Clear rules needed for mall washroomsYellowknifer - Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Nobody, other than the participants, knows exactly what led to an A&W customer being roughed up by security at Centre Square Mall late last month.
That said, one rhetorical question helps to put the situation into perspective: What would have happened if the mall security guard had just given Ranelda McNeely the key to the washroom?
McNeely, a 23-year-old pregnant mother, had just eaten with her family at A&W and needed to use the washroom. She found a security guard on the lower level of the mall and asked him for a key.
Somehow, the situation escalated into a three-way fracas between McNeely, the security guard and for some reason, his mother.
A&W serves food, so it has to provide a washroom. According to A&W's manager, customers have access to a mall washroom but employees aren't given any specific policy on how to guide patrons there.
They don't stipulate customers need to use a certain washroom, and they don't advise patrons to carry any proof they are A&W customers.
Obviously, something needs to change here.
Either the mall needs to come up with an easy-to-understand policy for accessing the washroom, or security just needs to provide access without question.
It certainly does seem like at the mall, the pendulum has swung pretty hard from a laissez-faire attitude on loitering to a crackdown toward it.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. As Felix Seiler, one of the mall's owners says, the mall has long been a rough place.
Nobody deserves to come to work to be harassed, spit on or swarmed. And shop owners pay good money to rent space, so they deserve to be able to run their businesses in peace.
There will be growing pains for sure but the transition will go much more smoothly if those in security roles at the mall use their heads before judging people and perhaps even post a clear washroom and loitering policy.
This is the song that never endsYellowknifer - Wednesday, May 3, 2017
After the summer of 2014 - the worst forest fire season on record for the territory - the Department of Environment and Natural Resources reviewed its firefighting performance.
The department assessed how it responded to fires, used resources, protected buildings and other values, communicated with people and monitored fires. One of the recommendations at the time was to improve communications with the public.
Two years later, the department is still making that recommendation to itself.
Last summer, a fire along the Ingraham Trail blazed its way through Namushka Lodge at Harding Lake.
On the day it happened, one of the lodge owners met with the department to warn that his brother and 21 guests were out there. Nobody in the government tried to make contact with the people at Namushka Lodge. Nobody even tried to warn a superior about the situation. The lodge was destroyed but fortunately, nobody was hurt.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been struggling with good communication for years, and post-mortem reports such as the one into the Namushka Lodge fire illustrate this.
At some point, the department is going to have to start taking its own advice before somebody gets hurt or killed.
The lunacy of over-sensitivityEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, May 3, 2017
I've been fortunate in Rankin Inlet during the past 18-plus years to have known a fair number of people who liked to discuss "hot topics" of the day openly and honestly, without playing the race card or firing about a bunch of impossible-to-disprove labels in an effort to force silence or capitulation.
It has been my experience, those who employ such tactics usually do so when unable to counter a well-made point, get themselves involved in a discussion with someone of the opposite view who has a deeper understanding of the topic, or are really not interested in any opinion but than their own.
I've grown during the course of the discussions I've had with folks in Rankin over the years.
The most important lesson for me was learning to not only listen to an opposing viewpoint, but to try to understand it and where the person expressing it is coming from.
I can't say it's changed my opinion on a vast number of issues, but it has changed it on some, and a few of them were surprisingly so to me.
Learning how to properly evaluate the opinion of others, while being able to constructively examine my own way of looking at things, taught me to understand the different types of racism and how they differ.
It also helped me learn to differentiate between fact and wishing it were so in the opinion of others.
Learning these skills came at a vital time in my life, as the rules of debate were radically changing, and one was no longer allowed to counterpoint with the logically obvious.
If someone suggests every Canadian should have to learn Inuktitut, you risk having an ugly word tossed at you for asking is that after all English folks learn French and all Francophones learn English, our nation's two official languages.
We're supposed to be a great model of multiculturalism and racial harmony for the world, but we're becoming a nation where a minority of easily-offended types rule due to everyone's fear of being called a racist or a bigot, and it has transcended craziness to absolute lunacy.
