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It has been nearly two decades since our country has been able to stand up and proudly proclaim itself a nation of peacekeepers -- a people who choose diplomacy over war.

Peacekeeping has been part of the Canadian identity since former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson established the concept through the United Nations in 1956 while he was the minister of foreign affairs.

When it comes to its military identity, Canada has lost its way.

But Canada's role in keeping the peace has been diminishing since the 1990s when our country's peacekeeping contribution plunged from 1,110 in 1991 to a little more than 50 troops in 2006, according to the Council of Canadians, a citizens' group.

The war in Afghanistan has further changed the face of the Canadian military.

Last month, additional evidence of Canada's abandonment of its role as a peacekeeping nation came via a senate report recommending increased militarization of the Canadian Rangers.

The Northern Patrol group is the Canadian Forces' eyes and ears in the Arctic. Historically, the Rangers have comprised primarily Inuit and First Nations people who have used their skills and knowledge of the land to assist in search rescue efforts and guide and train military personnel in the North.

The Rangers derive a deep sense of pride from sharing those traditional skills and the knowledge they are serving their country. However, many of them have no desire to engage in combat situations.

Whereas Nunavut's Liberal Senator Willie Adams says the change could provide more jobs for Inuit; we must agree with Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington who said militarization of the Rangers is the wrong approach to enhancing Arctic sovereignty.

If the Conservative government is serious about Arctic sovereignty it will establish roads and ports and further invest in Northern people.

It's time for Canada to reaffirm itself as a nation that encourages peace instead of war and stands up for freedom with words instead of bullets. In the words of Pearson, one of Canada's most noble leaders, "the best defence of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war."

Alice Mawdsley stood before her fellow graduates in Fort Smith as valedictorian of the class of 2009. It was against all odds that Mawdsley graduated this year. She survived a serious head injury and numerous surgeries following a recreational vehicle accident. Following a prolonged coma she had to relearn to speak and walk. Another youth was charged with operating a motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol in relation to the incident.

Mawdsley is a testament to the strength of human spirit. But she is also a reminder of how quickly a life can change or end, especially without a helmet. While we congratulate and celebrate Mawdsley's recovery, we urge the youth of the NWT to learn from the close call that nearly ended the young student's life. Not everyone gets a second chance.

In last week's Nunavut News/North, we reported Kugluktuk has realized a 30 per cent drop in crime and a 38 per cent drop in arrests in the year or so since it established an alcohol education committee.

The results are a dramatic example of the link between liquor and crime.

In November 2003, 57 per cent of voters in a plebiscite in Kugluktuk had said "no" to an alcohol committee.

But in the summer of 2007, the RCMP got a one-month alcohol ban to lessen their workload while renovations were carried out on the police detachment building.

In the two weeks before the ban was put in place at the end of June, there were 59 people taken into custody.

Only three people were arrested during the month-long ban.

In the two weeks after the ban was lifted at the end of July, 36 people were arrested, 12 people were taken into custody under the Mental Health Act and two people committed suicide.

In the plebiscite in October of that year, 66 per cent of voters said yes to establishing an alcohol committee, which would have the power to approve or deny applications to bring in liquor.

Creating an alcohol committee is a compromise between a complete ban and total liberty. People without recent liquor offence charges are allowed to bring in reasonable amounts of alcohol for personal consumption.

Those who have been in recent trouble with the law due to their alcohol consumption are out of luck.

As with any committee, its decisions don't please everyone. In one case, by the time a permit application was processed, the wedding reception the alcohol had been ordered for had already taken place. Some have complained about their orders being reduced without notice, or the fact that the committee stopped processing permits three days before a spring alcohol ban took effect last year.

Perhaps the committees still have a few kinks to work out, but they have proven their worth.

Some will argue that establishing alcohol education committees simply increases bootlegging. We would refer those individuals to the crime statistics from Kugluktuk, cited above. If bootlegging does rise, it's up to community members to band together and report it to the police.

When abused, liquor can tear the fabric of communities apart, resulting in missed days of work and school, fetal alcohol syndrome, broken relationships, absent parents and lost lives.

