Wednesday, July 13, 2005
They want to bring the city's storied tavern back from crack central of Stagger Lane to be the palace of the night clubs. They've declared war on drug pushers who haunted the bar.
Dealers and notorious users have been more than just warned, they have been exiled to the street, never to return, their names on a list of banned people on the wall.
We applaud this, and loudly. If there is any signal that things are really changing in Yellowknife's downtown, this gutsy move is it. Any business would think twice to take steps that meant chasing away customers and their cash.
"We were willing to take the hit for a clean bar," Yurkiw says.
With important renovations coming this fall, The Gold Range Hotel's lustre should return to do Yellowknife proud.
We need legal aid because not everyone can afford a lawyer and everyone needs the full protection provided under law.
Lawyers recognize this and the NWT branch of the Canadian Bar Association has joined a legal challenge to a 40 per cent cut to funding in B.C.
It's a court fight the bar association hopes will change how legal aid is funded across the country.
We're lucky. The territorial legal aid system is in fairly good shape, even though there are backlogs and there is never enough money to meet the need. The 10 per cent budget increase since 2001 isn't nearly enough to keep pace with a 24 per cent jump in the number of cases.
It would be easy to dismiss the lawyers' appeal for change as a way to try to make more money for themselves, but that would be wrong.
Without legal aid, battered women and children would have no voice in court, many people would be left to their own devices when facing important criminal matters.
It's a system that puts everyone on equal footing before judges and juries, not a political football that can be tossed about to score political points.
Editorial Comment
Brent Reaney
Kivalliq News
Kivalliq consumers have been spending too much money at their grocery stores for too long.
It is time the region's food mail delivery system changed to fulfil the program's mandate of providing healthy food at reasonable prices.
In principle, the federal initiative is a great idea.
The feds pay most of the cost to ship healthy foods up to Kivalliq communities from Churchill.
But the food has to be shipped from Winnipeg to be eligible for the rebate -- an expensive process which can last more than three days and make for tired-looking produce.
This cost, along with concerns about the quality and freshness of the goods, mean retailers in the Kivalliq's two largest communities of Rankin Inlet and Arviat are choosing to pay full freight to get the food in quicker.
Confused? Well, the end result is higher prices on our shelves.
Unlikely to be news to most of you, a pair of studies done by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development found Kivallimmiut were paying more for their food than other Northerners.
Still living off country food
Some people have said many Kivallimmiut still live largely off country food, which makes the cost of items in our grocery stores unimportant.
But a growing number of people are working during the week. And hunting seems a little like golfing in that you can't expect to make a living off it by only heading out on the weekends.
As more people enter the work force, having access to healthy store-bought food at affordable prices matters that much more.
A review of Churchill as a food mail entry point is underway.
Now is the time to get out to the rest of the meetings scheduled and let the feds know change is expected.
There were fewer than 20 people at the Rankin Inlet meeting. This was not enough to prove we care about food prices.
This system is complicated, but how this review is handled will directly affect everyone.
Residents of Whale Cove, Chesterfield Inlet and Baker Lake still have a chance. They need to speak up at meetings scheduled during the next week in their communities.
With Churchill having had 14 years to make this program work, let's cut the delivery process in half by moving the food mail launching pad south to Thompson.
This move is estimated to cost the program up to $2.5 million more per year.
Assuming 8,000 people live in the seven Kivalliq communities, that $2.5 million works out to a yearly total of $312.50 per person.
In simpler terms, for less than half the price of a Kivalliq cup of coffee a day we could lower the cost of nutritious food.
Then again, it doesn't matter what the government decides as long as it improves our situation.
Editorial Comment
Jason Unrau
Inuvik Drum
Inuvik will play host to more than 50 artists when the 17th Great Northern Arts Festival kicks off next week. As in previous years, the event will feature not only artists in the visual disciplines but performances and, for the first time, a local filmmaking effort too.
As the longest running event in the town's history, it is unfortunate that this cultural smorgasbord does not have its own dedicated venue. Sure, the Midnight Sun Recreation Complex has the space, and for a hockey and curling rink the arts festival staff and volunteers have done a fair job in recent memory of making it look, well, not so much like a hockey and curling rink.
