Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Baker Lake (Sep 11/02) - Community leaders from eight municipalities and the Kivalliq Chamber of Commerce met in Baker Lake recently to discuss issues of common concern to the Kivalliq and northern Manitoba.

Six of the seven Kivalliq hamlets were represented at the Hudson Bay Neighbours Regional Round Table, as well as the Manitoba communities of Churchill and Gillam.

Round table members Fox Lake, Man., and Arviat were unable to attend.

This was the third such gathering for the panel, which has identified youth, transportation, energy, technology and health as its top priorities.

Brock Junkin, Kivalliq's regional director for the Department of Sustainable Development, says five committees have been working on priorities since January.

He says committee chairs will table resolutions this month aimed at improving their venues.

"This alliance shares co-operation, experience and knowledge," says Junkin. "In less than a year, the RRT will show itself to be quite productive."

The Baker meeting was co-chaired by Churchill Mayor Mike Spence and Whale Cove Mayor David Kritterdlik.

Chairing the five committees are Junkin (technology), Rankin Inlet's Ray Mercer (transportation), Churchill's Brenda Lavign (health), Winnipeg's Erik Nielsen (youth) and Stonewall, Man.'s Ross Thompson (Energy).

The round table will lobby provincial, territorial and federal governments to move ahead quickly with energy and transportation projects between Manitoba and Nunavut.

It is also expected to start lobbying for high-speed Internet technologies for isolated Northern communities.

Kritterdlik says the unified approach will give the communities a louder voice when lobbying governments.

"Mayors and community leaders need to get together like this and look beyond our own communities to table regional priorities," says Kritterdlik.

"We have found, by experience, that for a community to go it alone in lobbying governments and other agencies is frustrating and inefficient." The next round table meeting will be held in Gillam in February 2003.