Of course, people have done evil things without touching a drop of alcohol.

But it would be safe to say the vast majority of Nunavut's acts of vandalism, thefts, robberies, arsons, harassment, threats, assaults, sexual assaults, aggravated assaults, suicide, manslaughters and murders stem from the abuse of alcohol.

Anything that prevents violence and deaths, helps people feel safe in their own communities again is well worth doing.

Catholic school trustees are deluding themselves if they don't think their campaign to ban non-Catholic board members hasn't affected their bottom line.

Last week, it was revealed that tax support among Yellowknife ratepayers has shifted four per cent from the Catholic district to public schools since 2006, the year the Catholic board began its attempt to prevent non-Catholic trustees from running for election to the school board.

The board went on a rampage after discovering its lone non-Catholic trustee, Amy Hacala, had a Web blog page where she condoned abortion and criticized those who believe in God.

Those certainly aren't very Catholic views, but the Catholic board has never had a problem accepting non-Catholic students, which make up 40 per cent of the student body.

Let's remember that some parents don't send their kids to Catholic schools because they want to them to convert to Catholicism; they send them there because they believe Yellowknife Catholic Schools provides a superior education and school environment.

Board chair Mary Vane suggests the fire at St. Joseph school is what led to the exodus of tax support, but this is questionable logic. One would think ratepayers supportive of the Catholic school board would rally behind the district after such an unfortunate incident. It would seem more likely, as the board keeps digging deeper into its dogmatic bunker, while shopping their failing lawsuit from one court venue to the next, that some non-idealogical ratepayers who've supported the Catholic district in the past are offended by the board's discriminatory zeal.

Top education sells, not divisive attempts to weed out the non-believers on the Catholic school board.

City council made clear this week that a clean environment will remain a priority for Yellowknifers for years to come.

Councillors approved a proposed waste transfer facility, whose function will be to make it easier to dispose of toxic and hazardous materials within Yellowknife and throughout the territory.

To be built in the Kam Lake area, the facility will take on industrial and commercial waste - primarily from NWT diamond mines and exploration camps.

The plant may eventually take on household wastes as well, according to John Oldfield, owner of Kavanaugh Bros. Ltd., builders of the facility. This would give residents an option in addition to the city's collection days, allowing them to be rid of toxic products more quickly. That's less time for the toxic substances to sit in people's sheds and garages - spills waiting to happen. It also makes it less likely that people will resort to illegally dumping hazardous waste in out-of-the-way places, like in the woods skirting the city.

The waste transfer facility also highlights the need to develop local industry, rather than rely on southern operations to service the territory. The North requires solutions suited to the region, and local companies are best suited to this.

The first time I saw a bison was in Fort Liard.

I'd just moved to Fort Simpson and within the first two weeks I took a trip south to Fort Liard. As I was driving around the hamlet's streets I spotted them.

There were three bison standing in an empty lot beside a house looking for grass under the snow. They were huge and had a dusting of snow on their dark brown coats.

I stopped and took a picture.

My initial reaction is apparently not uncommon.

"They're really cute animals the first few times until you start receiving damage," said Al Harris, a long-term resident of the hamlet.

Harris was one of the people who attended a meeting the Department of Environment and Natural Resources held on bison. Instead of waiting to hear a summary of the draft Wood Bison Management Strategy for the NWT, the original reason for the meeting, residents moved straight into discussing the problems that bison cause.

The novelty of sharing your community with the largest land mammal in North America soon wears off. The animals, which can weigh over 800 kg, have a habit of damaging lawns, trees, gardens, fences and vehicles.

The bison are just doing what comes naturally to them, but residents at the meeting were quite clear: they don't want bison in Fort Liard. They can wander around in the surrounding woods but they aren't welcomed in the community.

No one can blame them for feeling this way and many residents of Nahanni Butte and Fort Providence, two other bison afflicted communities, feel the same.

Residents realize, however, there's no getting around the fact that the bison are back to stay but they also know who reintroduced them and, therefore, who should be responsible for them.

