Wednesday, July 15, 1998
Last Thursday, Yellowknife RCMP issued a press release warning the public about a "known sex offender" living in Yellowknife. A story and the man's picture appear on page 3 of today's Yellowknifer.
Thursday's press release stated the man had finished serving three and a half years for sexual assault causing bodily harm. He also had a record of six offences of which two involved children, one of which was of a sexual nature.
While the man's record is serious, there are many with worse records in both the North and this city. Before agreeing to the police request to publicize the offender's name and picture, Yellowknifer editors needed to know why this man was being singled out.
The RCMP gave us the information in time for today's issue. They said the federal parole board believed the man was at high risk of re-offending. Their view was backed by psychiatric assessments he was dangerous and the man's own refusal to undergo treatment.
Without that information, we ran both a legal and an ethical risk of trampling a private citizen's rights to privacy and reputation. Those rights however, were outweighed by the high risk of re-offending and the protection of the public.
That the RCMP have only taken such action once before in the North indicates it must not be done lightly. In this case, their public alert is justified.
Summer in Yellowknife means festival season. Starting with Raven Mad Daze and Aboriginal Day toward the end of June, we then spend a week celebrating the arts at the Festival of the Midnight Sun, which primes the pump for Folk on the Rocks, the high point of the Yellowknife summer social calendar.
The enthusiasm and attendance for these events are symptoms of a city that works. While the Festival of the Midnight Sun flirted with extinction for a while, there were enough people prepared to make a commitment to keep it alive for another year.
Folk on the Rocks is powered by volunteers who give their time, expertise, and even their spare bedrooms for the cause.
The festival season is a time for Yellowknifers to get together and enjoy each others' company while being entertained by each other's talents. While Folk on the Rocks is known for the quality of its imported talent, the presence of visitors tends to underscore the wealth of talent here on the home front.
No doubt an argument could be made for the beneficial impact of festivals on the city. Surely visitors come from far and wide and spend all their hard-earned money on food, accommodation and souvenirs before moving on. This is all good. But the economic case for festivals has been made elsewhere.
Today we are talking about Yellowknife's festival season just because it is so damn much fun. Summer is short in this neck of the woods, but Yellowknifers know how to wring the most out of it.
Ask anybody in February why they stick around Yellowknife and they'll tell you that the summers make it all worthwhile. The festivals are part of that. And without the organizers, the sponsors and the volunteers none of this would be possible.
As Yellowknife revels in another wonderful summer, let's remember all the people that made it possible.
Editorial comment
Jennifer Pritchett
Kivalliq News
Nunavut residents have their first real assurance that the creation of Nunavut is on schedule.
Public confidence was restored to the office of the interim commissioner last week at the Nunavut leaders summit in Rankin Inlet after the deputy ministers presented the work completed to date on the government departments. While there are some obvious challenges to implementing the decentralized model of government, the overall state of affairs seems to be good.
Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Jane Stewart said publicly that she is satisfied everything is on track and stressed that the work is now under way to ensure that there will be no interruption in government service after division.
Until the Rankin Inlet meetings, there had been some serious concern that the forming of the government was terribly behind. Fears that the project is taking too long and costing millions more than originally projected will likely still persist, but the sense that little was being done to change this, should vanish ... for now.
The deputies and their staff are working hard to get vital services in place by division and, for the most part, they have given assurances that there will be no lapse in services.
The public was able to get a sense of what was going on after the meetings were opened at the insistence of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Jose Kusugak and Interim Commissioner Jack Anawak. While only a handful of people attended, the people of Nunavut certainly have, through the media that attended, received more information about this "public" government than ever before.
The people of Nunavut deserve to know what's going on with the creation of their government. Nunavut leaders are selling this new government as one that will be unique, better than the GNWT, as more than one politician has been quoted as saying. A people's government, open to the public, they call it. Well, this will only prove to be true if the people of Nunavut are kept appraised of its development each step of the way, whether the project is ahead or behind schedule.
Otherwise, when all is said and done, people will see it as little better than its predecessor because they won't understand how it evolved.
The leaders managing this massive task agree that the pressure will only continue to mount as April 1 draws closer. With that kind of pressure looming, let's hope that the momentum created by the deputies and their staff over the last three months doesn't slow the shaping of the government or their willingness to share their developments with their constituents.
The people of Nunavut are depending on their hard work and expertise to carry them through until the new government is up and running in eight months.