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It really pays to have someone watching out for your best interests, as a few Yellowknifers recently learned first-hand.

Michelle Beckwith was one of at least seven Northland Utilities customers receiving astronomical power bills that just didn't match up with previous power consumption.

Thankfully for her and the others, Joe Acorn, chair of the public utilities board, took up the case and launched an inquiry into the charges.

Three of the customers who complained about the charges were supposed to be refunded or credited by Northland Utilities, as ordered by the board. To avoid confusion like this in the future, staff at Northland Utilities are being asked to notify customers when unusual spikes in bill amounts occur.

While the customers may be compensated, the power usage discrepancy was never explained to them or the board. Answers should be provided. And now, Northland Utilities is trying to figure out how to recover the money they were ordered to credit the customers.

How do they plan on doing this? By charging the customers, of course. So even customers who haven't had problems with expensive bills may end up paying more to help fill the company's pockets.

Acorn has not yet commented on whether he believes this is an appropriate course of action.

But people like Beckwith, who are not satisfied with the response from Northland Utilities, are still counting on him to hold the company accountable for discrepancies.

And they should be accountable for every kilowatt.

As the territory's central city, Yellowknife absorbs many of the territory's ills and the costs associated with that are high.

When the delivery of health and social programs in the outlying communities fails or is lacking, those most in need end up in the capital. The same applies for many who cannot find housing or those without a steady job.

This puts a greater strain on Yellowknife, one immediately evident to any visitor or longtime resident: aggressive panhandling, public drunkenness, evident drug use - often complemented by violent confrontation in the streets. This is can be seen throughout downtown Yellowknife.

Even though Yellowknife is nowhere near the size of a big city, this town of less than 20,000 faces big city problems.

A social forum in Yk last month indicated the city is prepared to do something about its problems. Participants pointed out the obvious, however - the city's social ills are too extensive for city hall to take on alone. Yellowknife's $57 million budget exists primarily to take care of infrastructure and municipal services, not social ills. Former city councillor Ben McDonald was correct when he said "to pay for social services with property taxes just won't work."

The city's emergency services are forced to respond to many of these problems, putting greater demand on finances and personnel.

It's time for NWT Health and Social Services to step up and use its $300 million budget to fulfil its mandate in the capital, where almost half of the territory's residents live.

Words are never enough to erase wrongs that have been done but apologies can go a long way towards setting things right.

On April 29, Pope Benedict XVI made a statement in which he acknowledged the role the Roman Catholic Church played in the organization and operation of residential schools in Canada. Speaking in Italian and through a translator, the Pope "expressed his sorrow at the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the church and he offered his sympathy and prayerful solidarity," according to Vatican officials.

As some people have pointed out the Pope's statement doesn't appear to use the exact word "sorry," but that is a small quibble. The head of the largest Christian church in the world, an organization that has many other things to deal with, has stopped and taken the time to apologize for a past action that caused so much pain in the North and across Canada.

This apology follows nearly to the year after the Canadian government also stepped forward to recognize that a wrong was done through residential schools. On June 11, 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to victims of the residential school system with the words, "The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history."

Harper went on to say that the Canadian government is sorry and sincerely apologizes and asks for the forgiveness of aboriginal people for "failing them so profoundly."

Taken together the apologies from both the Roman Catholic Church and the Canadian government are major steps in the public acknowledgment of the horrors that happened under the residential school system. The schools have left a legacy that both parties are likely ashamed of but that they are choosing to own up to as seen by the apologies.

For residential school survivors the words of the Pope and the Prime Minister before him can't be enough to mend the childhoods that were damaged and the repercussions on adult lives and family members. The apologies can, however, be used as stepping stones on a path of personal healing.

The public apologies also need to be used as invitations for survivors to pass on the history of what happened at the schools. Residential schools are part of Northern and Canadian history, a history that needs to be remembered both as a mark of contrition and as a precaution against allowing anything like this to happen again.

Apologies, both ones that contain the word "sorry" and ones that don't, aren't enough to fix past wrongs but they do provide a path forward with the hope of a better future.

For me, the economic downturn has been a sobering reminder of just how vulnerable we all are to outside forces, and how utterly dependent we appear to be on a relatively small group of players who dictate how our most fundamental financial institutions operate. They determine the interest rates we pay and how comfortably some of us can retire.

So many of us have come to despise these people, as we've been swept up in all the negativity and fear surrounding our plummeting economy. Most of us have become particularly obsessed about our own financial well-being and future. With that inward turn a lot of us are losing sight of the fact that there are millions upon millions of people all over the world way worse off than we are.

Sometimes it takes people like Simon Jozzy to wake us from our slumber. The Beaufort Delta's supervisor of regional dental programs just returned from the Mpumalanga province of South Africa in March. In that country he provided basic dental services to about 800 residents desperately needing it.

He travelled there with another team of Alberta-based dentistry volunteers. They provided basic dentistry services, fillings and extractions to those people free of charge.

