of serious toxins their children are being contaminated with, and may logically result in life-altering health complications. There is a pathetic contradiction in all of this.
Dump burning releases a range of extremely dangerous toxins like PCBE, dioxins and furans which are proven to be fat-seeking and bio-magnifying. Children under five years of age absorb the kind of fat-seeking toxins at a rate much faster than adults or older children because their bodies are rapidly accumulating fat cells in their expanding brains, organs and body tissue.
That's bad news for the kids, but not new news for the rest of us.
Northerners were informed of the link between carcinogenic PCBEs and "local burning of garbage" in the 2003 edition of the Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment Report II. Anyone can find ample evidence of the scientifically proven dangers of open garbage burning on the Internet.
The pathetic part is that a Government of Nunavut environment health officer told Nunavummiut via CBC radio in August that there was no great long term risk from exposure to dump smoke.
The federal and territorial governments share responsibility for enforcing safe air quality in Nunavut. Environment Canada is too under-funded and under-staffed to uphold its federal responsibility for air quality control, and apparently the GN cannot meet its enforcement responsibility either, due to capacity issues.
No wonder the GN environmental health officer is minimizing the risk: if people connected the known science to the reality, somebody would have to be accountable for poisoning the children or actually make the infrastructure investment so Panniqtummiut could appropriately manage their waste.
But without air quality testing in the community, there is no baseline data, and without testing the children under five, there is no accurate human health baseline data. Without data, how could there be a problem? No funding, no monitoring, no control, no enforcement, no problem. The lack of federal investment in Nunavut communities is a disgrace.
Unfortunately, the Nunavut Inuit Health Survey will provide only a partial perspective on Inuit health; it will not reveal the truth about the impact of contamination in their children's bodies from the ongoing policy of open dump burning.
If the ship arrived in Pangnirtung on Sept. 4 amid the clouds of particulate matter from the dump fire, researchers could have had the unique experience of being participant observers in the deterioration of Inuit children's health. In this regard, the Nunavut Inuit Health Survey missed the boat.
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August 10, 2007
Education and the prime minister’s visit
JEETEETA MERKOSAK, CHAIRPERSON, COALITION OF NUNAVUT DEAS
This month Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit Nunavut to discuss issues of sovereignty, deep water ports and the control over our natural resources (devolution.)
As representatives of parents in Nunavut, and the 75 per cent or more of our children who will not graduate from Grade 12, we hope that discussions between our premier and the prime minister on devolution quickly turn to the need to transform our education system. There is not a single province or territory in Canada who have developed their natural resources without ensuring that their school system is working and graduating the future work force.
As parents, we have been watching to see if the transformation of our school system is given the same level of political importance as devolution. Credible observers have remarked that more attention needs to be paid to our school system.
In the last year, Thomas Berger and federal representative Paul Mayer both observed that Nunavut's schools cannot produce sufficient graduates to meet the demand of the present government or the additional jobs that would be created by devolution.
It is not enough to defend our school system with statements about record numbers of Inuit graduating from our high schools. Yes, we are immensely proud when we see our children graduate, but not nearly enough make it through Grade 10, let alone Grade 12.
In fact, there is reason to believe that our rate of graduation has actually stalled. In a 2005 report by the Iqaluit District Education Authority, they noted that while there are more graduates there are also more children enrolled in our system, so the rate of graduation has not increased.
The Government of Canada is certainly familiar with the challenge of transforming education systems. The federal government funds First Nations education. Jim Prentice, the minister of Indian affairs and northern development, will undoubtedly recognize the challenge that Nunavut faces with graduating more of our children, as his department has been collaborating with First Nations schools boards for years in developing innovative programing.
According to Statistics Canada, the average graduation rate of aboriginal students across the country today is 54 per cent compared to Nunavut's 25 per cent.
And herein lies one of the issues that parents feel needs serious re-examination in the life of our young government. In 2000, our Government eliminated regional boards of education and with this decision abolished local governance of the schools. In a stroke, what had been working as an Inuit way of governance of our schools, with decisions made by a council of parents, disappeared for a system where most decisions on schools are made by bureaucrats working outside of our communities.
Parents don't want just an advisory role in running our schools.
Local governance and regional boards matter because it enables and motivates parents and communities to care about the results in their schools. It encourages parents to ensure that instruction will be in the Inuit language and that the schools reflect our Inuit culture. Parents, through elected boards, employ and hold accountable the superintendents, teachers and principals and hold boards accountable for their results.
