City council must be flying at an altitude where the oxygen is thin. Why else would it pass a motion chastising First Air's decision to transfer employees to Edmonton from Yellowknife? Wendy Bisaro went so far as to suggest a boycott.

What are they thinking? Yes, councillors are entitled to their opinions, but that doesn't extend to using their position to bash a corporate citizen that does a lot for Yellowknife.

While the loss to Yellowknife of the flight attendant and purser jobs will be painful, councillors have overstepped their bounds.

The task before them is to manage the city effectively. That job description includes ensuring Yellowknife remains business-friendly. It means keeping taxes and land costs affordable, and doing their best to make our city a great place to live.

Condemning a business for making a decision that is in a company's best interest is not one of their duties.

In fact, it's in Yellowknife's best interest that First Air remains viable. We want and need two strong airlines -- something that is by no means assured in today's cut-throat travel market.

Better would have been an invitation to both First Air and Canadian North to explore effective ways the city can lend a hand.

City officials, too, seem to have short memories that First Air tried to give Japanese tourism a boost with direct flights between Yellowknife and Vancouver. If it wasn't for the actions of a few terrorists, this could have been a banner year for tourism.

And it certainly doesn't recognize how much First Air contributes to the city, from sponsoring events to providing discount fares and numerous free flights.

City council owes First Air an apology.

While it is a good thing Coun. Ben McDonald is not the recruiting officer for the RCMP, his recent comments will hopefully draw much-needed attention to the issue of pregnant women in the police force.

McDonald will unfortunately be remembered as much for drawing attention to the issue as he will for his poor choice of words: "If this detachment accepts women members they're crazy."

Thankfully, Yellowknife RCMP Staff Sgt. Terry Scott was not crazy enough to buy into McDonald's suggestion on how the detachment should handle maternity leaves.

But any finger- pointing in this situation should be directed mainly at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, not McDonald or members of our Yellowknife detachment.

It is ironic that an organization that encourages women to join, has no policy to handle issues related to motherhood. It is not as if the RCMP hasn't had substantial time to draw up a policy. Canada's first female mounties were hired in 1974. Today, there are about 2,045 female regular RCMP members who make up about 14 per cent of the force.

Police offer essential services and not replacing those on maternity leave is not wise.

Using current standards, if half the officers at a 30-member detachment are women and eight of them get pregnant at roughly the same time, the other 22 members will have to carry their workload for up to a year.

That would be a particularly frightening scenario in Yellowknife where officers are saying they are already overloaded.

The RCMP has to establish a pool of officers who fill in for temporary positions. If that is not an option, RCMP administrators will just have to hit the streets.

Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News

You can't blame Rankin Inlet hamlet councillors for feeling like they're between a rock and a hard place.

Council has been painted as being responsible for some of the delays in construction of a regional health facility in Rankin. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The hamlet has bent over backwards time and time again to accommodate the wishes of both the Sakku Investments Corp. and the Nunavut government. That trend continued last week with the granting to Sakku of a right-to-occupy permit to clear snow, survey and sink pilings into the health facility lot.

The hamlet has assurances from Community Government and Transportation that it will not be held liable for contravening its own bylaw, which states all development permits must go through a 14-day waiting period.

The time is for a notice of development to be posted in the hamlet to give residents a chance to voice any concerns they may have.

Council's decision is a smart one, enabling work to finally proceed on the long-awaited project. At the same time, it does nothing to diminish council's position on the final lease agreement -- and that is the key point for the hamlet.

The land comes with a price tag of no less than $350,000, payable to the hamlet of Rankin Inlet. The lot is held in reserve for the health facility, regardless of who the ultimate lease holder turns out to be.

Council is positioning itself carefully so it doesn't get caught in negotiations between Sakku and the territorial government.

The original council motion was for the lot to be designated for the development of a health facility. It did not grant preferential treatment towards any development company. The final title holder will negotiate their lease agreement with the hamlet.

This is a significant point, since it doesn't put the government in a position of having to pay fair market value on the lot should it eventually be the lease holder. It also clears the way for the government and Sakku to work out a development deal beneficial to both, without either party having a market value advantage in the final negotiations.

This is especially important to the government, which was criticized by the auditor general for entering into long-term lease agreements with development companies.

Hamlet council can now sit back and wait for the two sides to strike a deal while development proceeds. Neutrality is the best position for the hamlet to adopt during these proceedings.

Editorial Comment
Terry Halifax
Inuvik Drum

The price of legal suicide just got higher.

Smokers were hit with a 75 cent per pack tax increase.

I don't have a gripe about the new tax, I think if it prompts people to quit or never start, it's worth it.

