Buried beneath the reams of paper generated by consultants studying this and recommending that is one very important point: people.

Let's examine what's happened.

We're paying more for health services we use in Alberta. People are being flown South for care, away from family and friends. Health care professionals are tired and angry and leaving the North.

Almost daily we hear horror stories. Some people scramble to pay out of pocket for services when they're flown south, then have to fight through the bureaucracy for repayment. Or of dreams of sharing the miracle of birth being shattered by lack of space on the medevac airplane that flies a pregnant woman to Edmonton to give birth because the obstetrics unit is short-staffed.

All the stories may not be true, but that's what's going around town and like it or not that's the image people have of Yellowknife's health system.

Health Minister Michael Miltenberger is pleading poverty and saying money is not the solution to all our problems.

A recruitment and retention plan suggests that attracting new staff to fill hospital vacancies requires just forgiving loans (great for people going into health care training) and $2,000 each for training. It doesn't really address the cost of living in Yellowknife.

Hospital officials blame the worldwide health care workers shortage for staffing woes.

Directors appointed to oversee Stanton hid behind board bureaucracy when Yellowknifer asked them to comment on the health care crisis.

An operational review of Stanton pins much of the blame for current problems on poor communication and administrative problems.

We just want a hospital that can deliver what is promised. We want to have our babies born here. We want doctors, nurses and other staff there ready to help in our time of need.

We want an administration that is more interested in delivering quality health care than cutting budgets to wrestle down the hospital's "deficit."

Now it's time for the Stanton board to do what it can. If administration is failing, it must be replaced. If the board is not willing to do it, they must go.

That's what accountability is all about. That's part of the job.

As a profession, lawyers are often depicted as having the client's money, not their best interest, at heart.

But that perception of the legal profession may soon change with a new process, aptly-named collaborative law.

The program helps families get disputes out of court and reach a more peaceful settlement.

It could mean less money in lawyers' pockets.

We hope the legal profession understands they will be lowering the human cost at the same time.

The most important task for school trustees is to do the best job they can for parents and students.

It's not an easy job. It means being available almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week, fielding questions and complaints.

There are meetings -- days, nights and afternoons worth of meetings -- taking you away from family, work and personal interests.

It's an expected sacrifice and if you can't hack the commitment keep your name off the ballot.

Last week the newly elected chair of Yellowknife Education District No. 1 forgot that unspoken commitment.

Roy Desjarlais recommended to the board that they no longer have to attend parent advisory committee meetings.

To make matters worse, he downplayed the importance of advisory committees by implying they are merely good forums for Halloween parties, bake sales and eating doughnuts. If Desjarlais wants to be a member of the board when election time rolls around in 11 months, he might want to remember to whom he is accountable.

PAC members represent the largest core group of voters in the school system and without their support a board member's elected career may be cut short.

To be fair, it is Desjarlais' first few months on the school board and he is still getting oriented, but he must understand the importance of knowing parent needs.

Trustees must attend as many PAC meetings as they can. How else will they know what parents are saying about what's going on in their schools?

Hopefully, Desjarlais will settle in and begin to learn that he needs to value all aspects of the school system, no matter how superficial he might believe they are.

Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News

It's beginning to look like not everyone is on the same page at Sport Nunavut concerning the organization's new mentorship program for its top job.

We still applaud Sport Nunavut's decision to put this program in place.

Taking someone with strong ties to Nunavut and its sporting community and having them mentored by a proven leader from the South to eventually take over the reigns of the beleaguered organization, is a positive step in the right direction.

That is taking for granted Sport Nunavut's latest head-hunting mission proves more successful that its last.

The new director for Sport Nunavut is expected to be publicly named in the not-too-distant future.

So, too, is the person who will begin training early in the new year to eventually assume the director's position.

As the list of frontrunners narrows, Sport Nunavut must stay focused on the directives it set for the program.

If so, a person with a long history of involvement with Nunavut sports will be unveiled, with a passion for developing programs from the ground up.

With such a positive step as the mentorship program in place, one would think the sun is shining brightly over the land of Sport Nunavut.

Think again.

Word out of the capital suggests whispering that the position should be filled from within the ranks, or offered out to competition.

We also hear those supporting this line of thought are still harbouring desires for Sport Nunavut's head office to be moved back to Iqaluit.

Such a move would open the door for anyone within the organization who covets the director's position to go after the job without having to relocate to Baker Lake.

Arguing the pros and cons of how the eventual winner in the mentorship sweepstakes is selected only lends credence to the fact Sport Nunavut should be operating at arm's length from the government.

