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Supply, supply, supply Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, December 10, 2010
With sparkling clarity, the first clause of the policy statement defines the core requirement for the success of the battered and bruised diamond cutting and polishing industry in the North.
To achieve its goal, the GNWT will: Endorse the mining of diamonds in the NWT only when agreements are in place so that a portion of the rough diamonds will be made available for manufacturing by Approved NWT Diamond Manufacturers.
The policy could have included assurances that the diamonds would be economically viable but putting the supply of diamonds at the top of the policy priorities shows the GNWT has learnt some hard lessons.
Minister McLeod characterized some of the past efforts to help cutting and polishing diamonds get off the ground as "mom and pop" operations, vowing never to get involved with them again.
Closer to the truth is that even the most efficiently run, experienced business cannot succeed if profit margins are too small. The profit margin of Northern diamond factories is determined by the amount and quality of diamonds they are given by Ekati, Diavik and DeBeers. Government and entrepreneurs have lost millions trying to make it work but to no avail.
As was revealed in Yellowknifer's diamond series (see www.nnsl.com/business), these diamond mines have kept the flow of rough to a minimum, some more than others, essentially foiling all the GNWT's efforts to get the cutting and polishing industry on its feet.
What is the potential of the diamond cutting and polishing industry? From January to December 2009, the total value of NWT diamonds produced was $1,447,940,000. Ten percent of that would bring $140 million in value to the cutting industry. Yellowknifer reported Crossworks Manufacturing, the city's only cutting and polishing factory in operation with 11 employees, did $10 million worth of diamonds in the first quarter of operation. Imagine how many would be employed with $140 million.
To date, the territorial government's hands have been tied by the lack of binding agreements with the mines that ensure a proper supply of rough diamonds. The time to negotiate such a deal was when the mines were going through the approval process. The territorial government of the day saw the potential but the federal government was in charge and couldn't be convinced to act on the behalf of Northerners.
Ontario, learning from our mistakes, has such binding agreements with De Beers and its Victor mine in Northern Ontario. A cutting and polishing factory set up in Sudbury currently employs 34 cutters and polishers.
What can the GNWT do now?
Recognizing supply is the key, it must focus all efforts on convincing the diamond mines that growing the cutting and polishing industry in the North is part of their corporate responsibility.
Doing so will not affect the miners' bottom line because Northern manufacturers will pay market prices for their diamonds. Again, a guaranteed, consistent supply is the key to success.
Considering life of the existing mines along with the expanse and potential of the NWT diamond fields, steps taken now to establish a cutting and polishing industry now will surely pay off in the future.
The Sambaa K'e and Nahanni Butte Dene bands have reached an impasse with Acho Dene Koe First Nation and the federal court system has been called into play.
The disagreement is centered on an area of land where the traditional uses of the three groups overlap.
Through their land claims process, Acho Dene Koe (ADK) could select sections of land that either Nahanni Butte or Trout Lake consider to be their traditional territory.
The two neighbouring First Nations, who have joined together to negotiate as one, strongly object to that idea.
Ideally differences like this should be settled through direct negotiations between the parties. As Chief Steve Kotchea of ADK pointed out, the people in the three communities have close ties including bonds of marriage and friendship. It would be best if these ties could be respected and the matter settled "in house."
Sometimes, however, this proves impossible. The situation in the southwest Deh Cho is ramping up to be such an occasion.
One of the primary problems, and the reason that an agreement cannot be reached at this juncture, is that ADK, Nahanni Butte and Trout Lake are on completely different pages.
ADK refuses to negotiate its asserted boundary on the basis that it was established by its elders and represents Fort Liard's traditional land. Any land claim that is settled will only affect the ownership and management of sub-surface resources, according to
ADK. Traditional uses of the surface of the land, which ADK seems to believe is the primary concern, will remain unchanged for residents of the three communities.
Trout Lake and Nahanni Butte, however, don't even accept that ADK's asserted boundary represents its traditional land use area.
Having ADK claim portions of their land, regardless of whether hunter and trappers can continue their activities, is unacceptable, in Trout Lake and Nahanni Butte's views.
The result of the boundary overlap could very well be a drawn-out court case and a cooling of relations between the three First Nations regardless of interconnecting family ties.
One or more groups will be left feeling that they lost some of their traditional land when the land claims are finally settled.
The legacy of this disagreement will affect Deh Cho politics for years to come. It's an unfortunate interruption of the region's goal to attain a land claim of its own.
Whether we are tourists or professionals, we come and go - while few stay.
Editing a community newspaper is a privilege.
Our stories, other than our children, are our most precious possessions. We create our individual stories with our lives and colour them with our imaginations as they become memories. Those stories are passed down through generations to form our culture and while we are their creators, it is through our stories we see and make sense of the world.
