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Inuvik MLA Alfred Moses is fed up because he believes the government has been "coasting" when it comes to addictions treatment.

In an effort to rectify the problem, he is pushing for a second addictions treatment centre for the NWT. His reasoning that the Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Centre on the Hay River Reserve is not culturally relevant and too far away for people in the Beaufort Delta or Sahtu regions makes sense. It might also explain why, in a territory that suffers from addictions rates twice the national average, the facility is rarely at capacity.

Moses's point is also highlighted by stats that indicate the territory is losing its battle against addictions.

According to the latest addictions survey from the Department of Health and Social Services, people who reported at least once trying one of five types of illicit drugs -- cocaine/crack, hallucinogens, speed, ecstasy and heroin - increased to 24 per cent in 2009 from 16 per cent in 2002.

The same report states 43 per cent of residents surveyed said they typically consume five or more drinks on one occasion. This is an increase from 34 per cent since 1996.

In 2002, addictions services in the NWT were hit hard by a report titled A State of Emergency ... Evaluation of Addiction Services in the NWT, a document produced by consultants hired by the territorial government. That 184-page document criticized nearly every aspect of addictions services delivery in the territory. Unfortunately, 10 years later, little has changed.

The Hay River treatment centre remains the only detoxification facility in the NWT; services for youth and special needs individuals with addictions are still non-existent; and funding, which was deemed insufficient then, has actually decreased to 2.3 per cent from three per cent of the total health budget. Although total spending is $8 million compared to $5 million 10 years ago, inflation takes a bite out of that.

While more must be done to combat addictions in the NWT, Health Minister Tom Beaulieu is correct when he says a new addiction treatment centre might not be the best option.

The minister pointed out that the GNWT spends approximately $2 million annually on the Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Centre and the facility has been consistently operating under 50 per cent capacity.

There is no reason to believe that a similar facility in another region would see better use.

Beaulieu said other options such as on-the-land, culturally appropriate treatment options might be more effective. The health minister might be right, but he also told News/North the government will have to address adding or changing programs by working within the existing budget.

Unfortunately, that is not a realistic view.

Back in the 1990s, Beaulieu said, the government was spending up to 14 per cent of its health budget on addictions. Granted it was still budgeting for the communities which now make up Nunavut, but addictions levels were also at their lowest.

The minister took exception to Moses's accusation that the government was coasting on the issue because it undermines the work health professionals in the NWT have been doing. We would suggest, however, that the Inuvik MLA's comments were directed solely at the policy makers and not the front-line workers.

Addictions funding has not kept pace with the need; those with FASD and our youth are still sent south for treatment or end up in jail; and since the State of Emergency report was published addiction rates have continued to grow.

While we appreciate the government's fiscal challenges, addictions are tearing our communities apart -- a fact that is all too apparent every day in our courts. More money must be found to address this troubling issue.

It's hard not to feel pangs of sadness with seeing the Inuit Art Foundation meet its demise.

Its beautiful Inuit Art Quarterly magazine, the foundation's flagship product, was a pleasure to behold. The foundation's mandate, to promote and market Inuit art and to train artists and make being an Inuit artist in a Northern community a little easier, leaves a gap to be filled - but it's a gap that can be filled.

Look at David Alexander's Iqaluit Auction Bids page on Facebook. It's been around since November, and with no money down, it's created a Nunavut-wide art market that sees deals worth upwards of $500 go down daily.

There is a market for this art. If buying it is made easy, it will be bought.

Without comment from the federal government on why $485,000 in annual funding to the foundation - about half of IAF's budget - was cut, it's difficult to know the reasoning. It seems the foundation did not have data to support it was fulfilling its mandate. Whether it was or not, when funded by public money, that data has to be collected and presentable to the government, and public, on demand.

Even the best of organizations must be accountable, and the best tend to be.

As well, the foundation's quarterly magazine, while beautiful and well-read amongst art aficionados, is not modest in its production. It has beautiful, glossy pages with nice layout on heavy paper, making it an expensive product.

There is no question there must be programs to meet the needs of Inuit artists, and the death of the IAF is the death of the only national organization devoted completely to marketing and promoting Inuit art.

