All we have to do is look around Yellowknife. Trucks loaded with sleds tell us about dogs bred specifically to pull just about anything.

Pitbulls were once bred for a specific purpose, too: to kill. That may not be the ultimate job for them today, but what's bred in the bone tends to stay there.

While we can agree somewhat with Janet Pacey of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that "dogs have to be taught to be mean," we have also seen what happens when - for whatever reason - a pitbull is agitated enough to attack.

The dog is a stocky creature with legendary tenacity and incredible jaw power.

It does not matter that cocker spaniels, the example given by Pacey, have registered more biting incidents than pitbulls.

Without being too crude about it, an attacking cocker spaniel can be driven off with a swift kick or a punch to the head. Not so for a pitbull with anger in its heart. Children's faces have been ripped apart. Some have been killed.

While a ban on pitbulls may go too far, it is naive and not helpful to insist pitbulls are complete innocents.

The SPCA has a role to fill here. It must be honest to its clients and the public: all dogs react to strangers or to children differently.

The animal rights group already checks out potential owners of its dogs, it must also educate the public when large vicious dogs - or their large vicious owners - misbehave.

Terry Woolf is the latest public victim of City Hall's decision to only accept debit or credit cards to pay fees at the landfill.

While many people rely on plastic for everyday business, some still prefer cash, especially to avoid bank fees for small purchases.

Cash isn't accepted, the city says, because of concerns someone might rob the dump. It's more likely the bean counters at City Hall are concerned about having to reconcile the day's receipts and ensure the daily deposit and float balance.

If administration isn't willing to do it on its own, mayor and council should order them to design a user-pay system at the dump that accepts cash and cards.

It's called customer service and in this case, the customers are the people who pay the taxes that pay city wages.

Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News

Make no mistake about it, people are going to have strong feelings on both sides of the ledger concerning the Government of Nunavut's (GN) new strategy for staff housing.

For some, the initiative will be viewed as nothing more than an attempt by the GN to bolster the percentage of Nunavummiut staff by dissuading southerners from seeking employment in the North.

The argument has some merit, considering Nunavut Housing Corp. president Peter Scott was quick to point out that 55 per cent of government positions are still held by non-beneficiaries.

Even with the phase-in period, the two areas of primary concern are education and health professionals.

Percentages or not, we still need quality teachers and health-care professionals in Nunavut and we're not going to train enough local doctors to meet our needs during the next five years.

While the picture for educators is somewhat brighter, we will still be hard pressed to come anywhere near the required number of teachers in the next 10 years by trying to hire solely within our ranks.

Education Minister Ed Picco and Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq are going to have to get awfully creative in attracting professionals to their respective departments for the next few years.

The GN believes the new system will encourage home ownership in Nunavut and has dreams of major condominium projects springing up across the territory.

Should that come to be, the vacated rental units would go a long way towards easing Nunavut's housing crisis, or so the theory goes.

That would be nice to see, but unless the GN is prepared to implement strict rent controls, these units would have to go down the road to public housing to be effective.

We have nothing against people making $90,000 and up per annum being asked to carry their fair share of the rental load.

In fact, for that alone we applaud the government.

As pointed out by Scott, there are still far too many people with high incomes in Nunavut who are able to take advantage of the current housing system.

But if the GN expects private landlords to give the average working person making less than $15 an hour in the retail sector a break in their rent, it will be in for a rude awakening.

The GN's new staff housing strategy is a good move for cleaning up its own house, saving about $23 million a year and increasing the number of beneficiaries working with the government.

However, unless we see a spike in public-housing units or some form of rent control initiated during the next few years, the strategy will do nothing to establish healthy communities outside of the capital.

And, while it may establish sustainable housing markets, those markets will remain far out of reach for the average working person trying to support their family on $30,000 a year in the Kivalliq.

Editorial Comment
Jason Unrau
Inuvik Drum

Having listened to leadership from around the territories speak in the past about the importance of education - and in light of the closure of Samuel Hearne secondary school and the territorial government's response - one would have to be a blind optimist not to question the sincerity of the GNWT's commitment in this regard.

Forget about the roles and responsibilities of actually educating the students and focus on the fact that teachers and staff now lack a building from which to do so.

By last Thursday, nearly a week after the order was given to lock down Samuel Hearne, the District Education Authority's options were scant at best: either double-shift Sir Alexander Mackenzie school or run classes from multiple locations around town.

