Wednesday, March 07, 2001
Locked beneath the frozen landscape is a wealth of riches.
There are diamonds, gold, oil and gas and a variety of exotic, expensive and potentially lucrative metals.
Getting to them takes hundreds of millions of dollars and visionaries who are willing to work for years to make their dreams come true.
Unfortunately, the rewards that come with development have not accrued to the NWT.
We don't have the jobs, roads, schools or other infrastructure that ordinarily accompany such wealth. The territorial government still exists on the goodwill of Ottawa.
If things don't change, for example, federal coffers will grow by as much as $70 billion from resource royalties paid by new mines and gas fields.
If the federal government doesn't agree that there is an imbalance, an estimated 35 per cent of the economic impact, and three-quarters of the jobs from development in the Slave Geographic Province will go outside the territory.
The territorial government has a plan: it's called the Non-Renewable Resource Strategy and it calls for a $339 million investment in the North.
Because of the constraints that come with being a ward of the federal government, the NWT cannot do it alone. It needs Ottawa to come through with tens of millions of dollars for infrastructure and a debt wall that lets us build now against the promise of tomorrow's wealth.
That strategy was given to Federal Finance Minister Paul Martin on Sunday.
Now he must read it and see the wisdom in building a territory.
Final exams, moving out, checking marks and finding a job are some of the stressful day-to-day activities cash-strapped students face at the end of a university school year.
And just to raise the bar, Northern students normally have to wait until they travel thousands of miles back to their homes before they can begin to search for a job.
But that has all changed this year with the launch of a student employment Web site by the GNWT and NorthWIN.
The site puts technology to work in a way that will benefit both employers and students.
Being able to find a job while still down south will ease the burden students feel and let employers rest easy knowing help is on the way.
The move to add more money for child protection workers does little to alleviate the crisis facing Yellowknife.
Last week Health and Social Services Minister Jane Groenewegen pumped $1.2 million into a "critical investment fund." Some of the money will go to hire 10 child protection workers in the NWT, including three for Yellowknife.
But as far as we can see, this action in no way will address the depth of problems facing child protection workers in this city. A Child Welfare League report last year suggested Yellowknife needs 10 new workers.
As well, the new staff only replace temporary workers hired in December when problems about overloaded workers became public.
The new workers are a step in the right direction, but only a step.
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News
It is good to see Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) decide to try and negotiate an end to the Noah Kadlak situation in Coral Harbour before taking the matter back before the courts.
However this seemingly never-ending saga on the traditional polar bear hunt finally plays out -- one thing we don't need to see is another large sum of beneficiaries' money going into the all ready deep pockets of lawyers willing to fight the good fight for such a nobel and justifiable cause.
One thing that does worry us here at Kivalliq News, however, is NTI president Paul Quassa's assertion that every Inuit has the right to conduct the same type of hunt that Kadlak proposes.
Should Kadlak ever succeed in his quest, it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to envision a number of testosterone driven young hunters, desperately lacking in experience, heading out onto the land for their first traditional kill.
And, although we applaud NTI's decision to take the path of negotiation over that of the courts, we are concerned over Quassa's apparent stance that NTI's interpretation of the Land Claims Agreement completely outweighs the wishes of the majority of Nunavummiut.
Should the vocal majority not want NTI to return to court to battle the Department of Sustainable Development, yet again, over Kadlak's proposal, Quassa should listen.
Who decides how much money should be spent by the Nunavut Government and NTI fighting over one proposal, to kill one bear?
This money has to come for somewhere and where it would eventually come from is the pockets of all Nunavummiut.
With so many needing so much in our fledgling territory, it is hard to justify the costs of another court battle over a single hunting proposal.
There seems to be little doubt Quassa firmly believes in the stance he has taken.
And, as such, he should use every ploy in his considerable political arsenal to have Minister Akesuk see things his way during the upcoming negotiations.
However, at the end of the day, should the minister still give thumbs down to the proposal, it would be in the best interests of all Nunavummiut for Quassa to accept his decision, once and for all.
