Children's education needs to come first Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, October 14, 2016
Giving teachers time to prepare report cards and improve skills is a great thing.
No doubt it must be stressful to carve time out during school hours or stay late into the night to get it done. This is why a new contract agreement signed by the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association is a positive step for the well-being of teachers.
But it is worrisome these changes are coming at the expense of student well-being. In order to give teachers more time to do these things, NWT schools will be foregoing 100 hours of class time - which works out to about two weeks per year.
According to Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE), research that assesses development in areas such as physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development and communication skills, almost 30 per cent of Yellowknife children are vulnerable in at least one of these domains. This means that in at least one category, these children are sitting at under 10 per cent of what researchers consider to be a normal rate of development. The number of vulnerable children in one or more of these areas only goes up for children in NWT's regional centres and small communities.
So it really is unfortunate to see more administrative time for teachers come at the expense of students. For some NWT youth, most of the structure and cognitive stimulation they receive happens in school. If the territorial government is going to see success in bringing NWT children on par with the rest of Canada, students are going to need as much class time as they can get.
This will put students in a better place when they graduate and hopefully go on to develop career skills.
So if giving teachers extra time is a good thing but taking that time from students is bad, the department is going to have to look at providing more resources to schools so both teachers and students get what they need. This could be done by bringing in more support staff, such as substitute teachers, to keep children engaged during these times.
Yes, this costs more money. But who wouldn't agree children are the NWT's greatest resource? Obviously they are worth it.
Invest to keep Yellowknife a hot destination Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, October 14, 2016
Aurora driven tourism is up by almost 50 per cent over last year ("Aurora tourism up nearly 50 per cent, Oct. 3, News/North).
Not surprisingly, spending is up by the same amount. That means $39.7 million aurora tourism dollars spent in the NWT, and Yellowknife in particular.
This is an increase of $12.9 million over the previous year.
Overall, tourism spending is up by 14 per cent over last year across all tourism sectors and represented $167.1 million in spending last year.
The North and its natural, isolated, barren splendor seems to be something Japanese and Chinese markets cannot get enough of.
City hotels are booked solid, giving impetus to a minor construction boom in the city, while cafes and restaurants are putting their best foot forward in a bid to win a portion of tourist spending.
The private sector everywhere is doing its part to respond with capitalist verve.
The city has done well in the past few years with improvements to Government Dock and Pilot's Monument but now is the time to invest even more into ensuring Yellowknife remains a top draw for foreign visitors.
Erecting downtown street signs or other tourist markers printed in Japanese and Mandarin would be a simple but lasting gesture of goodwill.
The city also should not forget how popular the summer Dene Nahjo hide tanning camp was this year.
There has been talk in the past of a permanent downtown facility where Northern indigenous culture and craft could be on display year round.
It's time for the city to take this beyond talk and put shovels into the ground.
Perception key in conflicts of interestDeh Cho Drum - Thursday, October 13, 2016
At the Aug. 2 meeting of Fort Simpson's village council, Coun. Mike Rowe had enough. He told his fellow councillors he no longer wanted to be questioned on whether he should declare a conflict of interest in relation to the companies of one of his relatives.
He was tired of being the only one singled out by council regarding declarations of perceived conflict.
Now, with the Village of Fort Simpson facing a lawsuit for allegedly interfering in a territorial government contract process, which includes a demand that Rowe be removed from council, the question of what constitutes a conflict of interest has become vital.
Ever since Rowe was elected to council on Feb. 4, questions of conflict have pervaded discussion at the council table.
As the son and employee of businessman Pat Rowe, Rowe found himself facing regular questions from fellow councillors on whether he should be declaring a conflict of interest in items related to his father's companies.
"Declaring an interest" is the term councillors use for issues in which they may have a conflict. At the beginning of every meeting, they are supposed to declare whether or not they have a potential conflict with any of the agenda items.
But what does being in conflict really mean?
That question was so pressing that council met with representatives of the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs at the end of August.
A slide show presentation from that meeting was included in the Sept. 6 meeting package and makes for interesting reading.
