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Spectacular plates Yellowknifer - Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Unveiled last week, it's a move away from the old steel variation, which had not been updated since 1986.
The new plates are not only easier for police and bylaw officers to read, they retain the iconic polar bear shape with some eye-catching additional colour evoking the northern lights as well as images of trees and a bear atop some bedrock.
Some NWT residents are critical of the government for not holding a round of public consultation on the look of the new plates. That would have surely slowed down the process and driven up the cost beyond the $10 being charged as a one-time additional fee for the new plates.
If government checks the pulse of residents on almost every aspect of its work, then how can we expect things to be done efficiently?
Not all consultation ends well, either. Those who recall the rename the territory campaign, launched by former cabinet minister Stephen Kakfwi in 1996, will surely remember that the name Bob was one of the frontrunners. That initiative was scrapped.
The new plates are worthy of carrying the tourism slogan, "Spectacular Northwest Territories."
High heating and power costs account for a big chunk of Yellowknife's pricey cost of living.
Energy conservation is, therefore, that much more desirable here. Every drop of home heating fuel saved means more dollars in our pockets.
So it came as a blow when Ottawa announced the end of the ecoEnergy Retrofit Program in March, eliminating federal incentives to develop and renovate homes well suited to the sub-Arctic. Fortunately, the territorial government will continue to fulfil this need with a simplified program that promises to be more efficient.
Homeowners who apply for rebates when they adopt energy-efficient technologies will no longer require the government to assess their homes.
Any advice from energy efficiency inspectors will be optional -- performed by Arctic Energy Alliance -- and paid for by the hour.
Making inspections optional allows Arctic Energy Alliance to perform more complete evaluations and advice on demand, throughout Yellowknife and the vast territory. Homeowners keen on limiting energy consumption costs should be able to get as much as they need out of the program, with advice tailored for their homes.
That amounts to less carbon in the atmosphere and more money for homeowners to use elsewhere.
The fact plans are in the works that could see the cadet program return to Arviat and Baker Lake is great news.
Very few programs can lay claim to offering youth the same number, and calibre, of opportunities the cadets bring to the parade square.
From leadership, marksmanship and land skills, to discipline, camaraderie, responsibility and self-respect, cadets offer a wide range of ways to help youth mature and become more valuable members of their community.
Hopefully this initiative will come to fruition and prove itself successful, as those who stand to gain the most from that success are the youth of the communities.
Magic beans, however, only exist in fairy tales, and these programs will not prove successful unless they're firmly supported by adults in Baker and Arviat.
The cadets have been in the two communities before.
Both the 2992 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps (RCACC) in Arviat and the 3032 RCACC in Baker enjoyed some success before collapsing due to the lack of volunteers willing to put the necessary time in to run the programs.
And there's the rub!
For all the success we've seen during the past few years in the Kivalliq, the fact remains too few people are keeping these programs going with burnout as a constant companion.
And, we don't have to look too far to see what happens when these people relocate or simply need a chance to catch their breath.
The programs die.
It happened with the cadet corps in Arviat and Baker in the past, and it happened with Little League Baseball and what appeared to be a very strong Girl Guides program in Rankin Inlet.
In the cases of the baseball and Girl Guides programs, the end came after the individual leading each program moved to the south.
I was once told programs like these are southern initiatives that spark little interest in the North.
Strange, then, how I always saw so many smiling young faces when I covered the ball games or Guides meetings.
They certainly seemed interested enough.
One of the weakest links in the chain of Northern program development, especially for youth, continues to be the low number of local adults willing to give freely of their time to support the initiatives.
I also find that quite strange, considering it's their kids, relatives and communities the programs benefit.
Equally puzzling, is the fact the lack of volunteers falls outside the spirit of co-operation for the good of the whole, which is supposed to be a staple of Northern culture.
Many hands make light work and help communities survive, grow and prosper.
With our populations continuing to grow in every Kivalliq community, more and more programs are going to be needed to help our youth become everything they can be.
And that means more adults are going to have to start giving back to their community and helping out.
Hopefully, we'll see that start in Arviat and Baker, and many of the youth in those two communities will, once again, have successful cadet programs to participate in.
If so, we'll be the first to salute the effort!
Now, 15 years later, there's promise of $100,000 in funding from Health and Social Services and assistance from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation to convert a donated NWT Housing Corp. building into a new addictions centre.
The House of Hope had a rather informal feel. People gathered to offer each other support and keep their minds off their vices. Elders would drop-in to share stories.
There is real value in this. Although it is not a rehabilitation program or a detox centre, such a place gives alcoholics and drug abusers a healthy environment to temporarily "dry out." It won't provide answers for some troubled souls, but it may help a few find the will to take the next step and seek counselling.
