Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

Complaining about food prices is a Northern pastime, and rightly so considering costs can, at times, be double or even triple what consumers expect in the south.

It is doubtful, even with changes to subsidies, we will see much decrease in that aspect of our cost of living which means we need to stop looking for government help and start finding more innovative solutions to our food security issues.

A new study commissioned by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is investigating the economic viability of greenhouses in the North. It's a great idea and has the potential to grow on the success many Northern garden projects have demonstrated.

Potato farms in the Sahtu, the greenhouse in Inuvik and community gardens sprouting up in various NWT communities have demonstrated the growing potential during the territory's long summer days.

Armed with the proper information, a savvy entrepreneur could turn what is currently a green hobby into a thriving business venture. Add a little technology, such as hydroponics, and the NWT could be growing food all year round.

Would it be cheaper? Probably not. However, if the cost was comparable not only would Northern consumers gain access to fresher produce, they would also be spending money in support of a community business employing friends and family.

Higher costs of food might be more palatable if the money was staying in the community.

The Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board's mandate is two-fold, each bearing equal importance.

On the one hand, the board is charged with the important task of safeguarding the environment and protecting people affected by development.

On the flip side, the board is also responsible for helping to facilitate development that meets the standards of environmental protection and provides fair benefits and compensation to the people directly affected.

It is in that role the review board has chronically fallen short.

Although it is understandable that comprehensive reviews of major projects can take time, there should be set policy on what can be considered acceptable.

We don't want to recommend pushing development quickly through the review process, but our economy needs development if we are to prosper. Nothing deters potential investors more than red tape, especially when it has the reputation of tying up applications for years.

Its most recent blunder with Fortune Minerals certainly doesn't help the board's public image. Failing to properly schedule hearings on Fortune Minerals' NICO gold-copper-bismuth-cobalt deposit near Behchoko due to a clerical error demonstrates a need for policy regarding the board's timeliness when addressing applications, as suggested by Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

We need to balance environmental protection with generating greater wealth and jobs in the NWT. Investment can only come with some level of certainty and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board has offered far too little of that.

In an organized protest, it is critical to have a defined concern and a specific target audience. Get a sense of what you want your audience to do, and see if they are willing to help resolve your concern.

As Nunavummiut plan another round of food protests for the end of August, organizers would be wise to consider the following: If the goal is to get retailers and the government to lower the price of pop, you're wasting your time.

Nutrition North Canada is not designed to subsidize junk food. That's like asking the federal government to subsidize cigarettes. Both are bad for you, and they are bad for governments, who have to pay the health-care costs associated with their long-term consumption.

Despite this, members of the Feeding My Family Facebook page regularly post junk food as examples of the high cost of food in Nunavut.

The implication is that food subsidies should include all food. Sorry, but the federal government will never subsidize the purchase of products that cause health problems, specifically those high in sugar, salt or fat. The target audience of your protest is not interested.

At the same time, some protesters want retailers to drop their prices to a point where they don't make a profit. That's never going to happen, either.

So let's consider the position of the target audience. The federal government says Nutrition North Canada is lowering prices for healthy food, and the North West Company agrees. Their statistics are easy to confirm.

Still, costs here remain higher than in Ottawa. They always will, so what do we do now?

Come to the table. If governments and retailers must shoulder the responsibility of increasing food security in Nunavut, so must Nunavummiut.

Cigarettes, pop, and microwaved meals should not be the core of peoples' diets. Foods promoted by the Nunavut Food Guide - and subsidized by the government - should be.

Nutrition North lowers grocery prices and gives every consumer access to the subsidy. That's an improvement from Food Mail, which was only available to those with a credit card. Going forward, the government can increase Northerners' confidence in Nutrition North by proving retailers are passing on the savings, and by increasing the subsidy and program budget annually.

But if Nunavummiut want the cost of living in Nunavut to go down, we need to determine what solutions give us the means to earn more money, make living in the North more affordable, and show us we're important to Canada. Those solutions largely have to come from us.