Should this matter end up back in court, we won't have all that long to wait until the next NTI election to find out how Quassa fared in judging popular opinion.
Editorial Comment
Malcolm Gorrill
Inuvik Drum
Doctors, it would seem, are in short supply in rural areas across the nation.
The local hospital is struggling with that issue right now. The Inuvik Regional Health and Social Services Board would like to attract two doctors here, and would like to have them stay on for some time.
But the board maintains this is not an easy task, though for a different reason than the difficulties they are having in attracting nurses.
There's a shortage of nurses in Canada, and across the world. In contrast, in Canada there are enough doctors to go around, they're just distributed wrong.
It seems that more and more doctors want to practise in cities.
This is a problem without an easy solution, but it would seem efforts will need to be made by many groups.
One thing that's been suggested is for universities to actively seek out more med students from rural areas, in hopes that when they graduate most will work in rural communities.
Another suggestion is to make med students have rural practicums. This would allow students to help address shortages, plus it would allow them to sample what rural medicine can be like.
Some universities are doing that. Living proof is Bevan Hughes, a second-year resident in the rural family medicine program at the University of British Columbia. Hughes is from a city (Ottawa), but plans to conduct a rural practice, in part because he enjoys the great outdoors.
Interestingly, Hughes revealed many of his colleagues don't plan on a rural practice, in part because of the isolation, as well as the extra responsibility involved.
That goes back to some of the perceived drawbacks of rural areas in the minds of med grads. In major centres doctors can send seriously ill patients to a specialist with just a short ambulance ride.
That doesn't apply in a place like Inuvik, where medevac rides are the only option for patients needing additional help.
This creates more pressure and responsibility for doctors in communities like this than they would usually face in large centres.
There's another reason med grads are reluctant to leave large centres. After completing four years of undergraduate studies and another four years of medical school, all of which is done in large centres, grads have met a lot of people and put down roots.
It is understandable that many might be reluctant to pack up everything and head to a remote area that they may know nothing about.
Congratulations speedsters
Congrats are due to Inuvik speed skaters Mark Orbell, Alyssa Carpenter, Chris Lennie, Kelly McLeod and Sam Anderson. They all fared well recently at the NWT Speed Skating Championships in Yellowknife.
Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum, Fort Simpson
As one looked around the classroom at Deh Cho Hall, it may have appeared an odd juxtaposition. Here was a white man, Philip Howard, one of the foremost authorities on the Slavey language, teaching Dene about Slavey grammar.
It's not so unusual, however, when one reflects on the historical context. The Dene have oral histories because their's was not traditionally a literate society. It's western culture that introduced them to the written word.
For a Dene to have accomplished what Howard has done would have taken a thoroughly western education, particularly in English, and then they would have had to turn around and apply those linguistic principles and concepts to the Slavey language. It's quite feasible that scenario could have occurred, but Howard beat everyone to it.
That's not to say the Dene haven't made meaningful contributions to the language. Andy Norwegian, the cultural and Slavey language specialist for the Deh Cho Divisional Board of Education, for instance, continues to revise and update the vocabulary.
Yet, there is no denying that Howard's story is a fascinating one. Imagine sitting in a library thousands of miles away and, based on your limited research, deciding that you're going to travel to a distant land to advance a language that you don't even know how to speak.
He and his wife Margaret had initially settled in Fort Nelson, B.C., but found there were too many English-speaking people, so they loaded their belongings on a barge operated by legendary trapper and merchant Dick Turner and travelled the waterways to Nahanni Butte. From then on, they were essentially immersed in Slavey.
Perhaps the most meaningful contribution anyone can make to the Slavey language is to continue to speak it or learn to speak it. Slavey, like the majority of aboriginal languages, is dying.
Howard has practically made a lifetime of preserving the language on paper, but he fears it is gradually on its way to extinction.
"There are too many families where the parents are not speaking (Slavey) to the kids. If they don't use it in the home, it's going to die," Howard said.
He has made his contribution to the language.
Deh Cho First Nations leaders and elders have pledged to speak Slavey at leadership assemblies.
Now it's up to each household to do its part if the Slavey language is to endure.