Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

On Valentine's Day, NWT cabinet ministers and some regular MLAs showed their love for the federal government when they stopped Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley's motion on federal changes to environmental law.

The rare vote by cabinet ensured the defeat of Bromley's motion, which would have directed the GNWT to express its disappointment over the federal government's failure to consult with the territory when it passed bills C-38 and C-45. Both contained changes to Canada's environmental legislation.

Bromley, well-known for his passion concerning all-things environmental, called the changes a "federal assault" on the health of the territory.

Whether you share Bromley's passion for protecting the environment or not, there was a deeper, disturbing message carried in the response from cabinet.

Premier Bob McLeod proclaimed it to be the duty of the GNWT to respect the decisions and jurisdiction of the federal government. Finance Minister Michael Miltenberger argued that the GNWT cannot "tell them (the feds) we are unhappy and, oh, yes, we want more money."

Miltenberger concluded his statement with a theme common to like-minded MLAs, which was to say with a devolution deal so close, the territorial government can't rock the boat.

We don't necessarily agree that Bromley's position is correct. There are valid points made that environmental protections within the NWT will remain stringent enough to protect the land. It is also fair to say some regulatory relaxations are needed, considering the difficulty developers have had in the past, which have contributed to our suffering economy.

All those arguments would have been enough for cabinet to stand on, but instead they chose to use their speeches to publicly pucker up to the prime minister.

Contrary to McLeod's statement, the GNWT has a duty to criticize the federal government if it's warranted, just as it is the role of our MLAs to represent the will of their constituents.

In this case, that would be to stand up and tell the federal government Northerners demand and deserve effective consultation.

By kowtowing, the GNWT has shown its weak hand to the world. That does not bode well for success at the devolution negotiating table. Is our government strong enough to ensure the deal is fair? Is it fighting tooth and nail to ensure the people of the NWT get what they deserve? Or, as the recent legislative assembly exchange would suggest, is it nodding and smiling politely at everything the Government of Canada says?

It seems gone are the days when premiers such as Stephen Kakfwi would stand toe-to-toe with the federal government. He acted in solidarity with his Northern counterparts in 2003 to fight for more health-care funding, a deal that generated an extra $20 million for the NWT over three years.

Has the hunger for a devolution deal turned government leaders into mute ptarmigan who would rather allow Ottawa to walk all over them for fear it may jeopardize the deal and projects such as the Inuvik-Tuk highway?

The recent message from the assembly is clear: Dangle a few treats in front of our leaders and they will sit obediently for their masters in Ottawa. And that is the wrong message to send.

Northern mining executives must have grimaced at the news earlier this month that Shear Diamonds Ltd. abandoned its Jericho mine site, unplugged its phones and is hiding under a rock. It's this kind of thing that makes it hard to do business in the North.

When mines are being vetted by the public, during the impact review process, old grievances are often brought up. Companies like Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. and Baffinland have tried hard to drive home the message that mining today is different than it was years ago.

The spectre of projects such as Yellowknife's Giant Mine haunt the industry to this day - its infrastructure left to rot and its 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide and 13.5 million tonnes of toxic tailings abandoned, all of which was eventually put on the taxpayer's bill to clean up.

Shear was required to pay a liability, although everyone's mum on whether it was actually paid.

When Royal Oak Mines Inc. went into receivership, the government was left footing the Giant Mine cleanup bill. Nunavummiut rightly want to know how they can trust that situation won't happen again today, on their land.

When a company like Shear skulks away under the cover of darkness, it damages the trust companies have been trying to rebuild. Worse yet, neither the Nunavut Impact Review Board or the federal government will yet say whose dollar might have to pick up Shear's cleanup tab. The taxpayer should be worried.

The government must go public on this situation. If the liability money was paid, get the word out now before the industry's reputation is further tarnished. If it wasn't paid, the government needs to come clean and start beefing up, or at least enforcing, its legislation. If it were enough to just trust a company would pay its liability eventually, we wouldn't need liability payments in the first place.

The Pangnirtung fishery industry is proving itself to be a huge economic boon to its community.

Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd. created 35 jobs in 2012 - twice as many than the previous year - and had 92 licensed fishers hauling in 575,000 pounds of turbot, which it purchased and processed. Since this year's season started in late January, 240,000 pounds have been brought in.

General manager Michael Neumann predicts the plant could get 800,000 pounds this season, which ends in May. The fish is flown to Montreal and then sold to Asian markets abroad. Pangnirtung's role in these markets has brought more than $400,000 into the hamlet's economy this year for fishers and workers, Neumann said.

Those are great numbers for a sustainable industry that fits Nunavut like a glove. It's also a gold star for the Nunavut Development Corporation which made the necessary investments to set the stage for present and future success.

Eyebrows were raised in the legislative assembly last week when Range Lake MLA Daryl Dolynny brought up his concerns about the amount of money the territorial government is spending on health care, particularly in the area of medical travel.

Dolynny suggested that the GNWT is spending $100 million annually on medical travel. He asserted that leaves only 17.9 per cent of the overall territorial budget on "true health," much less than in other jurisdictions, which spend an average of 42 per cent of their total budgets on health-care delivery.

Considering that Finance Minister Michael Miltenberger's 2013 budget calls for $360 million in health spending, spending $100 million on medical travel would represent almost one-third of the health department's budget for 2013.

However, a quick look at the Stanton Territorial Health Authority's annual report for 2011-2012 reveals that there were 1,036 medevac trips in 2011-2012, which cost almost $9.8 million. In the same fiscal year, nearly $9.2 million was spent on non-emergency medical travel for 11,931 trips. That totals just under $19 million, a far cry from what Dolynny suggested while calling for more money to be allocated for health care in the budget. In fact, the cost of medical travel, including medevacs and scheduled trips for medical purposes, decreased in 2011-2012 from the previous year.