The focus should be on hiring the right person for the job, whether they're directly appointed by the minister, selected by Sport Nunavut, or Human Resources for that matter.

This political and self-serving bickering must be halted before a successful candidate is named.

Without the total support of the organization behind them, the person selected will fail -- even if they are the right choice for the job.

And, should that prove to be the case, the ultimate loser will be amateur sports in Nunavut.

Editorial Comment
Terry Halifax
Inuvik Drum

Ed's booked solid doing drug testing and education all over Alberta and the North, but this is one business we'd all like to see go out of business.

During his presentation, Ed played a video about the adverse health effects of smoking marijuana and it took me back to Grade 8.

When I was in junior high, we got all the usual low-grade health films about the evils of booze and drugs and they were a joke to us then and would be hilarious to watch today.

They showed us films portraying pot smokers as raving lunatics and drinkers as slathering boobs.

My friends and I tried pot and booze somewhere around that time and we collectively thought, "Our teachers lied to us!"

We felt that if they lied about pot and booze, they probably lied about that other stuff too, so off we went into our senior high years experimenting.

I was a lucky one. I never had much of a penchant for waking up broke and stupid, but as I grew older, I lost many friends who died drunk behind the wheel or overdosed on cocaine.

A guy I grew up with lost his house, his BMW and his carpentry business because of his addiction.

Those movies we watched in health weren't of much benefit to my friends and I and maybe even served us more harm than good.

Drug education has to be real to young people if it's going to have any effect.

Our schools are always eager to bring in shining examples of good citizenry, but if the students saw a few bad examples it might go a long way to preventing a problem before it becomes one.

If my health class had some guy come in and tell us how he lost his house, business and BMW to cocaine, who knows, I might have a few more friends today.

Renaissance revival

It's been a long time coming, but it's great to see the GNWT has finally made a commitment to an artisan training program for the territory.

While still in its infancy, the Aurora College program shows some real promise to future artists.

The beauty of the artisan program is that it offers students the full spectrum of arts that will give them a better understanding and appreciation of their own and other's work.

Whether carving, beading or sewing, these art forms carry a big part of the heritage of this area and recognizing that, the government will see their dollars come back through taxes paid and will help preserve a culture that needs all the help it can get.

Let's hope the next budget makes room for art.

Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum

The new Fort Simpson youth centre was hopping on Friday night.

The old Fort Simpson youth centre, located upstairs at the recreation centre, was also a very lively place once upon a time. It opened to great fanfare a few years ago but interest gradually waned.

A committee of adolescents was struck to help guide the youth centre, but committee members stopped showing up for meetings. The youth centre was eventually closed for good. Rec staff of the day claimed that there wasn't enough interest to keep it running. Some youth argued that it was shut down prematurely.

Youth centres are a tough nut. If the teens aren't given enough input, they don't want any part of the facility. If they are given the run of the place, then a situation like the one in Fort Liard occurs. There, the youth centre was shut down due to repeated assaults and rampant vandalism.

Let's remember that with teens, what is trendy one day may no longer be trendy the next. "Cool" is fleeting.

Right now the youth centre is hip, or as today's youth would say, "It's da bomb," or "It's off the hook."

However, if we think back to our own adolescent years, we can probably recall different places where it was desirable to hang out. It may have been the shopping mall, a bowling alley or a pool hall. Sometimes friends just walked around or gathered outside of a building, as Fort Simpson teens do at the school or the church, "hanging out" in the evenings. After a while, for some unknown reason, the location tends to change.

The new youth centre is a good initiative. It will give wandering teens somewhere to hang out, for as long as they so choose. Once the winter is over and the novelty has worn off, there will quite possibly be very few visitors to the youth centre.

Then adults will then be faced with a choice: either shut it down -- temporarily or permanently -- or continue to run it even though only a few kids come and go each night.

Either way, the building will have served a useful purpose.

Self improvement

There are those who are rather skeptical of workshops of any kind, but especially the ones that relate to spiritual or emotional healing.

Yet if some individuals insist that a workshop has helped them, how can that exercise be deemed a waste of time?

As long sound judgment is used in contracting facilitators, then it's a good starting point. But that's primarily what most workshops amount to: starting points.

Sadly there are those who tend to bounce from one workshop to another, never seeming to truly achieve a true sense of healing, only feeling better for a short while. For some people a workshop seems to be like a quick fix.

While some workshops do hold value, our long-term interests lie in having permanent local counselling available wherever and whenever possible.