The timing couldn't be better for Northern aboriginal groups to become seriously involved in the international lobby to ban chemical pollutants.
The fact that the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada and the Dene and Metis Nations were included in the recent United Nation's conference on contaminants, held last month in Nairobi, Kenya, shows just how important this issue is to people North of 60.
These non-governmental agencies clearly realize the health hazards these toxins pose to the Arctic food chain.
Now, if we could only get the government involved showing the same level of interest, we'd actually be getting somewhere.
Across the Northwest Territories, fur sales account for $1.3 million in much-needed income for trappers. Prices for fur are determined by auction in markets in the south.
However, the auction-house practice of using Northern furs to raise the value of bundles of lower quality pelts means that Northern trappers aren't getting the full value of their harvest.
A new government initiative aims to change all that. This season Northern furs will be marketed as a private collection through a dealer.
The aim is to get more money for superior Northern pelts.
Competing in the fickle market of the fashion world is difficult at best. Taking control of the marketing is a solid step in the right direction.
Craig Clark and the injured raven he was trying to save were caught in a Catch-22 situation and as a result, the raven was killed.
Clark wanted to get a permit from the Amarok Hunters and Trappers Association that would let him keep the bird. He had a meeting scheduled with the board of the HTA, but until he actually had that piece of paper in his hand, he was in violation of the Wildlife Act.
The wildlife officers that seized the bird had every legal right to do so. And their actions were further justified when the chair of the HTA reported that it was unlikely that Clark would have been granted a permit.
What remains unclear is at what point the government employees decided that they should kill the bird: before Clark got to attend that meeting, or before the HTA was consulted.
Yes, the board of hunters would likely have wanted to see the bird put out of its misery. It probably wouldn't have been able to fly again and nobody wants to see a maimed wild animal kept in captivity.
But the wildlife officers that killed the raven acted before the board had handed down their decision and they had no right to do that. It was not their within their jurisdiction. We can only hope the review that has been ordered by the deputy minister of the department of resources, wildlife and economic development will look at all of these factors and judge the situation and those decisions accordingly.
This is a case of the bureaucracy running amuck. Clark was playing by the rules. He had made reasonable attempts to secure the paperwork and was just waiting on the HTA.
While in the grand scheme of things, it was just the life of one bird. But it points to the absolute rigidity and disregard with which some government employees act. Workers for the government of Nunavut would be wise to look at this as an example of how not to conduct themselves.
Editorial Comment
Glen Korstrum
Inuvik Drum
A man dying of cystic fibrosis missed out on the opportunity for a lung transplant this week because intensive-care units were jammed.
A healthy set of lungs from a 31-year-old donor was available but two other transplant operations were taking place and the hospital did not have enough intensive- care beds.
Inuvik?
No, Toronto. This shows how a smooth-functioning health-care system is a concern even in Canada's largest city.
When staff tried to transfer one of its intensive- care patients to another hospital to make room for this potential transplant, they couldn't. All other intensive-care units across the city were tied up.
It is cases like this that serve to remind everyone that as easy as it is to critique the quality of various services in Inuvik, the same concerns are being raised all across Canada.
Often the attacks come with a political motivation to get more funding for this or that. The strategy is, "the best defence is a good offence -- attack."
But politics being the dangerous game it is, attacks can often backfire and cause more harm than good. This is the "what comes around goes around" scenario.
So, as Mackenzie Delta MLA David Krutko gets set to table two more petitions in the NWT legislature remonstrating area health care, it's healthy to keep in mind that speaking out could prompt qualified professionals to wonder whether it is really worth sticking around to hear the debate.
Krutko was simply forwarding complaints from constituents -- what a populist politician is supposed to do even if it means being seen as a bit of a maverick.
He tabled one petition and Health Minister Kelvin Ng dismissed it by saying everything was "adequate."
That only encouraged eager signature donors to find other petitions.
Finance Minister Paul Martin has hinted that when he releases the federal budget later this month, health will be the overwhelming priority.
Money that trickles down will help Beaufort Delta residents get better care either through better trained or more staff and better or more equipment.
In the meantime, it is worth a thought that health funding comes from tax dollars, and whenever there is a desire for more funding, that means higher taxes.
Currently, area residents enjoy massive subsidization from the rest of Canada.
Health care can always be improved. But in the meantime, it may do everyone a lot more good to be thankful for the level of service we do have.
Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum
It's great that Nahanni Butte, Fort Liard, Wrigley, Jean Marie River and Trout Lake are on the verge of having the Internet made available to them.
I can remember hearing that term "information highway" years ago and being quite indifferent to it. It quickly became cliche and, for me, it was quite vague, undefined. I was tired of constantly hearing those words on the news. Frankly, I didn't understand what they meant. Not having used the Internet until university, when it was often referred to as the World Wide Web (WWW), I couldn't conceive just how much information is available through this medium.
The schools in the Deh Cho region are about to be equipped with a phenomenal tool. Being relatively remote with limited access to library materials, these communities will now be able to find out practically anything about anything.
With numerous search engines available, all you have to do is type in a place, name or subject and, voila, instant information. Of course, the problem then becomes weeding out precisely what you are looking for. Many topics will result in the retrieval of hundreds of thousands of Web sites where, with the click of a mouse, you can visit to determine if it's what you wanted. Rather than broad topics, you have to carefully choose your cue words and hope to pare down the number of sites that match your request.
For example, if your child is doing a report on something as general as "snow" and plugs that word into a search engine, then more than 190,000 matches will come up. In addition to information on snow flakes, there's offerings on ski reports, Snow Lake, Manitoba, Disney's Snow White, a product called the Frost-o-Matic, profiles of baseball player J.T. Snow and basketball player Eric Snow and much, much more.
Unfortunately, there's also a lot of junk out there on the Internet. Like television, there's plenty of promotional material and mind candy. The potential for good outweighs the bad, however. If used properly, the Internet is a great way to find the information you're looking for and who knows what else you may discover along the way.
E-mail, or electronic mail, will now be readily available as well. For those who enjoy the process of sitting down with a pen and paper and jotting down a letter, perhaps e-mail won't appear to be much of a blessing. On the other hand, for those who can't bring themselves to write letters or who can't stand the thought that everything in it will be outdated by a week when it finally arrives at its destination, e-mail is a godsend. You can type a message on the computer and get it to someone across the country or around the world within a matter of seconds. If they check their mail frequently, they could respond the very same day.
This opens up the possibility of students having pen-pals with whom they can correspond frequently rather than two or three times per year.
The possibilities are endless.