Local control is the principle underlying the education system in every province and territory in Canada and it became the policy of the federal government in 1971. If local control is the principle being argued for with devolution, why does the same principle not apply to our schools?
We believe that our prime minister would like to be part of a positive schooling experience in Canada's north. There are several precedents where our federal government has made targeted investments in Nunavut, outside the Formula Financing Agreement, in areas of pressing need such as the May 2006 commitment to constructing 725 new housing units. We believe it is time our federal government looked at education as an area of pressing need to achieve our goal of self-reliance.
Transforming our school system will involve targeted investments - in teacher and principal training, in language development, in specialized programs for our at-risk children, in research, and in governance.
As parents of the young people who are moving through our education system, we feel it is our role to ensure that we take every possible measure to ensure they will graduate from our schools. This commentary is our call to our political leaders to share this dream.
August 3, 2007
Canada needs more than new patrol ships
MARY SIMON
Last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to the Arctic. Press speculation is that he will return this summer.
His interest in the Arctic is no doubt genuine, and likely heightened this week with the news that a Russian expedition has set sail for the North Pole, where it plans to send a mini-submarine crew to plant a flag on the seabed and assert the Kremlin's rights to the Arctic.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Harper responded to questions on Canadian sovereignty and jurisdiction over Arctic waters and seabeds by announcing a multi-billion-dollar commitment to buying new patrol vessels. He has told audiences of foreign businessmen that the untapped oil, gas and mineral riches of the Arctic are a major factor in his description of Canada as an energy and mining "superpower."
But alongside these news stories are less upbeat ones. Suicides rates among young Inuit have reached horrific levels, sapping hope from those left behind as surely as they testify to the loss of all hope by those who choose to put an end to everything. The Canadian Medical Journal reports that shabby and overcrowded housing in Nunavut has created the highest rate of hospital admissions in the world for infants with respiratory infections.
Fourteen years after promises made in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, and despite the reality that the Arctic is the canary in the mineshaft of global climate change, the federal government still does not have an overall plan for environmental monitoring.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has found that $65-million is being spent annually to recruit and relocate southerners to fill public-sector jobs in the eastern and central Arctic. At the same time, the federal government sits on the 2006 report by former B.C. Supreme Court justice Thomas Berger that says only bold and concerted action will turn around a 75-per-cent high-school dropout rate and allow Inuit to fill badly needed jobs.
It is sometimes said that war is too important to be left to the generals. In Canada's case, Arctic sovereignty is too important to be treated as just an adjunct to foreign relations or as a stage for foreign investment. It must be built from the inside out.
The bedrock of Canada's status as an Arctic nation is the history of use and occupation of Arctic lands and waters by Inuit for thousands of years. Inuit are, and expect to remain, the permanent majority population of the Arctic.
This is helpful for Canada when defending claims of sovereignty against other nations. Coherent policy-making for the Arctic must commit to two things: a credible power-sharing partnership between Inuit and the government; and a determination to overcome the obvious gaps in basic measurements of well-being that separate Inuit from all other Canadians.
Pursuing, let alone achieving, these things will not be easy.
But turning a blind eye or waiting passively on events is a sure recipe for failure.
As Inuit, we have much work to do that only we can do for ourselves. For those things, we ask for the solidarity of our fellow Canadians. But the federal government has special responsibilities in the Arctic as well. In meeting those responsibilities, it could start with a practical program of action.
Restore and deliver on the 2005 Kelowna accord: The huge gaps in health, education and housing between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians remain a source of shame at home and abroad for all of us. Closing these gaps will require substantial public-sector investment. The Harper government's trashing of the 19-party accord at the beginning of its mandate was a huge mistake.
But when you break something, you should try to fix it. Establish a Kelowna II for economic development: The problem with the Kelowna accord was not that it was too ambitious, but that it wasn't ambitious enough. We need to kick-start economic development for aboriginal peoples and break out of the dependency trap.
In the Arctic, there are huge opportunities for diversified economic development, but we lack such obvious tools as shipping facilities, basic financial services for small-scale entrepreneurs and adequate budgets for baseline geological surveying to facilitate mineral exploration.
Implementing modern land claims agreements promptly and fairly: Most of the northern half of Canada is now covered by power-sharing agreements between aboriginal peoples and the Crown in the form of modern land claims agreements. But, as the Auditor General has pointed out to Parliament on more than one occasion, these agreements are not meeting core objectives due to half-hearted implementation efforts by the federal government.