Governments and retailers stay in business by serving the people who give them money.

To boost support, we need to stop talking about $100 cases of water. No one sympathizes with the person who buys that if the taps are working. Instead, Nunavummiut need to show Canada the territory's real challenges - and there are many - and come to the table with answers that make sense to those who can effect change.

The roar of jet engines over a sea of happy Yellowknifers, an armada of affluent tourists flying planes to our city - it's clear by the number of people who attended the Yellowknife air show and those who visited in their own planes with the Century Flight Club earlier this month, that our city is still much ado about airplanes.

Aircraft remain, as they were in 1930s and '40s, a major lifeline to the south.

The Yellowknife Airport ranked 32nd in the number of aircraft movements among airports nationally, according to Statistics Canada, with 53,463 flights landing and taking off in 2010. That's a fair-sized number for a city of fewer than 20,000 people.

In the midst of all this hustle and bustle in the skies above us is the ongoing saga at city hall concerning the municipality's desire to install a 12-metre dock bought and paid for with a $50,000 tourism grant from the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. The dock, recommended by the Yellowknife Harbour Commission to extend from a small park at the end of Lessard Drive on Latham Island, is supposed to accommodate visiting floatplane fliers and small boats.

The city had hoped to install the dock this summer but has faced fierce opposition from nearby residents. The expressed fear is that a sudden influx of floatplanes will disrupt the neighbourhood and cause safety concerns, but Latham Island residents have always been suspicious of incursions by the city.

Those suspicions date back 12 years to the failed Waterfront Plan that called for public trails along the Latham Island shore that would have crossed over privately-built docks on public land.

The city hasn't helped itself by its seemingly high-handed approach to the matter. Residents complained about a lack of consultation from by the city, and were riled by administration's decision to purchase the dock before receiving approval from city council. Word that senior administrative officer Bob Long was parking his floatplane for free on city-leased land on Wiley Road was cause for even more ruffled feathers.

Hal Logsdon, president of the NWT Float Plane Association, proposed to put the dock there, to the approval of Latham residents, but administration rejected that idea, citing further opposition from the adjacent Great Slave Yacht Club and a family nearby.

Surrounded by opposition, city council deferred a decision yet again on where to put the dock Monday.

We sympathize but for better or worse, we have the dock now and it ought to go somewhere on the water rather than be mothballed in a garage somewhere. City councillor David Wind surmised that the dock will become quickly populated by planes belonging to affluent residents. We hope not because it is quite obvious there is an appetite among out-of-town plane owners to visit Yellowknife and spend money. The Yellowknife Air Show and Century Club injected $1.75 million into the local economy with their presence earlier this month. No doubt last year's Floatplane Fly-in and an unrelated visit by 20 fliers two weeks later also gave our city's economy a boost.

It doesn't look like the dock will get installed this year. Hopefully it will be ready for next year's Floatplane Fly-in - somewhere on Back Bay. It would be a shame if this city council simply decides to play out the clock and leave the mess for the next council to sort out following the election this fall.

Mackenzie Days has come a long way.

A few years ago the annual summer event was synonymous with out-of-control, alcohol-fuelled parties.

The parties weren't supported by the organizers of Mackenzie Days, but they happened anyway during the same long weekend in Fort Providence.

Even the popular spelling of the name of the event at the time, Mackenzie Daze, added to the suggestion of over indulgence.

The members of the Mackenzie Days Committee have worked hard to turn the annual event's image around.

For a number of years, a lot of effort has gone into promoting Mackenzie Days as a family-oriented event.

An additional step this summer, with the decision to separate the adult-focused events, especially those involving alcohol, to a different weekend is following with that intent.

The adult dance, bingo and talent show are taking place between July 27 and 29 while the rest of the events will run from Aug. 3 to 5.

It's a great idea.

By moving those three events to an earlier weekend, the committee is ensuring the long weekend can be devoted to families, and that is what Mackenzie Days is all about.

