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Whether it's panic or ignorance, people aren't obeying those red and blue flashing lights and blaring siren. Some stop where they are, speed up or pull over, but keep driving.
Common sense dictates that you pull over to the right and stop. If you're unsure of the rules, call the fire department. They'll be more than happy to go through the rules for you.
Drivers who ignore emergency vehicles shouldn't be surprised when they get a summons to appear in court.
Five youths charged with multiple counts of snowmobile theft appeared in territorial court recently, asking the judge to change their bail terms.
Among their individual requests was to be allowed to leave the NWT to attend hockey school, to extend a curfew and -- in one case -- possibly participate in a snowmobile race in Alberta.
Judge Michel Bourassa showed some exasperation from the bench. He granted some of the requests but denied others.
Three of the youths go to school together and all five belong to the same snowmobile association. The thefts occurred in December and January. All of the accused are due back in youth court Monday.
It is important to remember here that none of the five have been convicted of any crime and are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
At the same time, they have been charged with serious criminal offences and the alternative to jail for those awaiting their day in court is release on bail.
And with that release comes restrictions on personal freedom.
The Canadian justice system leans toward the release of most suspected offenders until their trial, unless there is a concern they might not show up in court, or are a danger to the public or if they are charged with a very serious crime.
Curfews and travel restrictions are routine conditions of bail.
Bourassa took the right course. He granted the hockey school request, but refused to allow the same youth to extend his curfew to 11:30 p.m. to attend hockey games and other events without his parents.
"I appreciate the undertaking is a pain in the neck, but he's facing criminal charges," Bourassa said. "The conditions are not unreasonable."
On the contrary, they appear more than fair.
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News
Rankin Inlet hamlet council's decision to go in-camera to discuss the mayor and SAO's talks with Premier Paul Okalik concerning the PPD's move to Baker Lake was a slap in the face to both local media and hamlet residents.
For the past two months council has been a media-mongering machine concerning the PPD, issuing press releases and actively seeking interviews to rant on the injustice of it all.
To council's credit, the move worked as the intense media scrutiny brought the two sides together and opened the lines of communication.
Rankin Mayor Lorne Kusugak openly acknowledges the fact the media coverage played a large role in opening dialogue between the hamlet and the Nunavut government.
So, why the decision to go in-camera when a piece of good news finally comes down the pipe for Rankin on the subject?
Kusugak's explanation was that he didn't want the actual numbers being discussed in public for fear of undoing the productive talks with the premier.
The good mayor vastly underestimated the local media if he truly believed he was the only one who could release the number of jobs discussed in their conversation.
In fact, this reporter went to the March 3 council meeting already knowing the premier had assured Kusugak that at least five current PPD positions would remain in Rankin Inlet. The odds on favourite for three of those positions is the three-person operations department, which has the most hands-on responsibilities of any of the 16 PPD jobs in Rankin.
Equally disappointing was Coun. Justin Merritt supporting the mayor's motion to go in-camera on the subject. Merritt, whose wife is employed with the Rankin PPD, has been on a letter-writing campaign to Northern media for the past six months criticizing the GN's decision to relocate the PPD to Baker.
Council knows best?
The Municipal Act gives council the right to go in-camera when it deems it in the public's best interest to do so.
We fail to see how not letting the community know it will be holding onto at least five of the current positions is in its best interest. Releasing the numbers puts the premier's assurances on the record, which can weigh heavily in the hamlet's favour should the day ever come when the GN decides to change its mind concerning the issue.
Kusugak's statement that the hamlet plans to "eventually" go to the media because the people have a right to know is as self-serving and paternalistic as it gets for a municipal council.
Properly put, the message sent is that council will decide when it's in the best interests for people to know about decisions affecting their community. It's more than a little ironic that council adopted the same secretive approach it was previously blasting the Nunavut government for employing in making the decision to relocate the PPD in the first place.
Editorial Comment
Terry Halifax
Inuvik Drum
Facing your fears is a tough thing for any of us to deal with and it must be even tougher for Laura Moses, who has to face the fear of confronting her sister's killer.
It must be hard for her to even leave the house, knowing that she may meet this man that she's only imagined in her worst thoughts.
