Raising money while raising hackles

In delivering his final budget for the NWT as we know it, Finance Minister John Todd made it clear that his notion of private-public partnerships is more than just talk.

With a gesture that was vintage Todd, he met privately with a group of high-ranking southern bankers while the assembled masses fumed in the Great Hall of the legislature, munching on crackers.

Todd's error in judgment aside, the idea of bringing up the big money boys to show them the North was a good one. The federal government has shown it intends to be firm in reducing its spending. We have already felt the impact of that in the North.

Northern reliance on government spending is going to have to end, and the money to create jobs and build businesses will have to come from somewhere.

Where else if not the private sector?

However, there is stiff competition for the available money. In bringing some serious players in the capitalization game to the North, Todd is playing super-salesman, and like it or not, that's what it takes to make an impact on the money markets.

On the other hand, Jake Ootes' concerns about the way the proposed partnership would function are justified. While the North has to start taking initiatives to raise the money we need for infrastructure projects, we need reassurance that benefits accrue to the North and don't disappear down south.

The proposal of tax credits is designed to keep money in the North. While it is, at first glance, an attractive idea, a little caution must be exercised. In some jurisdictions, tax credits have led to tax-dodging schemes that were almost comic.

Not surprisingly, the voices of the North's social conscience were raised in protest. No wonder. Todd's social initiatives were indeed paltry. But then again, we live in times of paltry government spending.

We hope that as Todd's coffers fill, he remembers where the money needs to be spent.

Inuvik has lost a lot over the last decade or so. The military moved out in 1986 and the oil industry shrunk its Beaufort profile to a mere shadow. But it is the loss of individual residents that presents the worst news.

Among the latest to leave is Charlene Alexander, the woman who behind the Great Northern Arts Festival for the last nine years. She, more than anyone else, is responsible for making the festival what it is today: one of the premier summer tourist attractions in the North.

Her departure is the NWT's loss and Whitehorse's gain. So far, it looks Inuvik is poised to replace Alexander, but it's always sad to know that we can't hold on to such people forever.

I'll never understand the phenomenon of teacher-bashing. Never.

First off, let me admit my biases and then move on. One, my dad was a teacher, principal and school board official. Two, my wife sometimes supply teaches at the local schools. Three, I sometimes wish I'd gone off to UBC as I originally planned to take that teaching degree. Instead, I chose journalism school, though I rarely regret that choice.

So, if you feel that any of the above significantly compromise my position, stop reading.

Last week, I had the good fortune to stop by a local kindergarten classroom. Stepping into it, I was in another world. Teacher Val Gendron was leading her excited students through the wonderful world of space.

Each kid was dressed in an astronaut suit and Gendron had a screen up on the wall where pictures of planets, moons and stars were flashed. Along the way, she asked the kids questions about what they were seeing and you could tell the little ones were enjoying the ride.

Here was a teacher in action who was doing the type of work that could truly spark a young mind.

In Fort Liard, it's been my fortune to get to know Leo Ehrenberg, computer guru. That man has opened the world of computers to kids like few can. There's a teacher.

The list could go on -- Donna in Jean Marie River, Ralph in Trout Lake, Barb and Barb in Fort Providence, in Kakisa John, Roy and Geri in Wrigley and Cindy and Wayne in Nahanni Butte and the numerous others I've met at both schools in Fort Simpson.

So, it was with these folks in mind that I greeted the latest grumblings about teacher's salaries, holidays and benefits I recently heard.

What bunk.

With few exceptions -- I know a few dud journalists, bankers, politicians, constructions workers and others, also -- I think we're served pretty well by our teachers.

I like to see how long some of those who shout loudest against teachers would last in the trenches. And, I doubt many of these complainers would have the dedication, like most teachers, to spend the thousands of dollars and invest years in university in order to have the honor of becoming teachers.

In the 1990s, they put up with a lot that they really shouldn't have to, often being asked to serve as social workers as well as educators.

Perhaps I feel an affinity with them as I learned a long time ago now in my job that some people find it easier to shoot the messenger than to examine themselves. It seems the same with teachers. It's sometimes easier for parents to attack them than it is to look at themselves.

Whatever the reason, I'm a fan of teachers.

And, I don't care who knows it.

You have to love Canadian banks. They are currently spending millions of dollars running a series of television ads that admit that, yes, in the past they haven't done such a great job in the customer service department and they now realize it and, gosh darn it, they're going turn that around and act differently from now on.

From the tone of the ads, it's apparent that public dissatisfaction with them is news only to them, and only quite recently.

The whole campaign plays quite strangely in Inuvik, 7where we're down to one bank and an automated teller -- the Bank of Montreal having announced earlier this month that it plans to close down its storefront, shed most of its staff and move in with another business where it will offer a limited range of services.

The move is part of a large-scale corporate reorganization, the purpose of which became apparent last week when the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank, Canada's largest, announced plans to merge and create North America's 10th largest financial institution. Presumably to better serve the needs of people like us with a few hundred dollars in a chequing account.

Canada's banks say they are listening to people now. They're certainly not listening to us, because no one up here was asking for fewer banks and less service.

So on a collective scale, they're not doing so well. But who knows, maybe they're making their policies a little less arrogant or lowering their service charges or something.

Well, I had some money in an account at another bank in Yellowknife and when I got here, I was told I could not transfer it up here unless one of the tellers in Yellowknife could confirm my identity with a physical description. Now I had been in Yellowknife just three months and never developed a close working relationship with any tellers, largely because the bank charged me extra to talk to them.

So the option that my bank and I agreed upon was I would withdraw the money at one bank machine and run across the street to deposit it in another bank machine over a period of several days. Not all of it, mind you; I have to leave some money in Yellowknife to pay the service charges the bank needs for allowing me to withdraw my own money myself because they won't do it for me.

And I had to fill out a set of papers to cancel the Yellowknife account because if I just withdrew my money, there would be nothing left to pay the ongoing service charges for not using the account and the banks would be forced to devastate my credit rating.

The whole experience serves as a nice little reminder of how important we little cogs are to the large machines of Canadian banks. Nice of them to let us know they've changed.