However, I tend to be pretty cynical about new taxes and can't help but wonder about the real motivation here.

If young people are determined to smoke, 75 cents isn't going to make much of a difference.

It seems to me, that if the government really wanted kids to quit smoking, they'd make it illegal for them to do so.

If it's illegal for stores to sell to young people, why isn't also it illegal for young people to possess or consume tobacco, as it is with alcohol and heroin?

Hard truth is, our governments have become as addicted to the tax as smokers are to the drug. If the feds were truly committed to improving the health of the nation, they'd outlaw the product completely, but in the interim, lawmakers could at least put some teeth in the tobacco laws we already have.

A mouse that roared

I was amazed to learn that the amendment to U.S. President George Bush's Energy Security Act was quashed in Congress last week.

It's inspiring to see what a few determined people can do to get their voices heard -- even thousands of miles away.

The people who depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd for subsistence must be elated that there are politicians in Washington like Democrats Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry who took on the president and some oil-hungry Alaskans to kill the bill. We haven't heard the last of this issue and with elections coming soon in America, we might see another battle on the plains of ANWR.

Home-grown hero

It was a big treat to meet pilot Cecil Hansen on his turnaround from Edmonton.

The North imports so many of its pilots, it is refreshing to see a success that came right out of the Delta.

Aviation is such a big part of life in the North, one would think more young people would be at the controls of the big birds.

With Hansen as a role model, perhaps a few local kids will take interest.

Stand up and be counted

Good to see the census folks are taking another crack at the count in Inuvik.

I don't know what went wrong the first time the count happened, but somebody must have run out of fingers and toes.

Having been away from Inuvik for two years, even I noticed a lot more people here. New houses all over town, apartment buildings and just try and find a parking spot downtown.

I wasn't here when the last count was taken, but I'm sure there are quite a few more people here now during the boom, than their was in the recession.

Statistics Canada will be counting houses this time around. While I know a house is a big thing and hard to miss, maybe we should all get out and shovel our roofs and walks to make then even more visible -- we don't want to get missed this time.

Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum, Fort Simpson

Surely the late, great Elvis Presley wasn't singing of self-government negotiations when he crooned, "We can't go on together with suspicious minds."

Yet those very words ring true in light of last week's governance workshop in Fort Simpson. The Deh Cho First Nations and the federal government continue to creep forward ever so cautiously while the DCFN constantly casts a wary glance across the table.

This distrust remains despite federal negotiator Robin Aitken's repeated reassurance that Canada doesn't have anything up its sleeve. He is adamant that the federal negotiating team is pushing the negotiations envelope in Ottawa at the insistence of the DCFN.

A final agreement isn't projected to be signed for six or seven years. It would be excruciating for the two parties to carry on with so little confidence in each other. The Deh Cho should clearly state what sort of gesture of good faith they are seeking from the federal government.

In the meantime, the concept of self-government is starting to be examined more closely. At last week's governance workshop, the analogy of building one house (representing one government) was tossed around frequently. As facilitator Peter Russell pointed out, there are a lot of details about that house that have yet to be worked out.

Specifically, who holds power in what areas must be determined. At a community level it seems that Deh Cho leaders and elders want a single government to oversee everything including garbage collection and sewage. DCFN chief negotiator Chris Reid said the funding relationship with Ottawa must be direct, avoiding the loss of money to bureaucracy.

The idea of having single governments in the communities isn't a problem for some. In Wrigley, Kakisa, Trout Lake and Nahanni Butte, for example, the First Nations already administer programs and services. In essence, they already have their own local government.

The picture is a little on the fuzzy side for communities like Fort Simpson, Hay River, Fort Liard and Fort Providence, though. Each of those communities has a municipal government, a First Nations government and a Metis board.

There were references to how the Combined Council Alliance in Fort Providence is a good starting point for merging local government responsibilities.

However, there were also signs that on a regional level, proportional representation might become an issue. Hay River Mayor Duncan McNeill took umbrage with the concept of one community, one representative.

Hay River, he noted, comprises 3,600 people, more than the rest of the Deh Cho communities combined. Why should Hay River settle for a single representative? That's a tough question that will have to be answered somehow.

There are plenty of issues to be sorted out yet. The surface has just been scratched.

Deh Cho residents should keep abreast of these negotiations and be sure to ask questions or voice concerns.

Incorrect information appeared in "City takes aim at First Air," which appeared this Wednesday. The article said three city jobs could disappear for each purser lost. It should have read, three total Yellowknife jobs could be lost with the First Air restructuring.

In addition, in "Council gives hospital deadline," Coun. Dave McCann opposed the motion to impose a deadline for the hospital.

Yellowknifer regrets the errors.