It's true that the petroleum show, a similar-sized event, manages to use the complex. However, staging a trade show on a hockey rink tends to go well with the industrial feel of tungsten lights and sheet metal. An arts festival is a little bit more of an organic affair, which demands a warmer, intimate setting.
So with new schools to be built - both elementary and eventually a high school - and a college dorm now in the capital plan, it might be difficult to justify building a regional culture centre on top of everything else. Or would it?
Which brings us to Sir Alexander Mackenzie School. Plans are underway to design a new building to replace the aging elementary school, thus sealing the fate of that titanic wooden structure fronting main street, destined to fall under the wrecking ball. While the argument not to renovate but replace it has convinced capital planners of the economics of starting anew, it would be a shame to erase SAMS without trying to preserve at least some of this historic structure.
Imagine if the large entranceway, right at the back of the gymnasium/auditorium was left intact and turned into a gallery and performance space.
Consider that the new elementary school will not include an auditorium, so why knock down the one we already have? Additionally, the entranceway contains offices - perfect for an arts society currently borrowing space from the town - and included in what would be saved in such a project is a library and woodworking room.
Not to mention the possibility of staging future arts festivals in a space designed precisely for this kind of event, the revamped SAMS could be outfitted with a proper sound system perfect for year-round film showings, concerts and old time dances.
Imagine spinning your partner while surrounded by art work rather than the sterile green walls and buzzing fluorescent lights over at the recreation hall.
Instead of completely tearing down a landmark building, it would make perfect sense to save even a part of it - a way of maintaining some of Inuvik's cultural landscape - in order to create a venue to inspire and showcase the region's ongoing artistic efforts.
But the time to act on a project like this is coming soon, before the corrugated steel and its "built-to-last" blandness consumes the skyline.
Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum
As reported in News/North, Dehcho First Nations is ready to make its court case against the federal government go away.
In what is being termed a "settlement agreement," DFN is accepting $15 million in cash and a few million more for Dehcho participation in the environmental review of the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline.
This is, by definition, settling.
It's settling because it's far from being what the Dehcho wanted.
Chiefs Keyna Norwegian and Lloyd Chicot pointed out that the money is desperately needed in this cash-starved region. The Inuvialuit and the Gwich'in have settled land claims and have fairly big bucks rolling in through their various ventures. Not so in Deh Cho.
Not only is the Dehcho Process far from being finalized, economic development remains on the back-burner. At the Dehcho Assembly in Kakisa last week, the Dehcho Economic Development Corporation was given short shrift. Over the course of four full days of talks, the economic development corporation representatives addressed delegates for only about 15-20 minutes. They were asked few questions. That was essentially it for any talk of building business.
Other aspects of the settlement agreement expose how the Dehcho has essentially bowed down to government demands. A clause forbidding DFN from launching any more court action against the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act to halt the pipeline is most damaging. Ottawa clearly viewed the Dehcho's litigious actions as an enormous hindrance and successfully sought to prevent a repeat of the situation in the future. The Dehcho acquiesced, and thereby has forsaken its greatest leverage - the pipeline - in trying to negotiate further gains in self-government.
On another front, DFN has pleaded for an independent Dehcho Resource Management Authority. The federal government has indicated that it isn't opposed to creating such a regional body, but would not commit to making it separate from the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. Despite getting only a "maybe," the Dehcho signed the settlement agreement anyway.
That means DFN may never realize true autonomy in fully managing its lands. Should a Conservative government come to power over the next several years, then the lack of a guarantee could harm the Dehcho's chances of ever realizing that provision.
In addition, any hopes of gaining more than one seat on the joint review panel have been forsaken.
By filing its lawsuit last year, the Dehcho had gone into the trenches. Its weapons were drawn and cocked. Regional aboriginal leaders spent the next several months quietly looking through the cross hairs. In the end, they never pulled the trigger.
Going to court to fight this case would have been a long and painful battle. Self-government initiatives would have been stalled indefinitely because the government would have refused to negotiate. Federal funding - which represents the bulk of DFN's operating budget - may have been pulled for months or even years.
Under enormous pressure and in return for a desperately needed $15 million, the Dehcho has waved the white flag in this standoff. We'll never know how much more they could have achieved.