To a corporation that reported $17.245 billion in revenues in 2001, how much does $350,000 over four years mean to the bottom line?

Probably not as much as it means to school libraries across the Northwest Territories which will benefit from Imperial Oil's donation.

It will buy books, essential tools for learning.

That's important in a territory where one-quarter of aboriginal people have less than a Grade 9 education, dooming them to low-paying jobs or no jobs at all.

It's no secret that literacy is a big problem in the North.

Diamond mining companies have to hold special literacy classes for their workers.

The territorial government committed $1.657 million to literacy and adult basic education this year and spends $194,000 on community library services annually.

Kids will benefit

To city schools, the donation is a bonus ... helping Yellowknife Education District No. 1 and Yellowknife Catholic Schools improve the size and quality of their library collections.

Computers are important, but kids learn to read with books and still rely on them for day-to-day learning.

Thanks to this money, our kids will benefit from having bigger, newer, better libraries.

The donation is a reminder to parents that reading is important.

It also sets a standard for corporate involvement in the North that other companies wanting to do business here must recognize.

Imperial Oil has served notice that it cares about the people who live in the NWT.

Sure, they stand to profit from development of a natural gas pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley, but no one told the company it had to put up this money.

It's not part of a negotiated socio-economic accord. It's a goodwill gesture that will help our kids.

It's a financial commitment that can't be ignored or written off as propaganda.

Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News

We here at Kivalliq News are certainly sympathetic to the needs of our region's smaller communities.

However, there has to be a better way to meet those needs than to cut program funding in larger communities which have exceptional track records of success.

The numbers put up during the past year at the Rankin Inlet Work Centre are quite impressive.

There can be no downplaying the significance of $750,000 being pumped into the local economy.

But, it's not just the lost monetary value of the Work Centre that concerns us.

We've all heard the government rhetoric on trying to get more people gainfully employed and independent.

The Work Centre performed a number of invaluable services to the very people most in need of help to reach self-dependency. While all the services provided were important, the temporary job placement service stood out as a beacon of hope to many in the community.

Not only were people building up job skills and gaining valuable work experience, they were also establishing themselves with local employers for better opportunities to come.

As the Department of Education itself points out, it had helped fund the Work Centre for the past two years.

Why now is the decision made to turn down the proposal on the grounds of service duplication?

Another point to consider is our high rate of suicide in this region. People with few job skills and limited employment opportunities are in a high risk category.

We've already heard how Work Centre personnel beamed with pride after earning their own money.

Clients received the type of help they needed -- delivered in a manner they were comfortable with and could understand -- to develop the job skills they needed to find employment in a very limited job market.

We applaud the Department of Education for the proposals it did accept from the Pualaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre.

And, we appreciate how tightly its funding capabilities get squeezed by the number of proposals submitted.

However, the decision to discontinue funding the Work Centre was a grievous error in judgement.

The benefits $40,000 may instill in a small community pale in comparison to the benefits the Work Centre was bestowing on Rankin. The decision to cut Work Centre funding amounts to nothing more than an attempt at solving a problem in one community, at the cost of creating an even bigger one in another.

And that is just plain bad politicking.

Editorial Comment
John Barker
Inuvik Drum

Inuvik lives for me as a kaleidoscope of snapshots. One of the most vivid that will resonate with me for a long, long time is standing on the shore of the mighty Mackenzie River last Saturday morning, watching a flotilla of small boats head out in miserable weather for Aklavik.

The Gwich'in and Inuvialuit were gathering to bury three of their own: Doug Irish, Larry Semmler and Charlie Meyook. Northerners, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, look after their own.

Hundreds of Gwich'in, Inuvialuit and non-aboriginals travelled by river and by air from Inuvik, from McPherson, from Tsiigehtchic, from the Yukon, from Alaska and from the South for the funerals at All Saints Anglican Church in Aklavik, on the site of the original Anglican Cathedral of the Arctic. The women volunteered to cook the community feast; the men hunted caribou and dug graves, all giving aid and comfort to their brothers and sister in Aklavik.

By the time you read these words, I will have hopped a jet plane and be back doing my usual job as a news editor in our main newsroom in Yellowknife after spending six weeks on the Mackenzie Delta. Five of those weeks were spent working as a reporter and photographer in our News/North bureau here, while the last week has been spent as the acting editor of the Inuvik Drum.