In Inuvik, the Gwich'in Tribal Council has established a wellness camp on the outskirts of town. With money from the GNWT's Health department, addictions programs are becoming a reality there.
These sort of initiatives are needed in as many communities as we can possibly manage.
The federal government has short-sightedly cut Aboriginal Healing Foundation Funding. However, Ottawa has set aside $65.9 million for ongoing residential school mental and emotional trauma programs over the next two years.
These addictions programs are a good fit for that money. Let's make a strong case for federal funding and keep pressing for the healing we deserve.
Northerners are tiring of the territorial government's lack of will when it comes to protecting the NWT's most valuable resource: water.
For years the GNWT has been saying it has plans to negotiate transboundary water agreements with neighbouring provinces and territories. Yet we're still waiting for more than lip service.
In the meantime, elders along the Mackenzie River have been warning us for years about effects from downstream Alberta oil sands projects on Northern river levels, fish and wildlife.
Now, a major dam project in British Columbia could have impacts stretching as far as the Beaufort Delta but once again the GNWT is not racing to our defence.
The GNWT's water stewardship strategy, expected to be released this month in the legislative assembly, has been in the works for three years. Expected to outline the government's goals and vision for water management, it still isn't more than a list of wants.
The GNWT continues to drag its feet on protecting NWT waterways. Three years without a finalized strategy - and more time needed to hammer out the final details - shows a lack of commitment and priorities.
Until the GNWT starts protesting massive downstream developments and pressuring neighbouring governments for firm transboundary water agreements, it has failed in its responsibility to protect a resource that people rely on for food, drinking water and travel.
Outside CFS Alert a few weeks ago, while the Canadian Forces and the federal government were patting themselves on the back for another successful sovereignty operation, Premier Eva Aariak pointed out to the assembled that Inuit were inhabiting the Arctic long before the existence of Canada.
Back then, establishing "sovereignty" was not about twice-annual fly-in military exercises, but was a matter of walking these islands and shores year-round, and depending on them for sustenance.
"Our hunters and their families marked them with Inuit place names only now being recognized on maps of Canada," she said.
She went on to take the federal dignitaries to task for talking and spending freely on military operations to back up Canada's claims to the High Arctic while Nunavut goes without basic infrastructure such as sufficient housing, or roads; a lack of infrastructure she said southern jurisdictions would not tolerate.
That's because the resources buried under the Arctic seabed are behind this government's emphasis on Northern sovereignty, not concern for the Canadians who call this region home.
That's not to say there aren't benefits to Nunavut from large military exercises in the Arctic.
Operation Nunalivut had a number of firsts this year, including the participation of a Danish Sirius dog sled patrol team, the landing of a C-17 at the Alert airstrip, the longest sustained dive in Arctic waters, the use of a portable fibreglass iglu and real-time GPS tracking of Ranger patrols.
These operations allow the military to test its abilities in the Arctic, along with the equipment, procedures and communications required in the event of an emergency, such as a search and rescue or environmental accident. These exercises also spend a great deal of cash on charter aircraft, fuel, food and lodging in the territory.
Most notably, search and rescue technicians on the exercise saved a life, picking up polar adventurer Tom Smitheringale. He was rescued within six hours of activating his emergency locator beacon after falling into the icy sea 500 km north of Alert.
He was damn lucky, because usually the closest search and rescue plane dispatch centre is at CFB Trenton in southern Ontario.
A lack of roads, an abundance of overcrowded houses and lengthy waits for help from the south are things Nunavut communities cope with year-in and year-out. Ranger, Junior Ranger and cadet troops made up of residents from these communities are the most permanent and widespread presence of the Canadian Forces in the North.
We agree with Aariak that the best way to preserve Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic is to support those Canadians who live here and to invest in the communities in which they live. Organizers of Operation Nanook this August in Resolute plan to train the community, along with soldiers, in cleaning up oil spills - a possibility that increases with the influx of shipping and tourist vessels in the Northwest Passage and drilling for oil in the Davis Strait off Greenland.
It's a small step in the right direction to including Inuit in sovereignty.
The latest under-powered thrust comes from Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley, who questions the territorial government's position on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, which is currently before the National Energy Board for review. He believes the GNWT is ceding too much ground to big oil and gas interests, demonstrated, he argues, by the government's apparently lack of interest in obtaining a socio-economic agreement.
He may very well be right but it doesn't seem to be a hot topic among his regular MLA colleagues in the legislative assembly, or more precisely, outside of it since MLAs only met in the assembly for a mere 49 days over the past year.
Perhaps other MLAs will join in when the group gathers briefly starting next week but it's doubtful. Yellowknifer contacted or attempted to contact the four other Yellowknife regular MLAs about Bromley's concerns but they either had nothing to say or did not return phone calls.