According to the 2006 census, the proportional number of artists in the territorial workforce was 242 per cent above the national average, although they earn just 53 per cent of the income of the average Nunavut worker. Those artists need to have support and backing. Art is the lifeblood of Inuit culture, and must be nourished.

Look to the Internet for opportunities to foster an economic environment for art. Iqaluit Auction Bids is a fantastic model to use as a launching pad.

The government must help artists the supplies and training they need, and foster opportunities for artists to work in their chosen

field.

If the government is cutting half-a-million dollars for Inuit arts programs, it shouldn't put it all back in the coffers to be spent elsewhere. Earmark that money for replacement programs, and make sure the accountability framework is there so results can be tracked and changes can be made if the programming is not effective.

When Karen Lander ran out of a house in Frame Lake, rifle in hand, and charged heavily armed RCMP officers on March 14, she was finally in complete control of her life. The police were bound to do her bidding and end her pain, and they did.

While Lander's medical records are private, the terrible result of her mental illness was very public.

The consequences of this tragic incident were not suffered by her alone. Her pain, in some way, will now live on in her children, friends, and the police officers forced to take a human life.

We don't doubt there has since been much passionate debate in kitchens and coffee shops whether the police did the right thing. At present it seems they did their duty as demanded by the situation and their training.

A more productive subject of debate is the state of mental health services in the NWT. Was Lander's death a failure of the system?

She was one of 30 percent of Yellowknifers who count themselves as coping with mental health problems. In 2009-10, approximately 264 Yellowknifers were hospitalized suffering severe mental health symptoms; that number jumps to 620 people across the entire territory. These annual statistics were gathered in the territorial government's Northwest Territories Health Status Report and show a considerable segment of our Northern population suffers from mental health issues.

If Lander sought help before that night, the treatment offered wasn't sufficient.

Mental illness is one of the most difficult of all medical problems to diagnose. Some people are wise enough to seek support from their family doctor or counselling, or both, but the line between the expected emotional ups and downs of life and clinical depression are fuzzy. Too often sufferers self-medicate with booze and drugs which can mask and aggravate an undiagnosed problem.

Unlike other illnesses, people with mental health problems are often the last ones to recognize the symptoms. Indeed, their self-destructive behavior can alienate their family and friends who want to help. Often people in mental health crisis are left on their own or with people in the same situation.

We are still in the dark ages when it comes to dealing with mental illness. There are no quick tests for treatable depression, no medications guaranteed to provide immediate relief, no effective surgical procedures to remove or repair damaged psyches.

Psychiatrists, the only professionals who can make a diagnosis, are scarce and rotate through Yellowknife clinics as temporary locums. Their main tools are medications.

Psychologists and counsellors can do little without a medical diagnosis and even less without complete co-operation from patients who can neither explain or in some cases even properly describe their history, thoughts and impulses.

We have a psychiatric ward at Stanton Territorial Hospital that can provide sanctuary but no long-term treatment.

While health care professionals work with people suffering the debilitating effects of mental illness on a daily basis, they and the services they can offer are restricted by the understanding of our politicians who control the funding for resources.

The politicians respond to pressure from their constituents. That's us, the people where the real resistance lies. We don't like to talk about mental illness because we don't understand it and unless it hits our home, we are largely unsympathetic. We are even less supportive when it comes to addictions, irritated by the stricken people walking our streets.

If the ugly spectacle of a middle-aged mother being shot down like a rabid fox disturbs us enough to wonder how we as a society might have helped her - or indeed how she might otherwise have helped herself - Karen Lander may not have died in vain.

The results of the Alberta achievement test are bound to raise a few eyebrows and more than a few concerns.

The tests, which are in their seventh year, measure student performance based on the NWT curriculum in the areas of math and language arts at the Grade 3, 6 and 9 level. The 2011 results show a lot of students are not achieving what is considered an acceptable standard. For example, only 53.1 per cent of Grade 3 students in the territory, out of the total enrollment, achieved an acceptable standard on the language arts portion.

Even more disturbing, only 30.2 per cent of Grade 9 students, out of the total enrollment, achieved an acceptable standard on the math portion of the test.

