Monday, October 10, 2005
Anyone who wants it will have to pay our price.
That's the ace up the NWT's sleeve as the rhetoric and demands over the $7 billion Mackenzie Gas Project hit new heights.
There has been tension between First Nations and companies proposing the pipeline almost as long as the project has been on the table.
We've seen fights over winter work, access agreements and who pays for social problems.
It culminated in the producers cancelling preparatory work and delaying a decision on public hearings until November.
Now, there are rumours Imperial Oil wants $2 billion in financial guarantees from the federal government. That prompted K'Asho Got'ine Dene negotiator and former NWT premier Stephen Kakfwi to predict doom for the pipeline.
Then last Thursday, a letter from the Dehgah Alliance Society outlined a request for a property tax worth between $17 million and $20 million a year to Deh Cho communities. No one should be surprised by any of the demands.
Everyone wants a piece of this very big pie.
The company wants profit for its shareholders; First Nations want a financial benefit from a pipe built across their land; government wants tax and royalty revenue to offset the $500 million already promised the North to pay for social needs.
And it all comes down to the bottom line: the best deal for the North is not necessarily the best deal for Imperial and its partners.
This project must stand on its own merits, without artificial taxpayer support. That includes dealing fairly with the landowners over whose land the pipe will run.
And why not go shopping for another company willing to build the pipeline who understands Northern economics and needs.
Playing hardball with Imperial will be difficult for Inuvik and the Inuvialuit who've got so much at stake in seeing this project come to fruition in the very near future.
Unfortunately, taking anything less than a strong position will leave them and the entire North with empty holes in the ground and little else.
If this price is too high today, it might not be a few years from now when North America is even more thirsty for our energy.
When health officials realized a potentially deadly virus had appeared in Nunavut, they got their priorities all mixed up.
Instead of telling the public to be careful and take precautions right away, three months passed before the warning was issued about HTLV-1, a blood-borne virus that is spread primarily through unprotected sex.
It can also be transmitted through breastfeeding and among intravenous drug users sharing needles.
Health officials say they didn't inform the public because they had other priorities.
The first was to identify and help those infected. No one can argue about that.
However, why did public safety fall behind training health care workers?
Informing the public and letting people know how to protect themselves should have come much earlier than three months after the virus was detected.
Who knows how many others have been infected during that time?
Yes, workers need to know how to protect themselves and answer questions about the disease, but surely that training could have happened while the public was being warned.
This was a bureaucratic approach that failed to address the legitimate right of the public to know a serious new threat to their health is present in Nunavut.
A recent trip to Fiji by one MLA and the clerk of the legislative assembly wasn't essential.
Trips like that are luxuries that Nunavut can't afford.
Quttiktuq MLA Levi Barnabas and clerk of the legislative assembly John Quirke's attended a Commonwealth meeting at the South Pacific island nation, along with the speaker Jobie Nutarak. Nutarak's costs were covered by the conference.
We have our own problems to work on right here at home. Instead of spending more than $20,000 to fly to some exotic country, perhaps the money would've been better spent here, on the taxpayers themselves.
We don't need backbench MLAs or any other low-ranking politicians flying here and there. If Nunavut's presence is required on the international stage, it should be covered by either the premier, the appropriate cabinet minister, or in the case of the Commonwealth conference, the speaker Jobie Nutarak - that's it.
Nunavummiut must put the pressure on politicians not to travel unless it benefits Nunavut.
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News
To say it was depressing sitting in on the first meeting of the year for the Rankin Inlet Minor Hockey Association would be the understatement of the year.
Not a single parent attended the meeting. Not one!
That has to be some sort of record, even for Nunavut.
There were seven people at the meeting, all familiar faces who have been handling the vast majority of the workload in every conceivable area for years.
While hockey remains immensely popular among players and fans in the Kivalliq, the game will die (no, that is not an understatement!) if more people don't step up and start giving a little back to a sport which brings so much to our communities.
Numbers shrinking
Slowly, but surely, during the past couple of years, the numbers of the dedicated few are beginning to dwindle.
In fact, while Rankin remains the region's hotbed for fan support, the only hamlet improving its minor hockey program to the point where it's exciting is Baker Lake.
Yes, Repulse Bay was on a major roll with its program the past two years.
But the two award-winning teachers who were behind that have moved back to the south.
Only time will tell if anyone in the community will step up and continue to develop this great program (you busy this year, Rodney?).
While our governing territorial board remains relatively strong, and has the support of Sport Nunavut, it can only do so much.
Hockey has always been - and always will be - dependent on volunteers at the grassroots level.
Make no mistake about it, while the organizational presidents, top players and coaches get all the ink, volunteers are the backbone of minor hockey in every city, town and small community in Canada.
While I am always hesitant to mention names in fear of overlooking others, we have to start seeing people step up to replace the efforts of people who have stepped back from the game recently, such as the departed Repulse teachers, Jim Ramsay and Jim MacDonald in Rankin, John Donovan and Tom Thompson in Iqaluit - the list goes on.