There are two people considering court action because of the revocation of their personalized license plate.
In Winnipeg, a city with a population of 705,000, a man by the name of Nick Troller - a huge fan of the Star Trek franchise - had his plate taken when two people complained part of it was offensive to indigenous peoples.
Troller's plate proclaimed we are the Borg! Resistance is futile! And, here it comes, Assimil8.
So two people in a city of 705,000 ignored the Star Trek characterization of the evil Borg - a fictitious alien race that is, in reality, a collection of species who have been turned into cybernetic organisms to serve as worker bees while connected to a hive mind known as the Collective - and applied it to the struggles of indigenous peoples.
They're lucky Harry Potter wasn't there, or they may have quickly raised their tolerance bar.
But, if being offended by a Borg fan isn't enough, look no further than a Nova Scotia man who had his plate revoked for the spelling of his last name.
It made no difference to the handful who complained that Lorne Grabher was a real person, and there were no sexual desires or fantasies attached to his family name being on the license plate.
In Grabher's case, the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms - arguably this country's last true bastion of free speech and equal rights for all - is threatening to sue the Nova Scotia government for infringement of the freedom of expression.
We do live in the greatest country in the world, but the attack on free speech and freedom of expression, as well as the rampant over-sensitivity, has to end or it will not remain so for much longer!
Country food, not canned goodsNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, May 1, 2017
If a person could dine on bafflegab and bad decisions, then the Nutrition North program would be a hearty meal for all who use it.
Unfortunately, words and bad ideas don't fill empty stomachs or save money at the grocery store.
While people might not be dying as a direct result of Nutrition North's inadequacies, there is still an embarrassing lack of affordable healthy food in many Northern communities. The Hunger Count 2016 report from Food Banks Canada show the NWT had the sharpest spike in usage shown for all three territories – 24.9 per cent over 2015.
Nutrition North probably looked pretty tasty on bureaucrats' spreadsheets in Ottawa when it was designed.
Launched in 2011 as a replacement for the Food Mail Program, the national initiative is currently going through another round of navel-gazing. The evaluation of Nutrition North Canada is planned to be completed in fiscal 2017–18. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada will be leading the evaluation in partnership with Health Canada.
In the interim, there were some performance indicators for the current program that had deadlines of March 2017.
A few of these were: a requirement for major Northern retailers to show subsidy savings at the till receipt; 100-per-cent of funding recipients promoting nutrition education activities; and that all compliance or audit reports show that subsidies have been fully passed on to consumers.
It took veteran reporter April Hudson two weeks to get responses from various spokespeople to determine if those deadlines were made ("Nutrition North's hit or miss performance," April 24).
Some were, some weren't. The answers were vague and, as expected, dense with bureaucratic jargon that simply doesn't translate well into the language real people speak. For example, Indigenous and Northern Affairs had four other goals to meet by March 31, including having 100 per cent of audit reports show subsidies were fully passed on to consumers. The department couldn't say whether all of its goals had been met.
But spokesperson Valerie Hache said the government will be reforming the program based on feedback from Northern families when the major review of the Nutrition North program is complete.
That feedback, by the way, was partly in the form of meetings in communities across Northern Canada, including Wekweeti and Ulukhaktok.
At the Wekweeti community meeting people wanted nutritious foods to be more affordable and for flour and butter to be at a higher subsidy level since they are staples in many family homes – and are particularly important for country food preparation.
Residents also asked for assistance in starting a community garden.
At the Ulukhaktok community meeting it was made clear that the subsidies should include help to access traditional and country foods such as supplies to hunt, fish and trap these types of food.
Concerns raised regarding the quality of shipped food being sold and relying on airlines to ship food, which can mean delays in bad weather.
The Nutrition North program was also described as too complicated and not understood in the community.
There were calls for Nutrition North to support the building of greenhouses, educational programs related to developing greenhouses (and canning for preservation), and the related materials needed (vegetable seeds/seedlings, soil).