For the past few years Jozzy has headed up Healthy Smiles Society, which includes dental professionals from Inuvik and other NWT communities as well as local members who support the cause with donations and fundraisers.

But despite the fact that the organization has become a government-registered charity that issues tax receipts for donations, Jozzy still had to pay his own way down to Mpumalanga province. That said, it's interesting to consider just how much the group has struggled for funding. Its goal is to raise money to purchase a mobile dental clinic and to travel to Third World rural communities to provide basic dental services. In keeping with his ever optimistic attitude, Jozzy still believes the day will come when people in the most ravaged countries will have access to a service many of us take for granted.

Some cynics might ask why bother travelling all the way to South Africa or Ethiopia, when there are people in your own back yard who need cavities filled and teeth pulled. Sure there's some validity to the argument. But through the Supplementary Health Benefits program and Non-insured Health Benefits program, virtually everyone in NWT has access to basic dentistry. Yes, real poverty exists in NWT, but it's difficult to compare it to the rampant poverty that can be found through Mpumalanga province.

How much more inspiring can you get than a local dental therapist giving selflessly in such a much-needed, fundamental way?

On May 9 the Healthy Smiles Society will be hosting its fundraising barbecue, and Jozzy will be on hand with a slide show to show some of the good work he and others have done in South Africa. There will be live music and door prizes too. So perhaps this is our chance to open up our wallets a little bit more, as we realize the enormous help this society has to for people who so desperately need it.

Is the territorial government even capable of saying no anymore? That's the question we're left with after witnessing the GNWT's latest capitulation to the demands of unionized workers.

A year after kicking over a hornet's nest by hinting at massive job cuts, Premier Floyd Roland and his cabinet seem content not only to increase salaries and benefits - most notably, by eliminating the hated "Donny Days" unpaid leave during the Christmas holidays - but to keep most of the jobs as well.

The GNWT handed out 135 lay-off notices in February of last year but after enduring a pounding from regular MLAs and the Union of Northern Works for months, that figure was whittled down to 14 jobs eliminated last year and another 14 this year.

Meanwhile, if the latest collective agreement is accepted, the remaining 4,000 unionized workers will see a 6.25 per cent salary increase over three years, a 38 per cent increase to their yearly Northern allowance and the end to those dreaded Donny Days, whereby workers will still stay home but are now paid for them.

Not too shabby when compared to the mining and aviation sectors, which are dropping staff like ticks off a buffalo's back in light of the recession.

The four free Donny Days alone will cost the government millions. If you take 4,000 employees making $25 an hour - a very conservative number, mind you - in an eight-hour day and times that by the four days, you get $3.2 million.

Debbie DeLancey, deputy minister of Human Resources, described the inflated compensation package "reasonable" and "affordable" for the territorial government.

Really? What's changed? It was just last September when Premier Roland was wielding a slew of potential new taxes as an alternative to extensive job cuts.

"We have the instrument of taxation. It's a blunt one but if that's all we have and there's not an appetite to tighten our belts then we have to look at other options," he said at the time.

There's no way to reconcile DeLancey's reassuring words of appeasement with Roland's overt threats.

Yes, we want the NWT to remain a competitive environment so it can keep and attract top talent. However, even if MLAs were to argue that they're trying to spend their way out of this recession, with revenues falling and the territory's population dropping, the chicken is going to come home to roost at some point.

What is the territorial government going to do to save programs and services then?

There was a time when people had the ability to respect one another's opinion, even if they didn't necessarily see eye to eye on a topic.

The advantage of that approach, in addition to plain old civility, was that people often learned from each other and gained insight as to where the other was coming from in the debate.

This increased awareness would, on occasion, lead to compromise.

Once compromise was reached, the chance of an amicable solution being found that was, for the most part, agreeable to both sides would increase exponentially.

All too often in today's world, however, people are only interested in furthering their own side of an argument, with little interest in opposing points of view.

They speak their piece and feign interest while the other side presents its case.

Instead of really listening to what those on the opposite side are saying, they merely struggle to keep their tongues in check and wait impatiently for their turn to speak again.

In short: the walls are up, battle lines are drawn and it's absolute victory or nothing.

Unfortunately, this scenario closely parallels what's happening in Baker Lake right now concerning the debate over uranium mining.

While one group forms community liaison committees and holds public forums for residents to have their opinions heard, the other attacks relentlessly to dismiss any opinion not in agreement with its own, and calls into question the character of anyone who supports the industry.

This humble scribe felt the latter's wrath after he penned a piece speaking to what uranium companies have to offer a community.

I was quickly deluged with e-mails from anti-uranium and mining groups, many of which I suspect are the same organizations which the Baker Lake Concerned Citizens Committee refers to as its "advisors."

The messages were all quite similar once one cut through the double talk and accusations -- we're right and you're wrong. End of story.

I've met the same attitude trying to interview the Baker Lake Concerned Citizen's Committee.