To be entrusted with the telling of a community's tale is no small honour.
Having come from the East Coast, you'll have to be patient with me. I'm here to learn your lives and retell them, but I know little of life in the North. Mine is a fishing and farming culture, not an Arctic one.
As well, I'll need help learning what is happening in your community; what its issues are and what you'd like to know more about. Keep in mind advice or correction is always welcomed at a newspaper. Even a rebuff, whether it be a phone call or a letter to the editor, is a reminder the community takes ownership of the newspaper and considers it a venue for discussion.
In return for your patience, I'll try to be an honest broker of your tales and help your campaigns to get more for your community.
But life isn't only about work - in the meantime I'll be adding your culture's wisdom to what I've taken from the East Coast. I look forward to seeing, whenever the sun returns, the wilds which surround us. Northern Newfoundland, where I spent the last four years, shares a similar terrain, but its animals differ. There are caribou, but no wolves, cod but no pike, moose but no muskox.
What the land shares in both places, so far as I can gather, is a tight-fisted generosity - survival came easy to no one. But cultures, like people, grow from what is expected of them, not what is given to them. So cultures surviving in a rough land create tough and resourceful individuals.
This too is a gift.
That's how much the City of Yellowknife has budgeted to purchase and install new computers in bylaw vehicles next year.
It seems a bit rich.
Another $35,000 has been earmarked for new in-car cameras for the municipal enforcement department. The existing ones are four years old.
When Yellowknifer wanted to know the rationale for those expenditures, a brick wall initially went up. The head of the bylaw department simply said, "I have no interest in co-operating with you for this story."
Mayor Gord Van Tighem was more accommodating, explaining that the city usually replaces all electronics after three years, especially equipment that is frequently exposed to hot and cold temperatures.
At least that gives the public some sense of justification for the expenditure. We rely on our elected city councillors to go over the $26.4 million capital budget line by line, as they have done this week. We trust they will weed out the "Cadillac" purchases. Institutions, like city hall, have a tendency to go for the items with bells and whistles.
A good example of the brakes being put on such extravagant behaviour came in 2008 when some city councillors voiced their opposition to purchasing new $2,500 laptops just because the ones on hand were three years old.
Some councillors said they could use their own personal computers, one said he only required a laptop when he travelled for municipal purposes while others said they don't use the city's laptops at all. There were also a few who said the existing computers should be updated or repaired.
It's good fodder for debate, and it often comes as a result of asking questions which is what councillors are elected to do and journalists are paid to do.
Respect your elders isn't a phrase that everybody holds dear.
That was reinforced during the NWT Seniors' Society's symposium on the abuse of seniors. More than 100 participants assembled to tackle the issue on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 at the Explorer Hotel.
There was mention of the varying forms abuse can take: verbal, physical or monetary. The aged among us are sometimes a target for those looking to swindle some cash, including family members who can prey on parents or grandparents.
Imagine not only coping with the natural struggles of ageing, but dealing with a cold Yellowknife winter while your joints and muscles start to give you assorted aches and pains. Sometimes it's just easier to stay inside for long stretches of time since mobility can be limited. Then consider many seniors who stay in Yk gradually lose their friends to the lure of warmer southern locations. Isolation can creep in.
It is isolation that makes seniors even more vulnerable to abuse. As was pointed out at last week's symposium, support networks are critical for elders, and convincing them to reveal their troubles can be difficult.
While the NWT Seniors' Society is to be congratulated for raising the profile on this terrible situation, it will take a community effort to detect signs of seniors who may be deprived or wounded by unscrupulous individuals.
While it's still almost four months before the new Nutrition North food subsidy program replaces the federal government's old Food Mail Program, it seems more and more people are getting a little antsy over whether major retailers will actually pass the savings onto consumers.
Still others worry the bigger stores will increase the price on items not included in the subsidy to boost their profit margins even more.
Those in the region who use individual ordering under the old system will find they have a lot more work to do under the Nutrition North program.
Under the new program, individuals will have to pay the full cost of freight on their food orders and submit their receipts and paperwork to receive the subsidy.
Many are concerned this is the first step in eliminating individual orders and placing the program entirely under retailer control.
The rates of subsidy were published on the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) website this past week, and they vary wildly across the Kivalliq.
The program is divided into two categories, with Category A listing the bulk of what qualifies under the new approach.
The subsidy given to products in Category A is substantially higher than those in Category B.
On the low end of the Kivalliq subsidy pole is Arviat. Residents there will only receive a subsidy of 20 cents per kilogram on Category A items and 5 cents on Category B items.
The complete list of category items can also be found on the INAC website.
In Baker Lake, the subsidy rates will be $1.40 and 30 cents, respectively, while in Chesterfield Inlet it will be $1.50 and 40 cents.
