Public trusteeship for Oqota shelter?

At a meeting held on March 8 and March 9, Iqaluit city council, as they so often do these days, voted to give large sums of money to a variety of community organizations that offer social services, especially services that governments do not directly provide.

The money they voted on isn’t the city’s funds. It’s supplied by the federal government through a long, bewildering list of hand-out programs. They come with mysterious bureaucratic titles that may or may not describe what the money is actually intended to pay for: such as “Brighter Futures” or “Continuum of Care.” There are so many of them that no one, except for a few insiders, actually understands what they are and how they work.

In Nunavut, these funds are usually divided among communities. Then, each municipal council votes to hand the money out within their communities, more or less as they see fit. In Iqaluit, a special committee of council called “Niksiit” receives applications and then makes recommendations on who should get how much. These recommendations are then forwarded to city council, which votes to approve, reject or amend them. After that, the checks are cut and the money is spent.

Is all this money buying what it’s intended to pay for? No one really knows.

Fortunately, city councillors have recently been trying to get better answers. For example, at their March 8-9 councillors asked a lot of questions about a whopping $450,000 contribution to the Nunavut Food Bank that was under negotiation at the time. They also asked good questions about whether the money they’re handing out is creating permanent dependencies among people who could be made to stand up on their own two feet.

They also voted to give money to two local services that now appear to be on the verge of financial ruin: the Oqota emergency shelter for homeless people and a “youth cottage,” which houses four young offenders. Both are run by a local organization called Illitiit. The shelter got $76,388, and the youth cottage got $147,829.

In a recent plea reported widely in newspapers and on CBC radio, the chair of this organization declared that the organization can’t meet its payroll, and that staff were working for free. In a ritualistic piece of political blackmail, he said both projects will die if they don’t get more money.

This is an admission that the Illitiit organization is effectively bankrupt. Bankruptcy is what happens when a business or a non-profit organization can’t pay what it owes when important payments are due — such as payroll. In a bankruptcy, the normal thing to do is dissolve the organization, then divide the assets among the creditors.

In the case of the Oqota shelter, this is an unthinkable option. Many homeless people depend on its 14 beds. They have no other place to go.

But at the same time, Iqaluit City Council is directing more of the federal government’s money into a financially stricken organization. Is that in the public interest? Yes, but only if the public can be assured that its money will be managed wisely, and that the shelter and the youth cottage won’t be forced to close permanently later in the year.

The obvious answer then, is to take Illitiit’s programs out of the hands of its current board and hand them over to a public trustee, or even better, to a board of trustees made up of people representing the relevant federal and Nunavut government departments, and the City of Iqaluit. Illitiit should not be allowed to receive more public money until the public can be assured that it’s not throwing good money after bad.

A public trusteeship would ensure these organizations develop disciplined management, tight spending controls, realistic budgets, and timely financial reporting. Only after all this is done should the two Illitiit projects be returned to a community-based board.

City councillors have already started asking such questions about such issues, but they should ask more of them and probe deeper. They should ask questions about how much money is spent on things like staff salaries and telephone calls. They should ask to see business plans and financial statements, and they should not be afraid to deny funding if the information they do get is not satisfactory. Such projects, especially the youth cottage, should be analyzed to see if they are serving the purpose they’re supposed to serve.

In the wake of recent news stories about the homeless shelter’s threatened closure, some Iqaluit residents even reached into their pockets to make substantial donations. One person wrote them a check for $2,000.

This shows that Iqaluit is still a generous community. But it also raises a fundamental moral issue — and that is that such generosity must not be betrayed. The best way to assure this is to put the Oqota shelter and the youth cottage into the hands of a public trusteeship. JB