That's why I suggested to her and Mary Anne Ross that the families organize a healing circle, to confront the situation and set things right.
As Mary Anne said, this isn't just about their situation, it's about all the people in all the small communities and how they have to come to terms with victims and offenders.
The people are the greatest resource of any community and the more that resource is diminished and divided, the harder it becomes to live.
Small-town people need to huddle together to share their strengths and shore up their weaknesses through the hard times.
I'd like to see someone start a petition to banish hate and fear from Inuvik, so we could all get on with enjoying the wonderful lives we lead.
Territorial tantrum
Premier Stephen Kakfwi must be getting tired of fighting. Fighting for health care, fighting for a pipeline and now he's fighting for resources revenues.
In a room full of billion-dollar babies, the premier took his fight public, threatening no pipeline without a piece of the pie, and he asked for the support of the oil men.
I'm sure the producers empathize with the plight of the premier, but they aren't going to be eager to bankroll a pipeline when they hear these Third World threats coming from our head of state.
Oil and gas people want to have good news to report to their stockholders.
They have safe choices that don't include political pandering and idle threats. They can pipe the Rocky Mountain trench for gas; they can pipe the east coast.
Risk is something the producers have plenty of. The former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Venezuela are providing these guys all the risk they need.
The get tough attitude may have scored the Northern premiers some extra health dollars, but the feds won't respond to threats over this pipeline.
Perhaps scrapping the pipeline is within Kakfwi's grasp, but will it do the people of the NWT more harm than good to delay the pipe another 25 years?
It's my guess that Ottawa will call his bluff and all that will result from this threat is an unsettling feeling in boardrooms from Calgary to Houston.
We all want the territory to have the powers of a province, but we have to walk before we can run.
If the feds think of us as their child then we need to show mom and dad that we're grown up enough to handle the responsibilities of our older and wiser siblings. Running up a $100-million deficit and throwing a public temper tantrum are looked at as the actions of an adolescent.
Some fiscal responsibility, quiet diplomacy and good friends in the oil business might go a long way to showing mom and dad that we're grown up enough to look after our own.
Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum
The Energy Secretariat is making the rounds. Dennis Bevington and Pietro Di Bastiani are visiting every community in the NWT. It's admirable to seek the input from residents and community leaders. What's more important, however, is that the consultation is meaningful. The government, wherever possible, should enact what people demand.
There are those, particularly in the non-hydro communities, who are still smarting from the GNWT's dismissal of the Power Corporation board for proposing a flat rate for power. After silencing the last Power Corporation board by sweeping the table clean, it's hard for some people to believe that the government is genuine in its solicitation of public opinion.
Then there's the matter of a November territorial election. Although the final draft of the energy strategy will be presented in the legislature in June, how much of it will be implemented before the next government takes power? Will the next Assembly show any inclination to pick up where the previous one left off, or will the energy strategy get shuffled to the bottom of the priority list?
It's going to take a while to prove the skeptics wrong on this one.
Pay to play
Two of the NWT's environmental groups have asked who's going to pay for cleanup of the CanTung mine site. It's a legitimate question.
First it has to be determined how cleaning up the area will be defined. Will all the buildings be razed? Will only the most toxic materials be removed and fences built around the site? The latter option hardly seems adequate.
The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has a lousy track record on enforcing industrial reclamation. Take the Giant mine and Colomac mine fiascos as evidence. Even within the Deh Cho, the Nahanni Butte Dene Band was awarded a $400,000 contract to burn two old diesel fuel caches last year. Because the decades-old fuel was tied to the nearby zinc mine -- ownership of which has changed hands several times -- it was unclear who was responsible for it. So DIAND stepped and absorbed the cost. The 400,000 litres of fuel, a liability for many years, finally went up in smoke. We don't want the same thing to happen to any more taxpayers' dollars.
Even though DIAND's liability policies are improving, companies with dated water licences like North American Tungsten still pose a major risk.
Crying the blues
The folks at NorthwesTel have released the 2003 phone books but failed to restructure their blue pages. The government listings used to be very simple when territorial and municipal government offices and departments were listed by community. Then in 2002 the blue pages were listed by subject instead. Confusion ensued. That same puzzling format remains in place this year.