In the Deh Cho, Terry Jaffray, the superintendent of the Dehcho Divisional Education Council, said the region's scores are quite a bit lower than the rest of the territory in both math and language arts. There will undoubtedly be a tendency for people to read that statement and immediately move to the conclusion that the schools in the region are not properly educating the Deh Cho's youth.

After all, one would presume that with seven years of practice the council would know what the test requires of students and have teachers focus on those areas. Results for the region should be getting better every year. But instead they are hovering around the same level.

Jaffray is clear that the council, schools and teachers aren't shirking their jobs. All of the parties are taking a close look at the test results and developing strategies for helping students to learn the curriculum and perform better on the tests.

It would also be easy to look at the results of the report, which includes the average attendance of students in the 2010-11 school year, and point a lot of the blame for the poor test results on parents and caregivers. For example, in the communities across the territory, students in kindergarten had a 77.8 per cent average attendance. Clearly someone isn't getting them off to school in the morning.

The average for all students across the territory was 84.3 per cent, the equivalent of a student missing approximately one and a half days every two weeks. That's a lot of curriculum for students to be missing and has to have a bearing on the test results.

Pointing the blame at the school system or parents, however, will not address the real issue, which is whether students in the Deh Cho are getting the best education possible.

"Where have Canadian winters gone?" Uh, over here. We're bundled up nice and tight in Inuvik.

Residents of the southern provinces are currently experiencing higher-than-average temperatures and they are not keeping it a secret. Everywhere you turn -- the news, Facebook, Twitter -- you'll be bombarded with half-astonished, half-bragging updates about just how warm it is and what fun, warm weather-related activity everyone is getting up to.

People are posting pictures of their vehicle's dashboard which innocently state Ontario is dealing with mid-20s – proving this madness is actually taking place. They're not making it up. Others are taking it a bit too far – wearing shorts and flipflops and heading to the beach in Halifax when it's just reaching 12 C.

Now, our part of the world is amazing in the winter. The snowmobile trails are padded down from a season of use, the walking paths glisten with fresh snow and the sun is coming back longer and stronger every day.

Although the sun's return is proof that a seasonal change is expected – and the real, off-with-the-parka kind, not the spring equinox – the sun is just a tease.

Even though it's lighting up the town until past 9 p.m., those who want to enjoy it for any length of time must realize that hypothermia and frostbite might be in their not-too-distant future.

We have lived through a consistently frigid January, dipping to -43 C, but we did have a break in February with a treat of -15 C before it plunged back to weeks of deep-freeze conditions in March. But this is normal.

According to Environment Canada, the past six Marches had an average temperature of between -25 C and -30 C.

So, our brothers and sisters in the provinces can enjoy this spin-off of global warming, or El Nino, or whatever it is that is forcing them onto sun-drenched patios for lunch. But when they question so broadly why Canadian winters are no longer, tell them the winters they remember so fondly as they sip iced tea while sunbathing in their backyards – winters of snow, mittens, woodstoves and hot chocolate – are alive and well in Inuvik.

We're encouraged by the progress shown in the mining world of late, including efforts to wrestle the NWT's tangled regulatory regime to the ground.

The upswing in exploration is welcome news indeed, and for the momentum to continue so too should improvement to regulatory barriers. The Government of the Northwest Territories, the Chamber of Mines, and especially the federal government, should make ongoing progress in streamlining regulations very public.

Awareness and perception, after all, is key to attracting further investment and interest from the movers and shakers in the mining industry.

The regulatory boards' responsible for setting and enforcing regulations, whether created by land claims or the federal government, should be put on alert that their activities are being monitored.

Further, companies interested in doing business in the Northwest Territories need to realize that, while we are hungry for development, the protection of the environment and the long-term effects of their activities trump the desired economic benefits. That said, attraction is the key.

"The future is very bright for us here in the Northwest Territories," said Industry, Tourism and Investment Minister David Ramsay, who just returned from the 2012 Prospectors and Developers Conference in Toronto.

Despite mineral exploration spending in the NWT lagging far behind our neighbours in Nunavut - with a record $502.3 million spent in the east during 2011, according to Natural Resources Canada preliminary figures, compared to $105.4 million spent in 2011 on mineral exploration in the NWT - Ramsay is cautiously optimistic that the NWT can surpass the $500-million mark in the near future.