The committee has no interest in being interviewed by a journalist who its members view as being pro-uranium.

That is their right, which I dutifully respect, however ill-suggested by their "advisors" I may personally feel it to be.

That said, a simple "no, thank you" would have sufficed.

I could have done without the committee asking me how much the uranium companies were paying me to promote them, but such groundless accusations seem to be par for the course in this particular debate.

I would point out, however, that such tactics don't go far in convincing others of the credibility of one's stance.

It's disheartening to see such an opportunity for Baker Lake being turned into an us-versus-them scenario, with precious little room for constructive dialogue.

Such approaches to influencing community opinion do little, other than to prove there is more than one type of poison in this world.

Dennis Bevington put himself in the line of fire over the long-gun registry on April 22, but not in the way people in this territory wanted.

April 22 was the day that the Bloc Quebecois put forth a motion calling on the government to "maintain the registration of all types of firearms in its entirety."

Bevington, MP for the Western Arctic, didn't take a bullet for his NWT constituents. He sat out the vote in parliament.

The motion passed 143-136, but it wasn't binding, so the Conservative government doesn't have to abide by it. Many NDP members of Parliament were in favour.

It's assumed Bevington was under pressure to toe the party line and support the motion and so compromised by abstaining.

To vote in favour of the motion would have looked bad. After all, Bevington scored political points by using the gun registry against former Liberal MP Ethel Blondin-Andrew during past election campaigns.

Many felt Blondin-Andrew turned her back on NWT residents by voting in favour of the gun registry, which is a hassle for many subsistence hunters in this territory. It has also proven to be huge bureaucratic swamp and extremely costly, an estimated $2 billion to administer since it was introduced in 1995.

The Liberal government of the day said it would only cost taxpayers $2 million with licence fees paying the rest.

Bevington has defended himself by describing the Bloc Quebecois motion as a "political football" that wasn't worth his time. He has also reaffirmed his opposition to the long-gun registry. Of course, we're going to hold him to that.

The Conservatives are not without fault in this ordeal. They've been making plenty of noise since being elected in January 2006 that they have every intention to scrap the long-gun registry. They made the unusual move of introducing a bill to that effect in the senate -- where the Conservatives are still the minority - in early April. It's languished ever since.

It's time for the Tories to pull the trigger, or admit they're all about gamesmanship on this subject.

Some residents of Hay River have been waiting nearly a year for flooding compensation.

Several houses in the Vale Island and Hay River Reserve areas suffered water damage in 2008 but homeowners have been told that compensation cheques from the GNWT are still a ways off.

Robert McLeod, minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, the department responsible for handling this situation, admitted there has been confusion.

The government participates in the town's emergency measures organization.

That group is responsible for following very clearly planned steps to save lives in the event of severe flooding.

The GNWT needs to adopt the same approach with awarding flood damage.

Those whose homes were flooded were victims of Mother Nature. Let's not allow them to now drown in watery government policy.

Everyone agrees something has to be done to lower Nunavut's suicide rate, but there's little agreement on what.

And so the death toll continues.

Every year about 27 Nunavummiut kill themselves while government studies, strategies and reports continue to wind their way through the bureaucratic maze.

Back in 2003, a Government of Nunavut survey outlined the concerns communities had with the high rate of suicide in the territory, and their suggestions for suicide prevention.

Communities agreed the silence around suicide had to be broken. More counsellors were needed, counsellors with specialized training, and male counsellors for boys and young men.

But above all, they said, the government had to stop talking about suicide prevention and start doing something. Tomorrow, next week or next year would be too late for dozens of youth in pain and anguish and seeing no way out except through death.

Nunavut formed the Embrace Life Council in 2004. Since then it has focused primarily on life affirmation - youth activities, on-the-land trips and courses - rather than on crisis intervention.

Three years after that, the Government of Nunavut released a suicide prevention strategy. When, in October 2007, MLA Keith Peterson asked then-premier Paul Okalik in the legislative assembly what was being done to follow up on the strategy, Okalik dodged his questions.

"At this time we are not sure, but we certainly want to see a decrease in suicide," Okalik told the assembly.

Now it's 2009, and the Embrace Life Council, Nunavut Tunngavik and the Government of Nunavut have released a discussion paper and are planning to hold territory-wide public forums for community input on suicide prevention.

We're flooded with an intense feeling of deja vu.

More action, less talk is what communities asked for six years ago, and what they got was more talk.

People in a suicidal crisis need someone they can turn to in their community for help, a health professional who is quickly accessible, non-judgmental and who will keep things confidential. By training counsellors in suicide intervention, the government is at least taking some action towards stemming the territory's alarming rate of suicide.

But more action is needed.

Suggestions and recommendations that come from community forums on the discussion paper need to be implemented immediately.

We cannot wait on even more studies and analyses before taking further action. However, the effectiveness of suicide prevention and intervention programs has to be monitored so we'll better understand how to make the greatest possible difference - saving lives.