Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 03/00) - Declining demand is prompting the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development to review its policy of maintaining community freezers.

Bob Bailey, assistant deputy minister of operations for RWED, said that most communities in the Northwest Territories have used freezers over the summer for many years.

"There were freezers centrally located in communities that people could access to store frozen meat products, mostly from subsistence farming," Bailey said.

"Some communities don't have them any more. Some communities have done other things. Individuals have decided to keep their own products from hunting in their own freezers," Bailey said.

"Times have changed, so what we're attempting to do is to work with the communities that have freezers, to find ways to work with them to look at other ways to do it."

Bailey said there are still about 14 or 15 community freezers in use.

"They're in varying rates of usage. Some communities use them heavily, some don't," he said. "Through our regional superintendents we've written letters to the communities that have them."

Bailey said this process began some time ago, with at least one community being sent a letter from RWED back in June 1998.

"It's not exactly a recent issue. It's been around for a while. We're attempting to deal with it in as equitable a fashion as we can."

Bailey said the department would like to have communities look after their own freezers. Would RWED still pay for the freezers?

"That depends on the discussions we have with each individual community. Some communities may want that, others may not," Bailey said.

"There may be other ways inside government to do it too, so we wanted to explore all those options with them and see what would work best for the individual communities," he said.

Bailey noted Municipal and Community Affairs provides block funding to communities, and that money to maintain freezers could perhaps be taken from that.

"What we would like to see is communities suggest ways that they would like to tackle the problem," Bailey said.

"These are community type items, and with our move to try to get communities to look after things that are community things, we thought that freezers would be one that they'd like to look after."

Bailey said the cost of running a freezer varies from community to community, but can range anywhere from $5,000 up to $30,000 annually. This includes utility and maintenance costs.

"For example, the coolant systems would have to be inspected and maybe new coolant has to be put in them, or the pumps might have to have maintenance done to them or replaced," Bailey said.

One of the areas affected is Snare Lakes. The director of finance for the First Nations Band Council said discussions with RWED are ongoing.

"We haven't made any formal decisions yet," said Kevin Armstrong.

"It's very, very important to our community. Usually in the spring and the fall we'll put some caribou meat in there. We use it all summer.

"Pretty soon the caribou will migrate past here, in about a month from now. At that time we'll probably harvest a few caribou and leave them in there, you know, use it all summer long," Armstrong said.

"We have definite plans to hang onto it."

Other areas with community freezers include Paulatuk, Tsiigehtchic, Aklavik, Sachs Harbour, Fort Good Hope, Tulita, Deline, Gameti, Wha Ti, Rae-Edzo, Dettah and Ndilo.