This half-heartedness is costly. Ottawa recently had to sign a $1.4-billion out-of-court settlement with James Bay Crees to make up for 30 years of federal sins of omission. In Nunavut last year, Inuit filed a $1-billion lawsuit against the Crown because the federal government refuses to act on an independent conciliator's report on implementation failures. Ottawa's evasiveness in implementing agreements alienates aboriginal peoples across the country and undercuts investor confidence in the very areas governed by the agreements.
Be creative in boosting Canada's Arctic presence: The purchase of new patrol ships will no doubt allow Ottawa to wave the flag more frequently in some Arctic areas. But there are other ways to goose up Arctic surveillance at a fraction of the cost - create a general environmental monitoring system; dramatically expand the Canadian Rangers program; set up comprehensive programs to allow hunters to continue to make use of lands and waters throughout the Arctic; and construct small-craft harbours and remove discriminatory fisheries allocation policies to build up an Arctic-based commercial fishing fleet that can make use of Arctic waters for value-added civilian purposes.
We are pleased to see the Prime Minister's genuine interest in the Arctic and his willingness to back up that interest with bold pronouncements and money. But let's assert our Arctic sovereignty in ways that impress outsiders with the creativity and practicality of our domestic policies, building up the well-being of the Inuit communities of the Arctic, as well as the size and strength of our ships. Sovereignty, after all, begins at home.
COMMENTARY
Inuit must be part Arctic sovereignty strategy
PAUL KALUDJAK
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced July 9 that Canada plans to spend more than $3 billion to build up to eight Arctic offshore patrol ships and construct a deep water port somewhere in the Arctic.
This is welcome news, although it will be some years before any of the vessels are on station. But his rationale, "We either use it or lose it," doesn't hold water. The Arctic is not an uninhabited wilderness. It is our homeland and has been for centuries. More than 50,000 Inuit - proud Canadians - live in the Canadian Arctic.
In 1969, the American super tanker Manhattan tried to go through the Northwest Passage. A group of Inuit hunters stood in the way. The tanker stopped. Now that's sovereignty assertion.
Following the 1986 transit through the Northwest Passage by American icebreaker Polar Sea, the Government of Canada drew straight baselines around the Arctic Archipelago - a legal measure asserting waters within the baselines to be internal to Canada. Inuit use and occupancy of the Northwest Passage, mapped in great detail in the 1970s, supported and enabled this legal move.
Prime Minister Harper has yet to mention Inuit in the same breath as Arctic sovereignty. Last year, I wrote him a six-page letter suggesting how Inuit could help. I have yet to receive a reply. My main suggestion was to use the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement - a modern treaty between Inuit and the Crown - as part of a full-blown sovereignty assertion strategy. The agreement is the law of the land and acknowledges the Inuit contribution to Canada's Arctic sovereignty.
Let me give one example. The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement requires governments to develop a plan to monitor the Arctic's natural environment. Demonstrating that you know what's going on in the territory you claim is essential to persuading other countries to acknowledge your sovereignty. Pretty simple, really.
Remarkably, federal agencies won't implement the monitoring provisions of the agreement. Even the Auditor General of Canada is being ignored following her 2003 recommendation of full implementation of the agreement.
We have tried for years to persuade the Government of Canada to live up to its obligations in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. Other aboriginal peoples with modern treaties report similar problems. Among other things, implementing the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement requires taking concrete steps to tackle the harsh reality that acute social problems leave many of our young people adrift.
In 2006, former Justice Thomas Berger provided the Government of Canada with concrete proposals on how to reverse this situation. His report sits in the too-hard-to-do basket of officials in Ottawa.
Complacency in the face of social crisis is not acceptable. After much soul-searching last December, Inuit in Nunavut launched a $1 billion lawsuit to compel the Government of Canada to implement the agreement. In a very real sense, we are using the courts to compel the Government of Canada to use the agreement to assert Arctic sovereignty.
We support the construction of the proposed deep water port and deployment of Arctic patrol vessels, although the inability of the vessels to operate in the Arctic in mid-winter seems very short-sighted. These vessels and the port should be a component of a sovereignty strategy that engages northerners, not the strategy itself.
Inuit are here - use us or lose our support, Mr. Prime Minister. An Arctic policy that attempts to air-brush the Inuit majority out of the picture won't cut it at home, and won't cut it abroad.
Paul Kaludjak is President of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, the organization that implements Inuit obligations in the NLCA, and ensures that other parties to the NLCA meet their obligations.