We hope the feds listen to the people in the communities when they ask for help accessing country food, which has plenty of nutrients and is enjoyed much more than canned goods, wilted veggies and small pieces of expensive meat from the south.
Community gardens should also be a major component in the revamped Nutrition North's mission statement, as it helps people grow nutritious food in a sustainable fashion and also gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment.
Nutrition North as it stands has been a failure. It needs a complete overhaul, since it's not keeping people from going hungry and it's not lowering the costs of food Northerners really eat.
Vacant buildings waste moneyNunavut/News North - Monday, May 1, 2017
Iqaluit city council last month committed $150,000 per year for five years to support the city's homeless shelter.
Having visited the facility, we know that the support is critical. In January, we called on the city and its residents to help the city's most vulnerable men, and the city is showing it is prepared to do its share.
Now it is time for the territory to step up.
In communities across Nunavut, buildings – offices, apartments, and homes – sit empty while the government decides what or who will use the space.
In many cases, it's wise planning. Apartments are reserved for health professionals who might only be in town for part of the year but they stay long enough when they come that hotels become cost-prohibitive. Others are waiting for long-term workers, such as teachers, to be hired.
This is easy for regular folks to accept.
What is unacceptable is the number of buildings sitting vacant for ages without explanation.
Iqaluit city councillor Joanasie Akumalik has flagged the former Akausisarvik mental health centre as one such building. As Uquutaq Shelter Society executive director Doug Cox says, "It's heated, plowed, the lights are on."
Akumalik wants the territory to donate the space to the city. The government moved the mental health centre to a renovated facility four years ago this month. Uquutaq has paid $8,000 per month in rent, $96,000 per year, for a total of $384,000 over those four years.
In that time, what good work could that money have done to the benefit of the city's homeless men? While the old building continues to sit empty – burning territorial funds to keep it warm, lit, and plowed – the city is forced to duplicate that spending.
Iqaluit is not the only place where this issue is on people's minds. Tununiq MLA Joe Enook has raised the point in the legislature since he first took office to represent the people of Pond Inlet in 2011.
Under pressure to move to the hamlet after his election, he did so without a space for him. He lived in a shack for months, while GN staff houses sat empty. He said at the time that some had been empty for years.
Enook eventually found a house but just over a year ago, he raised the point again in the legislature. Finance Minister Keith Peterson, whose department is responsible for human resources, noted that the government was aware of the issue but indicated no end to the situation.
Enough is enough.
As an October election approaches, Nunavummiut deserve to know what is happening in their communities on this file. Which buildings are being held for which positions, how long have they been vacant, and what progress is being made to fill them?
It may not solve the problem but some transparency would help people decide whether their MLAs are doing a good job on this file and perhaps offer some advice on how to fix the problem.
Democracy at a price Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, April 28, 2017
After discovering contaminated soil during a Con Road construction project, city administration suggested to council that some of the responsibility, such as cost, for environmental cleanup ought to be borne by owners of the condominium adjacent to the contamination site.
Their reasoning went as follows: there appears to have been a fuel spill; the condos near the spill use heating fuel; therefore, there must have been a spill related to those condos and the owners should pay up.
This theory ignores the history of industrial use at the site where the condos now stand. Local historian Ryan Silke took the time to explain to Yellowknifer that a commercial trucking depot and warehouse operated in the area from 1959 into the 1980s.
Silke is a very knowledgeable person but it stands reason that it would be best to get this information confirmed by an official source - such as city hall where local property records are kept.
Alas, when Yellowknifer asked to see documents on the land in question the newspaper was told to fill out a form and pay a $100 filing fee to get the information.
The city will argue this is the cost of providing a service. Somebody at city hall is going to have type in the name of the property and retrieve the electronic record, or - God forbid - walk into a room somewhere and pull the paper file. Then scan it. And after all that, e-mail the file.