Adults will still be able to go to the dance and drink if they so choose, but that drinking won't affect the majority of the other events.

The Mackenzie Days Committee is also moving in the right direction in another area.

This year, the committee held a series of community meetings to see if there was still interest in Fort Providence for Mackenzie Days. The meetings were designed to get more residents involved in the planning and organizing stages of the events.

As a result, instead of four or five committee members doing the bulk of the ground work, there will be approximately 20 people involved from the beginning. An added bonus of the additional community buy-in will be an increased sense of community pride and ownership in the event.

Mackenzie Days has been celebrated in Fort Providence for decades. The changes being made this year should ensure the popular long-weekend event continues to delight even more generations.

All Fort Providence residents and people in the surrounding communities should remember to come out and support Mackenzie Days.

The 24th annual Great Northern Arts Festival has come and gone.

With it came and went artists, tourists, volunteers, teachers and friends.

Inuvik, and the rest of the North, has a vibrant arts community, filled with talented artists of all kinds. Spinners, carvers, painters, sewers, knitters and storytellers, to name a few, are everywhere.

Unfortunately, it can be a struggle to showcase and share these talents with visitors and with Northerners.

Walking through the gallery at the Midnight Sun Recreation Complex during the festival was overwhelming. So much talent and tradition was on display.

But the true art wasn't the finished pieces with prices clearly marked and attached.

The true talent was in the workshop spaces.

For the duration of the festival, participants could make anything. A basket made of goose feet, sealskin mittens, felted fish, yarn, kamiiks, dream catchers, drums, tie-dyed shirts and fabric – the list could go on indefinitely.

Whether you signed up for a workshop or not, you could stroll through and watch people at work.

That was the amazing part. The shared knowledge transformed a room of artists, residents and tourists into a close-knit community.

It was a place to get a taste of traditional or contemporary culture. One moment you could be scraping hide while in the next you were pouring thickened acrylic paint onto surfaces so it could dry before being peeled off and turned into three-dimensional objects.

That is exactly what's missing from the everyday.

There are so many skills passed down from generation to generation, but with an onslaught of technology it's easy to forget about the simple pleasures of sitting down and sharing knowledge with someone.

The workshops were a place where language didn't matter, so much could be shown with a hand gesture or the simple shake of the head.

It wasn't only tourists who signed up for workshops. Charissa Alain-Lilly led two workshops, but still found time to join Kate Inuktalik's kamiiks workshop.

Watching Inuktalik quickly trim caribou legs, Alain-Lilly remarked on how rare this knowledge was becoming.

"This is almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she said.

"There aren't any written patterns and fewer and fewer people know how to do this."

It's time to start preserving these skills. People don't live forever, but they can leave what they've learned for others.

Hopefully, that true picture doesn't include a return of the alley of filth behind 50 Street - a daily reality a few years ago when our city's homeless didn't have a place to use the washroom during business hours.

There is much at stake for the city now that the shelter is closed to give its staff a much needed vacation, but since city hall doesn't have the mandate or the human resources to manage the social ills afflicting our downtown core it falls on the territorial government to make sure the shelter doesn't simply fade out of existence.

The GNWT has been decidedly non-decisive when it comes to future funding to keep the doors open. Beyond $125,000 for one more year - about half the money needed to keep the shelter open - Health and Social Services Minister Tom Beaulieu won't commit to permanent funding. Meanwhile, Yellowknife Centre MLA Robert Hawkins, whose riding includes the facility, insists he is in favour of keeping the shelter open. However, Hawkins has continuously questioned its policies and services, complaining about public drunkenness and sex acts taking place outside.

The GNWT brain trust must get it through their heads that the day shelter isn't just a downtown Yellowknife facility. It and other struggling non-profit agencies like it, such as the Centre for Northern Families, provide a service territorially.