The presentation put a number of questions to councillors that they should be asking themselves before declaring an interest: primarily, whether they have a direct or indirect pecuniary interest in a decision and whether their employer has an interest in the decision, among other such questions.
There are, of course, exemptions to the Conflict of Interest Act - namely, "community of interest" - which stipulates an exemption if the member's interest is the same as the portion of the community affected by a decision.
The act also does not deem a member to necessarily have the same interests as family members they do not live with.
But according to the presentation councillors received, a member has an indirect pecuniary interest in matters that their employer has an interest in - and the member cannot claim no such interest exists.
The effect of this legislation upon village council should be that declarations of interest are made left and right. After all, most of the village's representatives, if not all, have jobs outside their responsibilities as public officials.
Clearly, the perception of a conflict is important regardless of whether a member feels they are actually in conflict.
Aside from keeping councillors from using their position to benefit themselves financially, the importance of declaring an interest lies also in maintaining public trust.
Going forward, it is important for council to truly consider the perception of its involvement with matters at the council table - and whether being involved opens the village up to liability.
Our hands are not tied when it comes to teaching positive valuesInuvik Drum - Thursday, October 13, 2016
One can certainly sympathize with the complaint that social workers feel their hands are tied when trying to manage the difficult situations their clients often find themselves in.
Seema Allahdini, victim services coordinator, was right that a community approach would be far more effective than sticking to the silos of different departments while ticking off the ABCs of our job descriptions.
It is a delicate game to balance what one person may think is right for a client and how much power that person should have in pursuing that conviction.
But no matter what department is working on it or how much power any person has, we will never be able to cleanse our cultural and community ills through policy alone.
Those changes come on an individual, human, community level. What stops violence is individuals not wanting to turn to violence, not laws, bureaucrats and policy advisors.
Crucially important is the foundation young people have growing up, from their family unit to the wider community.
The students in East Three School's leadership class are a good example of the right way to raise youth.
They are keen on making a positive difference in the lives of people around them and seek to achieve happiness for themselves and others. A lifelong pursuit of those values is as good a defense against misfortune as possible.
As mentioned by teacher Abe Drennan, this is the development of good citizenship values in school that goes beyond textbook knowledge.
This program or one like it not only makes for good citizens, but also develops skills transferable to later careers, such as event planning or marketing.
There is no future where all our problems are solved, but making a leadership club member out of every youth and having every person engaged in good citizenship practices is a positive goal.
Government departments might have difficulty balancing laws intended to help while watching they don't overstep the boundaries of patient privacy and confidentiality, but we are all free individually to pursue the world we want to live in.
Power of industry snubbed by GNWTYellowknifer - Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The adversarial approach the territorial government has taken with Northland Utilities shows the GNWT has no real solution to skyrocketing power bills beyond beating up the middle man.
As a subsidiary of ATCO Ltd. - a multi-billion dollar utility company with worldwide projects and nearly 8,000 employees - Northland potentially has far greater ability to bring major projects to life than the GNWT does. ATCO bolstered its position in 2015 by entering into an agreement with Denedeh Investments to make Northland a joint partnership - ensuring jobs and investment stays in the North should the utility remain.
Yet, we are told Premier Bob McLeod won't return phone calls from senior management at ATCO. His office claims it isn't aware Siegfried Kiefer, ATCO's number two on the company's organizational chart, attempted to reach the premier last spring but does admit it rejected a request for a meeting 10 months ago.
The premier's office said it wouldn't be appropriate to meet while arbitration talks continue over the purchase of Northland's assets in Hay River now that the town has opted to go with GNWT-owned NWT Power Corporation to distribute its power.
This is a weak justification at best. At this rate we can expect the drawbridge to remain firmly shut as the GNWT prepares for the final push to drive ATCO out of the territory with the expiry of Northland's contract for Yellowknife coming in 2020.
If the GNWT is really interested in reducing the cost of living in the territory - and the size of its workforce - taking over power distribution is not the answer. ATCO has the financial muscle and expertise to help the territory develop its hydro potential - an avenue of possibilities abandoned by the GNWT after deciding it could not swallow the $1.2 billion price tag to connect the Snare and Taltson hydro dams to the power grid down south with a spur going to the diamond mines.