"We are sitting on top of a huge resource wealth in our territory and I think we just scratched the surface when it comes to developing its true potential," Ramsay said. "$500 million wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities."

The latest update from the territory's three producing diamond mines is encouraging. Snap Lake, Ekati and Diavik produced $2.069 billion in diamonds last year, up more than $40 million from 2010, despite decreased production. Thank goodness for higher market prices and greater demand for diamonds on the world economy. With production expected to ramp up this year at Diavik, to 8.3 million carats from 6.7 million carats in 2011, one would expect production values to increase even more by the end of 2012.

Finally, the territory needs more mines to open as the existing operations reach maturity.

One doesn't have to use much imagination to speculate how bleak the territory's economic situation would have been had the diamond mines not opened as the gold mines shut down.

The time to set the stage for new mines is now.

This weekend, Yellowknife residents will once again have the opportunity to herald the end of winter with a community festival, this time on Yellowknife Bay.

The Long John Jamboree will replace the long-lived but recently-deceased Caribou Carnival, which offered Yellowknifers springtime entertainment from 1955 until 2010.

Originally designed to celebrate the return of hunters and trappers from the bush, Caribou Carnival struggled in its last years as it failed to evolve alongside the latest generation of Northerners. Organizers of the Long John Jamboree have designed an inaugural schedule of events to embrace long-standing festivities such as handgames and the Ugly Truck and Dog Contest, as well as fresh spectacles such as magicians, snowboarding, skijoring and music, to name a few.

In keeping with a custom handed down from the Caribou Carnival, the city has declared a half-day civic holiday on Friday. Many municipal and territorial government employees will be given that afternoon off to take part in the day's activities.

No matter how much work volunteers, performers, and organizers put into event preparations, it is up to the public to make the Long John Jamboree a success. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, head on down to Yellowknife Bay. If we all do our part to make the festival fun for all ages, it will give us all something special to look forward to again next winter.

A recent survey on the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population is being eagerly anticipated by Kivalliq hunters in the communities of Arviat, Baker Lake, Whale Cove, Rankin Inlet and Chesterfield Inlet.

Modern science and traditional Inuit knowledge have long been at odds over the health of the Western Hudson Bay population.

The Kivalliq's polar bear quota for 20112012 was increased to 21 bears. That's up 13 from the previous quota of eight.

Still, it's a far cry from the quota of 56 bears that was in place as recently as 2006-2007.

While Kivalliq hunters wait for the survey results to be made public and, in all probability, another round of community consultations to set a long-term quota, another game is playing out in the south that will, ultimately, impact both the bears and their hunters.

Auction prices for bear skins have skyrocketed during the past few years, mainly because of the fur's rising popularity in China and Russia and a growing feeling among collectors that the trade of bear skins will soon be banned in Canada.

The mecca of polar-bear-skin purchasing is the well-known auction house, the Fur Harvesters Auction in North Bay, Ont.

The going price on untreated polar bear skins rose by more than 200 per cent during the past few years, with some skins selling for more than $10,000.

With Canada home to about 60 per cent of the world's polar bear population, and being the only international supplier of the skins, getting an accurate picture of the real numbers of their populations could have a huge influence on market prices.

Many buyers are opening their wallets wide to get as many of the skins as they can afford in anticipation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora gathering in early 2013.

During those meetings, the United States is expected to go all out in its efforts to ban polar bear parts on the world market, a move Canada staunchly opposes.

One needs look no further than Inukjuak, Que., to see the potential impact rising prices can have.

Hunters there are reported to have harvested more than 70 bears this past year in an effort to cash in on the rising demand and soaring prices.

Indications on the Western Hudson Bay survey point to the news being good on population numbers.

Once those numbers are made public - and if Inuit are proven correct in their contention that polar bear population numbers are rising, not decreasing - it will be interesting to see what, if any, impact the results of one area survey will have on market prices.

Former Environment minister Daniel Shewchuk referred to the "remarkable recovery" of the population this past year and, if survey numbers bear that out, many eyes will be on the next large auction of polar bear skins this coming June.

Bidders will have to decide if strong population numbers and, possibly, increased quotas outweigh their fears of American success at the CITES gathering.

Whatever the outcome, hopefully it will be as advantageous to the bears as it is to our hunters and economy.

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