Folks in Coral Harbour will be subsidized to the tune of $3 and $1.90, while consumers in Rankin Inlet should see subsidies of $1.40 and 30 cents passed along.
Repulse Bay gets a subsidy of $3.20 and $2.10, while Whale Cove rounds out the region at 70 cents and 5 cents respectively.
For people in the region to be convinced the new program will benefit them in the checkout aisle, INAC has to have a foolproof system in place to monitor the subsidies.
The department also has to ensure the system employed at local retailers to show how much consumers save is easily understood.
If, for example, the in-store system only shows consumers a combined total of the money supposedly saved instead of an itemized list, we'll bet dollars to doughnuts many customers will still doubt they're receiving the full benefit of the program. There are many consumers and smaller retailers across the Kivalliq who still maintain there was nothing wrong with the old Food Mail Program, except for those who were able to abuse it by having goods subsidized that were never on the approval list.
They maintain a better approach would have been to close the loopholes in the old program and disqualify any merchant caught abusing the system from using it again.
To them, the government has accomplished nothing more than to replace a small group of bandits with the spectre of corporate greed.
Only time will tell if they are correct.
Since 9/11, the threat of global terrorism has been sensationalized by the media and governments have gone to extreme lengths to safeguard public safety.
However, when children are detained because they share the same name as someone on the no-fly list, we must ask the question: Are we operating on the desire for proper security or merely fear.
A recent report by an Alberta professor is calling for increased airport security in small Northern communities.
Rob Huebert, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, outlined a bordering-on-absurd scenario whereby a terrorist gains access to Canada after arriving in a small Northern community by sea, then flying to Yellowknife and from there driving south.
Huebert recognizes the probability of such an event happening is low but suggests the risk is real and Canada must increase security for the protection of Northerners.
He goes on to further suggest costs for more security measures could be passed on to the customer.
Such a statement demonstrates Huebert's lack of knowledge of Northern realities and places fear-based security issues above the well-being of our citizens.
Costs of flying between communities is already a hardship for many people. A round trip flight -- three hours one-way -- between Colville Lake and Yellowknife for example costs $1,600.
Any increase to prices would likely be unbearable and further isolate remote communities.
The federal government should instead focus its spending in the North to improving health, education and infrastructure.
The professor's ignorance was highlighted by the fear expressed upon seeing a hunter load his rifle into the overhead compartment of an aircraft.
In fact, rather than screen people flying south, it is more important to screen people coming north.
Drugs and alcohol continue to plague our communities and their entry point is through Hay River and Yellowknife. Airport screening going North from those two communities would do a lot more for improving the safety of Northerners than preventing a conjured threat of seafaring terrorists looking to traverse Canada's Arctic.
Thanks for the advice professor but concerns over addictions, high cost of living -- including airfare-- and access to essential services keep us more occupied than southern-based fear mongering ever could.
When it comes to something as controversial as uranium mining, discussion is necessary. And that requires the voicing of opinions other than those of the mining companies.
Recently Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit brought a number of anti-uranium mining speakers North to talk about the health and environmental impacts of uranium.
Mining research and technology has improved in the years since uranium mining began in the mid-20th century. But that doesn't mean questions shouldn't be asked about safety and environmental repercussions. Learning more about the risks will help Nunavummiut ask specific questions of the mining companies and get specific answers.
And there are risks. The uranium deposits being explored in our territory, including the Kiggavik-Sissons site about 80 kilometres west of Baker Lake, where Areva proposes to mine, are within the range of the Beverly caribou herd and are located close to or within their calving grounds. Uranium remains radioactive for hundreds of millions of years, requiring careful monitoring of operations and tailings disposal.
Also under debate is the issue of social responsibility.
Nunavut Tunngavik's uranium policy states they are in favour of uranium exploration and mining in the territory if it is carried out in an environmentally and socially responsible way, and the uranium from the mining should be used only for peaceful and environmentally-friendly purposes.
The problem is NTI has no control over what will happen with the uranium mined in Nunavut once it leaves the territory - as one speaker pointed out at the recent forum in Iqaluit. It could end up in nuclear power reactors, reducing dependence on coal-fired power plants that contribute to greenhouse gases and climate change; or it could end up fuelling nuclear submarines or in nuclear warheads.
Some candidates for NTI president have proposed revisiting the policy if they are elected. The Denesuline First Nations of northern Saskatchewan would be worth consulting, as they have lived with uranium mines run by Areva for decades.
We encourage more discussion as it can only help Nunavummiut weigh the cons of uranium mining, such as environmental and health concerns, versus the pros of employment and other financial benefits.
It's up to the Inuit affected to decide what is best for their children and grandchildren, and more information will help them make the choice that's right for them.
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