Rather than viewing Northland as an opportunity to capitalize on industry to help with its infrastructure needs, the GNWT seeks to paint it as the bugbear of high energy costs. Meanwhile, the government fails to explain how buying the utility out - estimated at $180 million territory-wide but bound to be much higher by the time arbitration is done - will help reduce the cost of power.
Partnering up with a major utility company to build power projects is not without risk. Nalcor Energy, the company responsible for building a major dam in Newfoundland that has turned into an $11-billion boondoggle, left its customers on the hook. But leaving power development needs entirely in the hands of the GNWT, when it has already acknowledged it is incapable of delivering, is no answer to the territory's power woes.
Premier McLeod should be the one calling up ATCO and asking what it can deliver. Instead, the NWT has a premier presiding over a government that would rather dig a hole as deep as possible and hope the pile of debt it keeps shoveling into it doesn't reach the top.
Good intentions, but not through distorting factsEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Once again the spin doctors are up to their old tricks and, once again, people are buying into the rhetoric at face value without digging just the tiniest bit deeper.
I have written this before in this space and I'll write it again.
I am a cigarette smoker. I am neither proud of it or ashamed of it. I just am.
I will be the first to dissuade young people from taking up the habit because of the ridiculous amount of money tobacco costs these days.
And I will also be the first to admit if you smoke, it's Russian roulette in how it may affect you in the long term.
However, I will also be the first to jump all over government and lobbyist claims that contain little, if any, truth.
And, please, don't get me started on second-hand smoke. I was a "collector" of international studies on the subject until, poof, they were impossible to obtain anymore.
Well, as least the ones that didn't say what Health Canada wanted them to.
Health Canada is pushing plain packaging on cigarettes with claims it reduces the sales of smokes and the number of youths purchasing tobacco products.
The department has stated on the record that the initiative has had good results in Australia.
Well, that might come as a surprise to Sinclair Davidson, who is a professor of economics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University.
Prof. Davidson says the removal of branding creates the perfect storm of bad policy.
You see, the truth is, the sale of tobacco has gone up in Australia since the initiative was introduced, not down.
And the criminality associated with contraband has increased since the initiative took hold Down Under.
If Mr. Davidson isn't enough to convince you on his own, you don't have to spend too much time in front of your computer to find there has been little impact on the deliveries of tobacco to retailers.
So, cigarettes being sold legally over the counter and even more being sold illegally on the black market.
Yup. Sounds like a successful initiative to me.
Seriously, you have to ask yourself why such an esteemed outfit like Health Canada can't keep it real?
Is it really too much to ask when you're still talking about a LEGAL product?
And, if they can't keep it real, is it so outrageous to ask yourself why not?
It opens the age-old argument on whether not telling the whole truth is the same as lying.
The Cancer Society of Victoria, a stakeholder in study results no doubt, claims a study it commissioned found the majority of 500 smokers claimed their cigarettes were less satisfying without the colourful packaging.
Ummm. OK(?)
Hard to disprove that, unless, of course, you've actually looked at a cigarette pack in the past few years.
Colourful and attractive? Which ones? The poor guy dying on the bed? The guy with the hole in his throat? The ones with the little kids wearing breathing masks?
In reality, it's an initiative making criminals rich, pushing all ages toward the black market, and creating the illusion of government fighting the good fight while it continues to rake in billions of tax dollars on the product.
Yes, let's get more of our youths to stop smoking or never take up the habit to begin with, but let's be honest.
After all, we teach our youth honesty is always the best policy, don't we?
Don't unabashedly bash big businessNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, October 10, 2016
The benefits of big business - in this case, mining - must be considered when environmentalists call for huge conservation areas.
That was the argument presented in a column by Gary Vivian, president of NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines ("Limiting mining's footprint? Done," News/North, Oct. 3).
While one would expect a person who represents mining concerns to be at odds with any group that would interfere with the capitalist interests of such companies, in this case, he agrees with them.