For all those people from communities across the NWT who are spat out by the justice system onto our city's streets and are unwelcome back home, the Yellowknife day shelter is crucial to their well-being. And, no doubt, it absorbs at least some of the hassles faced by merchants and commuters downtown. Anyone who has been living and working within the city core the last couple years since the shelter opened is surely aware of this.

Yes, having a day shelter is not without headaches but the alternative is much worse. It is crucial then that the GNWT doesn't let the facility die due to a lack of willingness to see the big picture.

Public freedom can be compromised when courts curtail freedom of the press.

This is why Yellowknifer vigorously disagrees with last week's ruling by the NWT territorial court that limits accredited journalists' use of electronic devices in NWT courts.

Accredited media and justice professionals are now permitted to use electronic devices, such as computers, tablets and mobile phones, in territorial court, provided all transmission functions are disabled. Audio and video recordings and photographs are still prohibited.

In effect, all the NWT ruling does is replace pen and paper with a keyboard.

Court technology policies vary across Canada. In Nunavut, a draft policy, if enacted, would permit Internet transmissions and audio recordings in that territory's courts.

Residents of the NWT deserve the same timely window into legal proceedings.

The modern Western justice system stems from the Roman Republic, which shared information with Roman citizens on publicly-displayed ivory tablets more than 2,500 years ago. Transparency of the justice system should change with the times, and that means allowing immediate communications from electronic recording devices so more people can follow what's happening in our courts.

With only one seat in the House of Commons and no political will to make meaningful investments in the North, it will be a long time before the territory gets what its people need.

While Nunavummiut wait for adequate housing, drug and alcohol addictions treatment infrastructure, more medical staff and more jobs, the federal government spent $70,000 on an F-35 photo op, $1 million on Prince William and Catherine Middleton's cross-Canada tour, and are spending $28 million on the War of 1812 bicentennial this year.

As part of the $1.2-billion bill the feds picked up for the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010, the government spent $14,000 on glow sticks, $85,000 for snacks, $14,300 for bug jackets, $26,000 for mosquito traps, $334,000 for kits that included sunscreen, insect repellent and hand sanitizer, and more than $60,000 for binoculars.

This sort of frivolous spending, of which the above examples are just the tip of the iceberg, is not new - the Liberals were hardly any better.

The trouble is, the North is just an afterthought to southerners, and Nunavut, with one seat in the House of Commons, has an almost non-existent impact on the politics of the country.

Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq has occupied an integral role in the Tory cabinet as health minister, but since taking office has been more a Conservative MP than Nunavut MP, and toes the party line unwaveringly - having a player on the winning team hasn't made as huge a difference for Nunavut as some may have hoped.

The biggest pieces of the federal money pie continue to go toward the constituencies with the most votes, and toward the country's political and economic posturing in the global scene. The sparsely populated North continues to get quick-fixes and the occasional investment and photo op so it doesn't feel completely ignored.

Nunavut is part of Canada and the government wants to keep it that way, as it is home to much mineral and off-shore potential - this potential is what is at stake in maintaining Arctic sovereignty.

Lost in all this are its people, trying to build an economy as a non-devolved jurisdiction without any roads connecting its communities to the south or even each other; a jurisdiction whose main industry is government, followed by mining, with the fledgling fisheries and arts-and-crafts industries trying to build steam.

With high costs of air travel, the potential of tourism being any sort of major economic force in the territory is low.

Due to lack of industry, tax base and the absence of province-like perks and powers, the territorial budget relies mostly on federal transfer payments, and it's been scraping by on what it's received. But will the territory have to wait until devolution is settled and industries are slowly built up in order for it to have the housing infrastructure it needs, the public infrastructure - such as ports so communities can develop fisheries - to create jobs for Nunavummiut, and the communications infrastructure it needs so Nunavut businesses can flourish in a similar environment to those down south?

The North needs major investments so it can start carving out its place in Canada's economy, and I hope one day a government will come along and prove the cynic in me wrong by prioritizing its people over extravagant celebrations and ceremonies.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.