One important purpose of the construction downtown is to fix the confusing and dangerous traffic situation.

What is supposed to be a parking lane and traffic lane in both directions, four lanes in rush hour, is often turned into four lanes and a parking lane evenings and afternoons.

Tiny signs listing appropriate parking times are supposed to let people know how many lanes there are but these fall far short of eliminating the hazard of some one's car door being ripped off.

Unfortunately, last summer's construction between 53 Street and 51 Street was ineffective because it did not go far enough.

With all the disruption downtown this summer, we hope when the dust settles, the traffic confusion is cleared up for good.

On the face of it, congratulations are in order to Nishi Khon/SNC-Lavalin for winning the contract to act as project engineering manager for the proposed Diavik diamond mine.

The company is jointly owned by Dogrib Group of Companies and SNC-Lavalin, an internationally known management firm.

The decision bodes well for Northern employment but one question nags. Aren't these the same Dogrib that have called for another review of the Diavik proposal?

Dogrib Grand Chief Joe Rabesca recently said, "Our people have no confidence in the report or its conclusions," referring to the comprehensive review.

The apparent separation of political responsibility and economic opportunity may be a practical approach but it is also confusing. Where do the politics end and the economics begin?

For plenty of Yellowknifers summer means boating. No surprise there, the city is surrounded by beautiful lakes and rivers.

What is a mystery, however, is the fact that there is only one public boat launch in Yellowknife and it is located in one of the most congested parts of town.

The lineups to get a boat in or out of the water, the lack of adequate parking for vehicles with trailers, the narrow streets and the awkward access to the lake from the road all add up to a fiasco of the first order.

It is ironic that here in the North, on one of the largest uninhabited shorelines in the continent, there is only one boat launch.

Maybe the site was a good idea at the time, but times have changed. Let's open the discussion on the city's boating facilities.

While we're creating maps to show what we think of as important around our homes, could we produce one that shows how to get to our homes at the same time?

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society recently sponsored a mapping day to create overlay maps with various highlights around people's homes: special places, water, wildlife, things of that nature.

While they're in the process, could they produce a street map of Yellowknife that actually shows where the streets are? While Yellowknife is not, by and large, a difficult city to get around in, visitors are newcomers are presented with teeny little maps with no grid and with street names are that are too small to read.

Tourism is a growing industry in the North and, if we want to make it easy, we should be willing to clearly tell people where to go.

Regular readers of Kivalliq News know, for the most part, we have adapted a wait-and-see stance with the vast majority of our new Nunavut government's policies.

While we have expressed concern -- some policies, such as decentralization, often work much better in theory than practical application -- the new legislative assembly deserves a fair chance at initiating its policies and proving them to be workable.

That being said, the directive being given to regional territorial government employees from the ministerial level to not answer questions from the public or its media is totally unacceptable.

Regional government employees are being told to direct all questions to their various minister's departments and failure to do so, as in the case of one Iqaluit employee, will result in disciplinary procedures.

What this does is effectively remove any semblance of public accountability from the front line or, "grassroots" employees. It also allows capital spin doctors to spend time on each and every issue before releasing whatever information they feel the public has a right, or a need, to know.

This is the type of clandestine directive more at home in a Nixon-styled administration built on secrecy and paranoia than one would expect from a new government which has been trumpeting accessibility, smooth communication and bringing government closer to the people as its main cornerstones to governing our new territory.

Denying the public and its media the right to ask questions of those implementing government initiatives at the grassroots level denies public scrutiny of those initiatives. And, just as importantly, it seriously retards the public's ability to accurately gauge just who in their respective communities is doing an adequate job and deserving of support in their position.

Major issues, such as accusations of wrongdoing or poor work performance, should be handled by top government officials, at least at the initial stages. However, it speaks volumes about our new government's faith in its frontline employees when it denies them the ability to field routine questions on their department's initiatives, performance, goals and objectives.

It seems accountability is another concept that works better in theory for our new government than it does in practical application. One can't help but wonder just how many of Nunavut's ambitious programs and initiatives will ever be properly realized with most of our ministers and deputy ministers spending most of their days on the phone.

Maybe the whole point is for only the easy questions to be answered to free up more time for the ministers. Or, perhaps, when things do go wrong -- and they will -- our new government has decided a blame-by-committee approach is in its best interests to adopt.

If that, indeed, is the case, they are mapping out a very tricky course for their departments to navigate, one fraught with danger where regional employees would be well-served to beware of falling objects from very high places.