With the municipal election less than seven weeks away, what could prove to be the first hot-button issue of the campaign is emerging.

On Oct. 1, smoking will be banned by bylaw in all Yellowknife clubs and bars. Think about that for a minute.

Canada's once-toughest frontier town, smoke-free. No more rings of blue smoke wafting across beer-filled tables.

Jumping on the non-smoking bandwagon is easy; it's as apple pie as you can get with public health issues. Smoking bad, non-smoking good. It's an editorial line Yellowknifer has followed in the past. What could be simpler?

Well, how about democracy? There's scant evidence that the majority of Yellowknife residents support either the present smoking ban in restaurants or the impending ban in bars Oct. 1. We do know the usual suspects have supported the smoking ban: the Yellowknife Tobacco Action Coalition, the Canadian Cancer Society and public health officials. The same is true with opposition to the ban. The Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce is against it.

Anyone who has strolled into the Leisure Cafe or The Diner on 50th Street at lunch time since April 1 can attest to what a business-killer the ban has been. Dead best describes their lunch-hour business most days.

What we don't know is what Yellowknifers really want.

While we make no claim to mathematical accuracy, we note Yellowknifer received 484 responses to our smoking ban telephone poll.

That's more than 11 times the number of responses generated by any previous poll question. Callers were opposed to the ban by more than 2-1.

Smoking was not an election issue in October 2000. It should be this year. Gord Van Tighem, Dave McCann, Blake Lyons, Kevin O'Reilly, Wendy Bisaro, Dave Ramsay and Alan Woytuik were not elected for their views on smoking.

But we now know Van Tighem, McCann, Lyons, O'Reilly, Bisaro and Ramsay support the ban on smoking in bars, while Woytuik has been opposed.

On Oct. 20, they should be judged, at least in part, on their support or opposition to the smoking ban.

It's time for Yellowknifers to stand up at the polls and be counted on the smoking ban. Make it a voting issue Oct. 20.

Well, it certainly is good to be back home in the Kivalliq, once again.

Many thanks to Chris Puglia for filling in for the summer so my family and I could visit our friends and relatives on the East Coast.

I must admit, the first few times I heard my grandson call me "Gampy" felt a little, well, different.

But, I quickly warmed up to it, even though I caught myself thinking on more than one occasion -- life is good, but it's short.

Congratulations are in order for both the traditional athletes from Rankin Inlet and Chesterfield Inlet.

Big congrats to Team Rankin for winning the overall title at the 2003 Kivalliq Traditional Summer Games.

And, big congrats to the Chester athletes for their amazing run during the past three years.

For any hamlet to three-peat at the summer games is an impressive feat.

Chester's three years atop the standings shows that great things do, indeed, come in small packages.

We'd also like to congratulate the 15 graduates at Alaittuq high school in Rankin and the four at Victor Sammurtok school in Chester.

Job well done, and the best of luck in all your future undertakings.

I didn't have the chance before going on vacation to congratulate the Team Nunavut junior C players and coaching staff for the wonderful job they did at the Atlantic championships in Yarmouth, N.S.

Not only was the team competitive, the accolades from Nova Scotia were many on the good behaviour and positive attitudes our youth demonstrated during their stay.

Thanks for making us proud, guys.

It's great to see the artificial ice is finally set to arrive in Rankin this year.

The ice holds the promise to boost participation numbers in both hockey and curling, as well as, hopefully, bringing more people out for recreational skating.

Having artificial ice will also allow our region's hard working minor hockey volunteers to bring their various programs on-line with the rest of the country.

In closing, for my first week back, it's nice to finally see work progressing smoothly on our new regional health facility in Rankin.

While it's a long way from being complete (don't want to get too cocky until the doors are finally open), kudos to Finance Minister Kelvin Ng for having the brass to take the necessary steps to get the project moving again.

Let's hope the good work continues.

Editorial Comment
Terry Halifax
Inuvik Drum

It seems that cabinet has pulled another one of it's unilateral end-runs with the Business Incentive Policy.

I'm not a big fan of business subsidies and I think business should be left alone to succeed or fail on its own, but this whole thing stinks to high heaven of a government so enamoured with itself, it doesn't need the advice of industry, the public or regular MLAs.

