John Curran
Northern News Services
Published Monday, June 9, 2008

BEHCHOKO/RAE-EDZO - Leaders with the Community Government of Behchoko are looking to correct a mistake they say was made by the federal government almost half a century ago.

Geographically, 16 kilometres of roadway separate the municipality's two halves: Rae and Edzo. According to Chief Leon Lafferty and council it's time to divide them administratively, too.

It isn't exactly a new idea having come up most recently about a decade ago, but given the community's evolution, Lafferty said it is likely an inevitable result.

In the 1960s, water issues in Rae led Ottawa to create Edzo in an attempt to relocate residents away from the problems.

At the same time Chief Jimmy Bruneau wanted a new school for his people.

The feds agreed but put it in Edzo, along with the cottage hospital, all in an effort to encourage people to make the move to the engineered community.

"He wanted the school located at Russell Lake so the community would willingly move," said Lafferty.

"Ottawa didn't listen when he said it was unreasonable to expect people living beside a lake to suddenly want to live in the bush."

History has proven Chief Bruneau's concerns more than valid as today there are approximately 1,700 residents in Rae and just 300 in Edzo.

Local infrastructure is still suffering today from that lack of understanding, said Lafferty.

Due to the distance between Rae and Edzo, council and the administrative staff complain they must stretch their relatively small pot of funding from the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) to build, operate and maintain double the facilities required by any other community its size.

"We need to have two fire halls, two sewage lagoons, two water plants, two of almost everything," said Terry Testart, Behchoko senior administrative officer and fire chief. "There's not enough money to do everything twice."

To make matters worse, there are about 30 people living between the two at Frank Channel. It's an area not unlike Reindeer Point in Tuktoyaktuk, Wild Rose in Fort Simpson or Prelude Lake in Yellowknife, with one major difference.

"In those other places, residents pay for a lot of the services they receive on their own," said Lafferty. "Here it's the Community Government of Behchoko that has to cover those costs."

If the territorial government took these factors into consideration when budgeting, things would be fine. Both Testart and Lafferty, however, complain that isn't happening.

Looking at the 2005/06 community operations and maintenance expenditure data from MACA, Behchoko and its approximately 2,000 residents received less than $2.5 million. That's roughly $1,223 for every man, woman and child.

Examining first its Tlicho neighbours, this compares to almost $3,460 for each of Gameti's 307 people; $4,613 for each of Whati's 523 residents; and a whopping $6,257 for each of the 143 souls officially calling Wekweeti home.

Behchoko is the fifth largest community in the NWT in terms of population. It's bracketed on that list by Fort Smith, 2,430, and Fort Simpson, 1,264.

While these two communities appear to get similar per capita funding of about $1,036 and $1,958 respectively, Lafferty is quick to point out those numbers are somewhat misleading.

"They're both tax-based communities and we're not," he said. "They have another source of revenue that we don't."

Wearing his fire chief's hat for a moment, Testart said the situation creates safety concerns as well.

"It takes us about 20 minutes to respond to a call in Edzo," he said, adding while there are fire halls in each community, all of the volunteers work in Rae.

"And that's driving with our lights flashing and sirens blaring ... it's not safe."

Council has approved the idea of dividing the community with Edzo and Frank Channel going it on their own.

But it isn't up to Behchoko.

A request first must be made through the Tlicho Government to the GNWT, which could then formalize the split with an Establishment Act that would need to be passed in the legislative assembly, said Testart.

Both the Tlicho Land Claim and legal precedent appear to be on the community's side for making the move, added Lafferty.

"There are provisions in the land claim for creating new Tlicho communities and there was a time when Enterprise was officially part of Hay River," he said.

Several Edzo residents approached by News/North declined to comment on the proposed Behchoko breakup, though they did share a chuckle over one woman's suggested name for the resulting new community.

"We could call it Edzoko," she said in jest.