The territorial government, namely the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR), has been addressing the bison issues, as the management strategy illustrates, but more action and less talk is what's called for.

In Fort Liard, participants in the meeting complained that they keep giving ENR staff the same message, deal with the bison, but see little in response. For their part ENR staff counter that they are taking active measures, like herding bison out of the hamlet, but it's not that simple because the animals keep coming back.

The Fort Liard meeting produced two suggested measures, electric fences and hazing teams, which both sides, to some degree, agreed to. Stephen Charlie, the regional superintendent for ENR said before staff can move on these initiatives permission has to come from headquarters.

The ENR departmental heads in Yellowknife need to stamp their approval on this and fast to prove that they're serious about managing wood bison and including communities in the plan.

Electric fences and teams that use quads to herd bison out of Fort Liard won't completely solve the problem, but they will go a long way towards addressing concerns that have been put on the back burner for too long.

I will say right off the bat that I didn't attend most of the government meetings and sessions scheduled last weekend at the rec centre as part of the 43rd annual general meeting of the NWT Association of Communities.

But at the ones I did attend, I wondered where some of our more prominent cabinet ministers might be. Rather than jumping to conclusions, I thought maybe it was just a coincidence that at the sessions I sat in on, ministers such as Sandy Lee (Minister of Health), Jackson Lafferty (Minister of Justice and Education, Culture and Employment) and deputy premier Michael Miltenberger (Minister of Finance and Environment and Natural Resources) were nowhere to be seen.

But my suspicions were confirmed during a conversation earlier this week with Mayor Derek Lindsay. They didn't show up. Understandably he was ticked off that several cabinet ministers didn't make the trip to consult with community leaders about their concerns and their constituents'.

It's hard not to side with the mayor, especially when you have community leaders from across the North gathered in one spot. Even Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington showed up. Considering the cost of travel to outlying communities, doesn't it make good financial sense for the government to take advantage of such an opportunity? What could be a better time, especially when many of the resolutions and priorities coming out of the meeting centred on territorial issues such as electricity rates and board amalgamations?

Premier Floyd Roland and Robert McLeod, Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, were in attendance. Good for them. But given that they're our local MLAs, did they really have much of a choice?

Nobody will force MLAs and cabinet ministers to attend these once-a-year meetings, and ones similar to them, but you can't fault people for being annoyed at the lack of territorial government representation at them. Especially when you consider all the opposition residents recently made against the government's ideas of board amalgamation and the proposed changes to the NWT Health Care Plan. Many of those residents said all along their government wasn't consulting its people.

And then it was reported in the May 18 edition of News/North that our government spent $54,191 to send a group of five of its own to Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The article goes on to list many other expensive business travel tabs, compliments of our MLAs.

Why shouldn't taxpayers raise an eyebrow? Isn't your own backyard more important than foreign pastures, especially when you consider the importance of last weekend's AGM?

MLAs are accountable to the people who elect them and our government does pride itself on the principle of consensus.

Maybe it's not the end of the world that many of our ministers didn't visit Inuvik last weekend, but it certainly provides a pause for thought.

Five years after the territorial government got tough on drunk drivers by introducing automatic roadside suspensions for those caught with blood alcohol levels between 0.05 and 0.079, impaired driving cases are still filling up the courts.

It was enough for one Crown prosecutor to remark earlier this month that "drunk driving is far too common in this jurisdiction."

Sadly, that's probably understated. Statistics Canada's figures from 2007 reveal some staggering results: the national impaired driving rate is 241.1 per 100,000 people while the NWT's average is 1,801.3 per 100,000 people - by far, the highest rate in the country.

Sentences handed out in territorial court for first offences are severe, usually a $1,000 fine or more and a one-year driving suspension.

But the existing law still makes it hard for a person to gauge when they're too impaired to drive. So why not just set the allowable blood alcohol level at zero?

Right now, it's too easy to rationalize that having just a couple drinks before getting into a car is acceptable, and technically legal. This sort of thinking undoubtedly leads to many of the impaired driving cases.

A zero-drink policy might make people actually think before jumping behind the wheel.