In fact, Vivian's math shows that mining's footprint in the NWT is actually much smaller than the size of development bans being called for by environmentalists.
"Canada has made international commitments to conserve 17 per cent of the country from development. The egalitarian might say then, 'OK, how about we limit development to the same amount, 17 per cent?'" Vivian wrote.
He continued that the area of the existing mines in the NWT is equal to 0.007 per cent of the territory.
"So with my ridiculously stingy concept to limit our operating mines' footprint to one per cent of the area of the NWT, it means we could have over 100 operating mines!
"So it begs the question then, 'Why do we have to protect so much land from development?' Farming, ranching, forestry, and new cities
aren't huge possibilities, so in much of the NWT, the only development we are going to see is from mining."
While the situation is likely much different in parts of southern Canada, the North has a fantastic opportunity to grow its economy with mineral exploration and mining - providing that is done in co-operation and consultation with indigenous peoples and with respect to jobs and the environment.
The positive impact to the economy - with employed people having money to spend - is crucial to the territory's future prosperity. Not to mention the taxes the companies pay to government. Going forward, the NWT should be reducing its reliance on federal government handouts, not begging for more and more.
Isn't it preferable to see government money at all levels going toward much needed infrastructure projects, rather than to social programs driven by unemployment?
One example, so far, of a positive relationship between indigenous people, the environment and business is the Gahcho Kue diamond mine. During its 12-year lifespan, the territory's newest mine estimates it will generate $5.7 billion in wages and revenues within the Northwest Territories alone.
So before people start talking about one-size-fits-all quotas that will only discourage potential major employers, they need to have a realistic look around this place and realize its potential.
Senator dishonours Inuit experienceNunavut/News North - Monday, October 10, 2016
Nunavut's only Senator seems to have forgotten the people he is representing in Ottawa.
In a Sept. 21 opinion piece for the National Observer, Senator Dennis Patterson said "racism ... is motivating Pauktuutit, Canada's national Inuit women's association, and the Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women Council to condemn" the choice of an Iglulik-born non-Inuk woman, Qajaq Robinson, as a commissioner to the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
We do not doubt that Robinson is qualified for the role. A graduate of Nunavut's Akitsiraq Law School, Robinson is a successful lawyer in Ottawa and her Inuk husband is an RCMP officer on Parliament Hill. She speaks Inuktitut and Patterson points to her work defending the interests of indigenous people.
The problem is not with the appointee, but with Sen. Patterson's belief that he is right to question Pauktuutit's and Qulliit's motives. They are right to want an Inuk commissioner. The four other commissioners are indigenous: a judge from the Mistawasis First Nation in Saskatchewan; a former Quebec deputy minister and activist from the Innu community of Mani Utenam; a Metis law professor - who taught at Akitsiraq - from Saskatchewan; and a First Nations lawyer from Ontario.
Hopefully the Senator can understand why this routine is getting old for Inuit. This is just the latest in a series of inquiries, commissions and councils that has seen Inuit passed over for representation on matters that affect them directly. We saw the same appeals for Inuit representation ignored when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established.
It is not enough for Patterson to "live and hunt with Inuit," the credentials he cites for his own role as a white senator representing an 85 per cent Inuit territory. An examination of the expense disclosure reports on his English-only website shows he has spent almost no time over the past few years in any Nunavut communities other than Iqaluit (he went to Naujaat and Rankin Inlet in 2015 and joined Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Northern tour to Cambridge Bay and Pond Inlet in 2014).
Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Patterson despite appeals from Inuit that he appoint an Inuk following Willie Adams. Continued appointments of non-Inuit to Senate seats, panels of inquiry, and the like perpetuate the colonial narrative, and diminish the work of the people who fought for the establishment of the Inuit territory.
Such appointments tell Nunavummiut there are no Inuit qualified to represent their interests nationally. We hope that even the Senator would acknowledge this is not the case.
Patterson's job in Ottawa is to fight for Inuit. Instead of accusing Inuit organizations of racism, he should be supporting their call for an Inuk commissioner.
When Inuit fight for a seat at the table, Patterson must either get behind that fight, or get out of the way.