If you can believe the DEA was actually waiting on a decision from the curling club about the use of its ice pad before deciding what to do next, then you have a pretty good picture of the government nincompoopery that has surrounded this unfortunate set of circumstances.

In fact, the GNWT's handling of this affair has been a complete joke.

"We'll give the DEA anything it needs," was the word from Education Culture and Employment in Yellowknife. As the DEA waited for the curling club to make a decision, perhaps they should have been baking muffins for the teachers, who went well beyond the call of their usual duties by moving countless boxes.

And since we're on the subject of baking, why not fashion a gingerbread school house, as ECE can't seem to have come up with a better alternative. Furthermore, according to the minister of that department, there is not even a contingency plan in place to deal with the aftermath of a school burning down, falling down or just plain closing down.

But this tragic comedy begins even before Samuel Hearne was closed, when public works decided to spend upwards of a million bucks on a new foyer for a building that apparently lacked the structural integrity to be safely occupied. Unfortunately, the foyer cannot accommodate 400 staff and students so the DEA and Beaufort Delta Education Council were left scrambling for alternatives. Tuesday was day five and there were still no classes for secondary school students in Inuvik. Enter the Midnight Sun Rec Complex scenario, where at first glance it appeared the town offered up use of only part of the facility, then seemingly put the onus on the curling club to pony up its ice pad instead of offering use of the town's hockey rink on the other side of the building.

The club initially balked at giving up its rink, but relented after learning the town decided during an emergency meeting to give the entire recreation facility over to the high school, including the hockey rink.

According to the mayor, it was all a big misunderstanding. As well, it was the DEA that favoured the curling pad over the hockey rink in the first place.

Regardless, thinking of all the stories floating around town by Sunday afternoon about what was supposedly happening - as opposed to what actually was going to happen - and you'll get a pretty good idea about how signals became crossed and why confusion seemed to prevail.

So for now, the students have the space they require and with help from the town, curling club, college and SAMS things will hopefully return to some kind of normal routine for students.

However, anyone looking forward to a season of speedskating, hockey, figure skating, broomball and curling are now going to be waiting on the sidelines either for the restoration of Samuel Hearne or for the clouds to open and a school to magically drop from the heavens.

Better get baking.

Editorial Comment
Andrew Raven
Deh Cho Drum

Last month, five territorial politicians criss-crossed the Dehcho asking citizens how the government should spend its bloated $1 billion annual budget.

That fantastic total amounts to about $23,800 for each resident of the Northwest Territories - four times more than Ontario spends per capita.

While the territories face some monumental geographical challenges - including a patchwork road system that only partially connects its far-flung communities - the government should have no problem administering 42,000 people with $1 billion.

Griping about federal transfer payments has become sport in the legislative assembly, where Ottawa, like an obese, over-the-hill boxer, is the perfect target for politicians looking to score points.

What the territorial government really should do though, is look itself in the mirror and trim some fat.

First on the chopping block: the proposed Yellowknife Courthouse. For $41-million dollars, the government wants to build this white elephant in the marshland beside the legislative assembly.

The only problem? The rate of violent crime here is seven times the national average. Several remote communities still do not have police stations. And the civil legal aid system is jammed up the yin-yang.

While a lavish courthouse would be an excellent locale for some judicial robe-hanging, it would be absolutely useless for those citizens who are bashed senseless on a weekly basis.

Item number two: cut back on the swag. The sheer number of pens, notepads, baseball caps and key chains emblazoned with the logos of the territorial government and its associated boards is astounding. A newsroom favourite: a mesh-backed baseball cap touting the NWT Protected Areas Strategy - a program designed to restrict industrial development in some areas. Kitchy? Yes. Necessary? Hardly.

And if the government really feels like thinking outside the box, it should re-evaluate its ownership of the NWT Liquor Commission.

The commission, which supplies the entire Northwest Territories with booze, generated more than $35 million in revenues last year. While that total is impressive, tens of millions more were probably spent dealing with problems caused by alcohol. (Nearly 9 in 10 cases that pass through the court system are alcohol-related.)

As an inmate at the North Slave Correctional Centre once said: the system is designed to feed off itself. Yellowknife sells alcohol and then employs a massive number of people to deal with the fallout, the bureaucratic version of the circle of life.

In the end, there are dozens of ways a motivated government could save money. Hopefully, by travelling across the Dehcho and the rest of the Northwest Territories, that will become apparent to our leaders.