This is a vast and open land, where two of the highest virtues practised are tolerance and respect. I witnessed many examples of both, but the two that come readily to mind occurred on difficult and controversial stories.

My first assignment here was to fly into Tuktoyaktuk for a story involving allegations of police brutality by some officers from the hamlet's RCMP detachment. A number of things struck me. Taking off one's footwear at the hamlet council meeting as a sign of respect (and practicality to keep the floors free of Delta mud), which is also common here in Inuvik.

Nobody tried to "spin" me on the story. The alleged victim and his wife invited me into their home for tea. One of the accused Mounties, knowing this wasn't going to be a good news story, still managed to chat graciously with me later at the airport. Mayor Eddie Dillon, in some ways the man in the middle, offered me a ride to the airport in his pickup with his daughter and grandchildren after the meeting.

I would have a similar experience my last week in Inuvik, covering a joint meeting of the Inuvik Indian Band and Nihtat Gwich'in Council in the wake of critical press coverage by Inuvik Drum of their postponed election. Again, no one tried to "spin" me on the story. No one went behind closed doors. No one asked the press to leave or gave us the cold shoulder.

Chief James Firth, who has shouldered much of the criticism, candidly admitted, "There was a big mistake made. We're here to do it right ... blame me or whatever ... we buggered it up. Let's do it right."

Firth also noted the council's process, while flawed at times, was at least "transparent."

Indeed. There's many lessons, many virtues, practised here that would do well to be practised everywhere.

Mahsi Cho, Inuvik.

Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum

Beth Philipp has a lot of spunk.

She's going to test her mettle at the RCMP training academy in Regina in a few weeks.

Leaving a husband and four children behind for 22 weeks isn't going to be easy, obviously, but it's all relative. Philipp pointed out that she's

in the process of hiring a nanny from the Philippines. The nanny is a mother of five who would temporarily be forsaking her family life to come and work in Fort Providence. Both women will be undergoing life-altering experiences.

These are the types of sacrifices often associated with the difficult choices we have to make in life. However, people usually stick with the status quo. For someone about to turn 38, to drop everything and pursue a long-standing ambition, well, that requires gumption.

Many of us think about what might have been if only we had gone another route, taken another path in life. Beth Philipp won't be asking herself that question anymore. Whether she graduates from the RCMP training program or she packs it in before it's over, she will have quelled a doubt in her mind.

Best of luck, Beth.

Related to the topic of crime and punishment, the story in this week's Drum regarding marijuana found in a van that rolled on the Mackenzie Highway might not be a story at all in the months or years to come. The fact that an accident occurred and the driver and passengers survived holds some news value, but some may argue that the possession of a small quantity of marijuana is negligible.

The signal from the throne speech on Monday is that the federal government is still considering the decriminalization of marijuana. That's short of legalizing it for those 16 and older as a Senate committee recommended earlier this year. The distinction is that decriminalizing marijuana could still warrant a fine for minor possession, whereas legalizing it would put an end to penalties.

This topic will undoubtedly continue to elicit great debate in our democratic nation. There are those who maintain that marijuana is relatively benign, resulting in fewer incidents of violence than alcohol, which is legal. There's also the argument that too much money is being wasted on the "war on drugs," especially for minor possession. People are smoking weed anyway, whether it's legal or not.

On the other side of the coin, some people take the position that cannabis leads to "harder" drugs, like cocaine and heroin. That one is debatable, but what's assured is there is a second-hand smoke issue with marijuana as with cigarettes. More importantly there is scientific evidence that pot temporarily affects smokers' motor skills and their reaction time.

Therefore, if marijuana is to be decriminalized, the laws against smoking up and driving should be unrelenting.

In an article in the Sept. 23 Around the North section of News/North, ("Back from South Africa," page B4), it was incorrectly stated that Elaine Alexie was representing the Population Institute at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Alexie was at the conference, but was acting as the Canadian youth delegate representing the Indigenous Environmental Network, an international agency based in Minnesota that advocates for indigenous people's rights. She said comments used by News/North from a press release were incorrectly attributed to her by the Population Institute.

News/North apologizes for the error.