Earlier in May, the city warned the public that bylaw officers would crack down on litterers with fines ranging from $200 to $500, depending on how many times the offender has been caught.

For people who were tired of stepping in pet feces and watching chip bags blow by, this came as welcome news.

But, it turns out, not a single litterer has been detected by the municipal enforcement officers despite promised trail patrols.

Doug Gillard, manager of municipal enforcement, recently admitted that it isn't easy to catch offenders in the act because people generally don't litter in front of a bylaw officer.

That may very well be true, but if people are going to take littering seriously, bylaw officers are going to have to step up their efforts.

Yellowknife has benefitted greatly from legions of volunteers who have picked up loads of trash. But if there's any hope of truly deterring people from carelessly tossing wrappers and coffee cups along our streets and trails, it's going to come from a swift blow to the pocketbook.

Paying a stiff fine will make people think twice. Without that, litterers are facing an empty threat and we all know it.

I've always been a supporter of buying local.

Living most of my life in rural Canada, I know the challenges local merchants deal with to survive, let alone compete.

And local merchants are also asked to donate to almost every fundraiser during the year.

You name the item and most Kivalliq merchants have been asked to donate it.

But goodwill only takes you so far.

I placed my first food mail order about five months ago and still can't believe how much further my dollar goes.

That's why I'm upset with Graeme Dargo's review on the program for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) and the idea of eliminating personal orders.

Since space is tight, let's debunk a few claims with a minimum loss of ink.

Unless everyday nine-to-five workers (you know, Dargo, regular folks who work for a living and have rent to pay and families to feed) have somehow become "privileged individuals," that statement requires no further discussion.

The majority, if not all of food mail merchants offer other ways to pay for orders other than a credit card.

Many people, according to Dargo, can't use food mail because they don't speak English or French, or use the Internet.

They also, apparently, can't get food items home from cargo because they don't have access to a vehicle.

Those claims don't hold their family members or friends in very high regard, and one can't help but wonder how they get their food home from local stores.

I don't know what business credentials Dargo or program manager Fred Hill have, but to suggest they rely on competition between stores in the North to ensure food mail savings are passed on to consumers is laughable.

Memo to INAC staff: familiarize yourself with the terms monopoly and oligopoly.

Also, research the terms markup from cost-landed price and volume incentive allowance (volume rebate) and the effects they've historically had on Northern consumers (can you say Christmas bonus for the store, boys and girls?).

There's no doubt the cost of doing business in the North greatly exceeds that of the south, but let's keep things in perspective here.

Many of the supposedly underprivileged folks who, apparently, aren't financially solvent or mobile enough to use food mail, are ringing up loads of debt on local store accounts that charge more than 25 per cent interest.

And that's on top of the 30 to 45 per cent markups routinely charged for groceries and meat items in Nunavut.

We give Dargo and Hill marks for noting a system must be devised to place strict accountability on retailers to show they're passing savings on to consumers.

However, considering study input came from "aboriginal groups and Northerners" (can you be more vague?), you can't help but wonder what their definition of accountability just might be.

There's a reason so many Northerners think stores are drastically marking up their costs despite subsidized prices. And unless INAC wants to become the biggest merchant sugar daddy in Canada, it better be darned sure it addresses that reason before taking the right to purchase affordable nutritious food out of the hands of individuals.

The article "Qikiqtarjuaq wants more visitors from national park" in the May 18 issue of Nunavut News/North should have read proposed "Zone 1" areas in Auyuittuq National Park would require special permission from Parks Canada to visit because they are culturally sensitive areas. Approval of the management plan for the national park has to go through the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, not the Nunavut Impact Review Board. Inuit are able to commercially sell products harvested and fished from the park, as long as the hunting and fishing methods are traditional, not commercial-style. Parks Canada does not have Inuktitut interpreters on staff, but it does have employees who are fluent in Inuktitut.

The article "'Place that never melts' is melting" in the May 25 issue should have stated the glacier near Grise Fiord is six square kilometres. Melville Icecap on Nunavut's western border is 75 square kilometres. Nunavut News/North apologizes for the errors.