To this we say, why don't you just make that $500? Or how about $1,000? Why not charge $100 every time a city official grants an interview with media? After all, time is money.
If the city, whose budget has doubled since 2006 even though the city's population has not, finds itself short on cash, perhaps it should charge an additional service fee every time it interacts with a member of the general public. Perhaps charge an extra $10 when someone stops by to purchase a snowmobile licence. Or another $50 to buy a permit to build a fence.
A meeting with the mayor or senior administrative officer should definitely cost a fair penny. The city might want to consider charging admission for council meetings as well. After all, it costs money to staff these meetings and draw up an agenda.
Or, perhaps the city will realize that it exists solely for the people it serves, and when the media asks it questions it's to provide the people with answers.
And when the city demands money for information, it's not sound fiscal management it is exercising but an attempt to squelch questions it doesn't want to answer. And that's not democratic, accountable or transparent.
Flying in witnesses waste time and money Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, April 28, 2017
The wheels of justice turn slowly and at great expense apparently.
The system demands due process for all involved, from the accused being charged and having their day in court to witnesses giving testimony, to judges deciding guilt or innocence and doling out sentences or acquittals.
This is all perfectly understandable.
What is not is flying witnesses halfway around the world to testify against a man who is not even facing criminal charges.
This is what happened earlier this month when the Department of Justice flew two accident victims from Japan to testify in a careless driving case.
Genanaw Tamene, 44, is accused of striking the two tourists with his vehicle at a Franklin Avenue intersection last summer. The maximum penalty for careless driving under the Motor Vehicle Act is six months in jail, a $5,000 fine or both.
To properly prosecute this case the department felt it necessary they appear in person.
Otherwise, they would have to rely on testimony by video, and worst of worsts - operate outside of business hours due to the 15-hour time difference with Japan.
Someone should be charged for the careless waste of money.
If the courts can't think out of the box every so often while watching their costs, then the justice system is in more trouble than people think.
Finding one's pride and meaning in lifeInuvik Drum - Thursday, April 27, 2016
The stories that Sarah Jerome and Jordan Peterson told of their path to finding what it means to be proud to be Gwich'in are universal, though the circumstances are different with each person.
Everyone, no matter heritage, home or upbringing, embarks from birth on a constant journey to find meaning and identity.
For some it might come more naturally, and others struggle for years to answer the 'why' to everything.
Identity and meaning are vital to human achievement and progressing the world in a positive manner.
The absence of such grounding can cause at best listlessness, and at worst suicide, when the person sees no point to continue and no pride in existence.
Consciousness can flip on a dime and people are closer to each end of the spectrum at any given moment than might be assumed.
Peterson, in his speech at the 25th anniversary for the Gwich'in land claims event, explained how Gwich'in teachings differ from area to area.
What it means to be proud to be Gwich'in to one person might not be the same to another. The teachings one holds valuable might not be the same as another's.
Jerome too offers no one path or 'right answer' to finding out what identity is and why a person should be proud of his or her heritage.
That's a task every individual must answer alone, and it is a fluid concept, changing with the times and circumstances.
Jerome, for example, now finds meaning in not letting her weakening sense of hearing hold her back.
Identity and pride don't have to come from some grand event or a difficult childhood such as some of those in residential school experienced. It doesn't need to spawn from a bad beginning at all.
For many, though, overcoming an obstacle is key to their identity. For others, it is simply passion that drives their meaning, finding what makes them tick and diving head-first into it.
The question of how to find pride and meaning in life is as old as humankind for a reason. It is not due to be answered conclusively any time soon.
As wise as elders may be, they cannot tell youth what their identity is. They can only impart their stories of how they found their own identity and put the question in youths' minds.
Still dealing with the intergenerational effects of residential school, youth may find it difficult to articulate their identity in rapidly changing circumstances.
But it's no surprise many Northern leaders past and present, many responsible for negotiating land claims and other advancements for their people, are those who went through severe challenges themselves.
As the Chinese proverb says, the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire.