The BIP was put in place to give struggling Northern businesses a level playing field with Southern competitors.

The cost of doing business in the North is much higher than in the South and the policy made much more sense than handing out negotiated contracts and sole sourcing.

What the policy did lead to was what's become known as "storefronting." This is where a Southern business will hitch it's wagon to a Northern "company" just to get the extra 15 percent boost from the BIP.

Storefronting is a practice that has become rampant in the North, but this new policy doesn't even deal with that. Quite the opposite -- it leaves legitimate Northern businesses competing with storefronters and also with full-on Southern competitors.

Cabinet's passed this greasy ball to Jim Antoine to run into the end zone because it doesn't matter to Diamond Jim since he's not running in November.

But why leave it at that? While they were at it, cabinet could have handed-off the housing harmonization and the energy policy to Antoine too, since this government didn't have the eggs to deal with them before the election.

Talk is not enough

Talking to Bob Simpson wears me right out. I can't imagine what that guy goes through in a given day.

When he's not negotiating the self-government file, he's working on devolution or the Gwich'in Land Use Plan and who knows what else.

If all this wasn't enough, he's got to deal with cagey government lawyers, squawking chiefs and airline food.

It must be pretty disheartening to Bob and his team when they get out to the community self-government meetings to see empty chairs.

I know Bob would rather be out trapping 'rats in the spring, rather than sitting in some boardroom in Ottawa, but he's spurred on with this deal because it's important, it's ground-breaking and it's history in the making.

I really wish the people of the region would feel the same way because the government you make is going to be the government you get.

I hear lots of bar stool politicians grumbling about the cost of self-government and the issues of representation, but I don't see anyone making a move to do anything about it.

Any government needs lawyers and it needs laws; it needs time to evolve and grow; it needs court challenges and firm opposition, but most of all it needs people.

The time you take with your government now, will save a lot of bar stool grumbling later.

Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum

Aboriginal groups in the Deh Cho are lined up in support of expanding Nahanni National Park Reserve and protecting the Nahanni watershed. Grand Chief Herb Norwegian and federal Heritage minister Sheila Copps have signed a couple of agreements to further that end.

There's dollars to be made in resource exploration and development, but, as it's been said many times, the riches of the land itself make people of the Deh Cho better off than industry could ever compensate them.

This isn't pro-environment propaganda. Of course industry is needed in the region to keep the economy running and bread (but not moose meat) on the table. So it's really a question of designating lands for development, which is exactly what the First Nations are in the process of doing.

Nahanni National Park Reserve has been widely recognized as one of nature's gems. Former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau played a key role in having the area designated a Park Reserve in 1976. Two years later it was designated as an United Nations Education, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site. The park encompasses mountain ranges, canyons, white-water rivers, boreal forest, hot springs, tufa mounds, limestone caves and Virginia Falls. It is home to grizzly bears, Dall's sheep, mountain goats, wolves, caribou and many species of birds.

However, only a thin parcel of land has been protected. The surrounding watershed had been left vulnerable, thereby making the ecology of the park vulnerable. With recent action taken by the First Nations and the federal government, that is changing. The park could grow as much as seven times its current size over the next several years.

There are two existing mines near the Park Reserve. The measures being taken today will prevent more from cropping up. No matter how careful industry may be -- even by using state of the art technology and practices -- accidents still occur. Contaminants can spill into the waterways, affecting the land and wildlife.

In addition, mines have finite life spans. They may produce minerals for 10 years or 20 or 30, but they will eventually exhaust the resource (or go broke or mothball the operation). The park, on the other hand, is a proven tourist attraction. With preservation measures in place it will remain that way for the long term.

The Deh Cho First Nations have also set aside Edehzhie for protection. It's a huge swath of land that includes the Horn Plateau. The Pehdzeh Ki First Nation in Wrigley wants to do the same for a large area north of its community.

Aboriginal groups in the Deh Cho are about to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in oil and gas development, forestry and other resource sectors. They have made sure to safeguard some key lands and waterways first. That's getting things done in the right order.

Lena Pedersen is seeking to be elected as MLA for Yellowknife Centre. Her name was spelled incorrectly in a Aug. 29 story on women getting into politics. Pedersen already has some experience in NWT politics. She was a member of the territorial council in the early 1970s.