Jason Unrau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Sep 23/05) - Locked-out Western Arctic CBC employees may not have had Premier Joe Handley barbecue them hamburgers - like he did for their counterparts in Yellowknife - but they have plenty of support among Inuvik residents.

By last Friday, Wanda McLeod, Mark Winkler, Sonia Koenig, Mabel English and Dorothy Arey had gathered more than 200 signatures from listeners who miss their broadcasts and want the government to step into the dispute.

"Get us back on the air," said Arey, host of the Inuvialuktun show Tusaavik.

"We've got a lot of listeners, from Cambridge Bay to Kugluktuk, who depend on the service."

Those ready to sign their names in support of the locked-out workers had three choices: a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin, one to Western Arctic MP Ethel Blondin-Andrew or a petition that will be presented to the House of Commons in Ottawa.

All three papers implore the government to force CBC to end the lockout.

Eager to sign

"Most have signed all three. They don't have to but seem eager to do so," said Winkler, adding that he hopes the Canadian Media Guild, of which he and his counterparts are members, can reach a deal with CBC.

"Negotiations are still going on but with nothing really concrete coming out of them. We're hoping it will be resolved in a couple of weeks, but who knows."

With winter approaching Inuvik a little sooner than in Toronto, where the CBC headquarters are located, locked-out employees here have already said they don't want to be picketing when the temperatures fall into the deep freeze.

In the meantime, local CBC listeners have had to make do with programming that is piped in, mainly from Toronto, which raises the ire of Arey.

"That content doesn't mean anything to the people here," she said, adding that weather announcements for people on the land are an essential service in these parts.

"So (the lockout) affects everybody in the communities."

Unlike Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet listeners, who have not had their CBC service disrupted because it has been deemed an essential service, listeners in the Western Arctic have not been as fortunate.

Explaining the rationale for that decision was CBC Jason MacDonald, who noted preference was given to the largest language group served by CBC North.

Seven left out

"We tried to do it in as strategic a way as possible and the reasoning was, roughly 50 per cent of our listeners in the North are unilingual (Inuktitut being their first language)," he said. "It's not ideal and we recognize that there are eight other language groups (CBC North has programming for) but with the limited resources we've got, it's the best we can do under the circumstances."