The people who take on the responsibility year after year to run our minor programs - such as Justin Merritt, Ron Roach, Tommy Adams, Donald Clark, Mike Courtney and John Thomas in Iqaluit, Jim Kreuger in Baker and Greg Tanuyak in Chester, just to name a few - deserve the support of their communities.
This is not even to mention the small group of coaches and officials (you know who you are) who come out every year to keep the kids playing across the Kivalliq.
Kids depend on you
Minor hockey is a wonderful program that benefits hundreds of kids in our region every year.
But it is also another area where kids are dependent on adults to provide those benefits.
Take an interest in the youth of your community and the coolest game on ice.
Contact a local minor hockey rep and get involved in your community.
And do it now, before it's too late!
Editorial Comment
Jason Unrau
Inuvik Drum
This week former premier Stephen Kakfwi, negotiator for the K'Asho Got'ine Dene of Fort Good Hope, said he thought the pipeline project was "doomed to failure." The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "doomed" as such: "consigned to misfortune or destruction."
Geez, not very optimistic. Sort of the same kind of optimism one might possess if staring down the Four Horsemen on doomsday. How grim.
But whatever doom and gloom may be on the horizon, take comfort in the fact Inuvik made the New York Times last week in a story entitled "Demands by Native Canadians Delay Start of Ambitious Pipeline Project." With reports that Imperial Oil just asked for $2 billion worth of concessions from Ottawa, I guess somebody forgot to tell the Times about big oil's "demands."
Switch over to Reuters news service out of London, England and its pipeline article's lead is, "Canadian governments may offer to broker a deal between major oil companies and native groups in the Arctic to push forward a pipeline..."
Two things here: aboriginal groups in the Arctic portion of the territories are more-or-less on-side with respect to the project; and, secondly, haven't the "Canadian governments" been trying to broker a deal all along?
Then take into consideration that hearings for the project - expected to take two years - have yet to get underway and with all that doom and gloom in the media on the subject, one wonders if it will even get to that stage.
A little closer to home
Thinking about future projects for Inuvik, Boot Lake MLA Floyd Roland won't go so far as to say that a new high school would be pushed ahead of a 2007/2008 SAMS replacement in the capital plan however he did admit that, "Discussions are underway about the plan and perhaps dealing with both schools (Samuel Hearne and Sir Alexander Mackenzie) as one complex."
Roland added that a lot depended on the future life-span of a repaired SHSS but as things stood, SAMS remained on deck.
He also stuck to the Department of Public Works' December target date for getting the high school ready for students despite the contractor's confidence the school would could be opened for classes at the end of October.
Play it safe this holiday
With Thanksgiving and a long weekend to look forward to, Inuvik RCMP phoned the Drum late in the day to day that "Operation Impact" would be going into effect. So drivers should be on their best behaviour as there will be a zero-tolerance for speeding, traffic infractions and, of course, impaired driving.
Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum
Halloween takes place at the end of this month, and we already know that there is no Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. But it's kind of fun to indulge in fantasy sometimes, isn't it?
Some of life's mysteries - Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and "Elvis Lives" - are easier explained than others, like UFOs, Stonehenge, the pyramids of Egypt and the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa.
When word started spreading in Fort Simpson that an elk was shot in the North Nahanni, some people reacted with disbelief. That must be fiction of the local kind, right? No, actually it's reality.
In addition to the wayward Northern elk, there have been plenty of sightings of white-tail deer in the Deh Cho over the past few years, particularly around the Fort Simpson airport.
In addition, bison, common in Fort Providence and Fort Liard, keep on winding their way towards Yellowknife on Hwy. 3. Some animals are obviously expanding their habitat in a northerly direction. So why is that?
Well, that leads to another myth versus reality question: Could it be global warming or climate change? It seems the majority of scientists now agree that climate change is taking place.
Average temperatures are inching up in many locales and the polar ice cap continues to melt at an alarming rate. The hurricane season has been more intense than usual in the Atlantic, but, as some weather observers have noted, there have been fewer storms in the Asian Pacific.
Some experts claim it's all part of a natural cycle. They often point to the panic over another ice age predicted back in the 1970s. Others are adamant that human beings and their pollutants are responsible for most of the changes in our environment. So that debate rages on, but we are clearly seeing signs that wildlife are adapting to something - in some cases it may be due to intrusion on their previous habitat. Humans are, without a doubt, displacing animals in some areas.
Before signing off on the weird animal stories, biologist Nic Larter mentioned that a hunter recently submitted a moose jaw that had nine teeth! What's next? Somebody will bring in undisputable proof of the bush man or a sasquatch? Elvis, are you out there?
A thousand words...
In this wonderful age of computers and digital devices, Deh Cho residents are sending in more and more photos to the Drum for publication. Those pictures are very much appreciated and we will make every effort to use at least some of them.
While not at all wanting to sound ungrateful, just keep in mind that we are a newspaper that focuses on people, so try to make your relative or friend prominent in the picture. Scenic photos are seldom used in the Drum. They appear mostly in News/North each week.
Please keep the pictures coming!