The regular MLAs lack cohesion, which too often translates into a lack of credibility. Consequently, the issues they raise are easily dismissed by cabinet, which is never divided even when the positions it poses proves widely unpopular.
The lack of time MLAs spend together is part of the problem, especially in a territory as vast and disparate as ours. How can regular MLAs develop decent alternatives to cabinet policies when they hardly ever see each other? We're not suggesting the Yukon is better governed but at least its legislative assembly sat for 61 days last year. That doesn't exactly make them workhorses but a more industrious lot than our legislators.
Our regular MLAs must look among themselves and not just at cabinet when addressing the territory's woes.
The regular MLAs do not even have to present a united front. It was six of the 11 that filed a conflict of interest complaint against Premier Floyd Roland last year. That complaint gained traction and led to an inquiry which found Roland was in conflict but, as adjudicator Ted Hughes ruled, had quietly engaged in a potentially compromising relationship with a legislative assembly clerk "in good faith."
The greatest challenge lies in regular MLAs, like Bromley in this case, acting as a lone voice. They're sure to be drowned out more often than not.
NWT residents deserve better leadership not just from cabinet but from regular MLAs.
On May 3, Chuck Strahl, minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, unveiled an action plan to improve Northern regulatory regimes. It's no secret there's been a longstanding need to revise the system that reviews applications for proposed developments.
Criticism of the system has been made on many different fronts, including developers and government-commissioned reviews like the McCrank report. Announcing that change is coming, however, is the easiest part of the process.
The action plan, as explained by Strahl, is short on details. The Mackenzie Valley Resources Management Act, the Northwest Territories Water Act and the Territorial Lands Act will be amended, but there was no mention of what exactly will be changed.
Existing land and water boards, in an ideal situation, will be condensed into one body - but again, the "how" was missing. The timeline for all of this work was also conspicuously absent, although Strahl said some portions would start immediately.
The process this plan has launched will in all likelihood turn out to be just as complex and time-consuming as it is to get a water licence for a proposed mine.
John Pollard is not in an enviable situation. He has been appointed Canada's chief federal negotiator to lead consultations and negotiations with the territorial government and aboriginal leadership on structural changes to land and water boards. This won't be easy
Aboriginal groups with existing land and water boards enshrined in their land claim agreements are not going to give them up without a fight. Dehcho First Nations doesn't have such a board yet, but the establishment of the Dehcho Resource Management Authority is among the items being negotiated in the ongoing Dehcho Process.
There is a lot at stake here for the territorial government, the federal government and aboriginal groups in the territory, as well as current and potential development projects.
The federal government did the right thing in launching the action plan for reform but the revisions have to be done exactly right.
If consultation isn't carried out in a manner agreed upon by all sides, and if changes are pushed through without widespread consensus, then the reforms have the potential to cause as many headaches as the current regulatory system has.
The right steps have been taken thus far, but the federal government will have to tread very carefully to reach the goal of a regulatory framework that is, in Strahl's words, "strong, effective, efficient and predictable."
As you can see in the paper it's partly about Dave Jones quest to empower aboriginal youth. But perhaps what didn't come across is how talented this Ojibwe man is at his job.
I sat in on one of his sessions at the school's library on Friday afternoon, and witnessed how he had about 30 Grade 10 students sitting around him, totally absorbed in a group discussion to the point where many of them forgot a reporter was in a room.
Every single one of those students told Jones how valuable the program was to them, and nearly every one of them cited how it changed their lives, whether it had to do with improving their confidence or allowing them let go of anger and frustration. I started thinking about how cool it would have been to meet this guy when I was a teenager, craving an older mentor.
Ultimately Jones' goal is to make leaders out of these students. This is an ambitious but common goal among many teachers. Part of his teachings include getting youth out of their comfort zone to make them feel it's okay to be in a seemingly awkward situation. It's OK to feel different.
The techniques he used to get kids out of their zone included getting them to dance uncontrollably in a circle and strutting along the library floor as if they were supermodels. Naturally, at first I was a little skeptical.
But it didn't take long to feel the positive energy. You could see the more reserved ones starting to come out of their shell, and the more hostile ones begin to loosen up. What I also liked is that Jones, right off the bat, got rid of the ones that would be a distraction to the group and those who weren't ready to pitch in.
After 20-odd years of motivational speaking, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Jones had such a great impact on the students. But what is a surprise is how his teaching philosophy seems to fly in the face of how we as adults like to build our young leaders. We like to tell them there's a certain defined mould they must fit to be a leader, and to succeed, which is true to an extent.
But how many of us encourage and allow youth the freedom to find their own voice? More importantly, how many of us have the patience to offer the support that's often needed for them to find it? Not too many, I suggest. Luckily there are some like Dave Jones, who care enough.
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