To be fair, Dolynny told Yellowknifer that his research on the topic involved looking at supplementary health program reports, contracts with airlines who provide medevac services and reports on other related contracts and services. He said there is not a consolidated costs figure and stopped counting when the number reached more than $80 million.

Now, there is no question that providing good quality health care across the vast expanse of the Northwest Territories is challenging. When an emergency situation happens, either because of a tragic accident or because a person experiences a life-threatening medical condition, a system must be in place for the victims to receive timely and professional health care, whether they live in Aklavik, Behchoko, Deline or Yellowknife.

How that is provided in a cost-effective manner has been put under the microscope before. A comprehensive territorial medical travel program evaluation was completed in 2009. It looked at expenditures from 2005-2006 to the 2007-2008 fiscal year, which ranged from $18.2 million to $23.5 million, including medevacs, scheduled medical trips, ground travel, administration, boarding homes and subsidies for patients and escorts. Cost recovery from various federal agencies and departments during that period ranged from $10 million to $13 million, resulting in a total cost to the GNWT of between $8.2 million and $13.5 million.

Combined costs have gone up substantially since the evaluation. However, because of advances in technology and with a $200-million budget for future renovations at Stanton Territorial Hospital, which are bound to expand services and lessen the medical profession's reliance on health-care services in the south, it is realistic to believe costs will go down.

During his budget address, Miltenberger touched on how advances in technology will result in future savings, pointing to more use of electronic medical records for better chronic disease management and more effective consultation with specialists. More than a half-million dollars is being spent in the current year. The government is also setting aside money to keep dialysis services open and has earmarked $472,000 to improve medevac triage and co-ordination.

Efforts are being made to reduce the amount of scheduled medical travel and its inherent expense by offering more medical services within the territory.

Dolynny's main point is that the territorial government is spending less than other jurisdictions on "true health" delivery as a percentage of overall budgets. However, the numbers seem to be somewhat skewed because of the way they are reported and may have been presented in a calculated fashion by Dolynny to make his point about his desire to see overall spending increase.

We prefer to see a proactive approach to reduce medical travel costs by lessening the need for patients to be flown south for scheduled medical appointments by providing more services at Stanton.

Enbridge Pipelines Inc. has a cleanup job on its hands on two fronts.

The first is a very literal cleanup. Earlier this month contaminated soil was found at two locations along the company's pipeline, which runs from Norman Wells to Zama, Alta., crossing the Deh Cho along the way.

Approximately 30 cubic metres of contaminated soil was found around 60 km west of Fort Simpson and an additional 60 to 70 cubic metres of contaminated soil was found approximately 120 km west of the village.

With an environmental assessment underway, the company has been very careful to avoid speculating on what the contaminate is and how it got there until it has definite answers.

It is understandable why Deh Cho residents who have heard about the soil, however, may already have reached the conclusion that the contaminate, likely oil, came from the pipeline.

This theory can only be strengthened by the knowledge that the soil was found beside two features, as they are called, on the pipeline that the company was digging down to examine. Features can refer to such things as dents, cracks or corrosion.

The company is avoiding words such as spill or leak, but those are the words that at least some residents of Fort Simpson have been using to describe what is happening. This means that Enbridge's second cleanup job will be in the area of public relations, and it's not going to be easy.

The oil leak that occurred in May 2011 on the same pipeline is still fresh in many people's minds. That spill was originally estimated at four barrels. It later became apparent that between 700 and 1,500 barrels of sweet crude oil had leaked into the ground, affecting 8,980 tonnes of soil.

That spill already raised questions in some people's minds about how environmentally safe the pipeline is and how well Enbridge can monitor what is happening to it. The spill was first discovered not by the company, but by hunters who were in the area and could smell an odour.

Some measure of assurance can be taken from the fact that Enbridge found the contaminated soil in areas where flaws were expected to be found in the pipeline. Also, of the approximately 20 digs the company has done so far this season along the pipeline, only two turned up contamination.

Even if testing shows the soil wasn't contaminated as a result of the pipeline, Enbridge is still going to have an uphill battle in front of it to assure Deh Cho residents the pipeline is a safe piece of infrastructure.

Sometimes it's good to be living in a small town.

Last week, I decided on the spur of the moment around 10 p.m. to go have a look for the Northern lights on a cold, clear night. I drove a short ways out of town with the temperature hovering at around -32 or -33 C. A marvellous crescent moon was well up in the sky by then, as the town lights started to fade into the background.

I stopped and parked along the side of the ice road. As soon as I hopped out, the lights were draped across the sky like a shimmering curtain of green-grey across the horizon. Already, they were the best that this "southerner" had ever seen.

In southern Ontario, where I hail from, the display of the aurora that's common here happens maybe once or twice a year, and with my usual bad luck, I always miss it.

The best I've seen has been a milky grey translucent curtain, and that's been in northern Ontario at Moosonee and Moose Factory on the shores of James Bay. The chance to see them was one of the reasons why I took this job at the Drum.

So I set up my camera, using the hood and roof as an impromptu tripod and started snapping while openly ogling the lights. I had the entire road to myself, or so I thought.

About 10 minutes later, I saw headlights coming from the north. Two men in a truck towing a trailer, obviously from some kind of construction site, drove slowly past me, braked and them came back around.

"Hello, how are you?" one cheerily called out. "Oh yeah, you're taking photos." He cheerily smacked his companion and said "I told you that's what he was doing.

"They're pretty tonight, aren't they," he said. "We could see them all the way down."

We chatted for a few more minutes, with the men telling me about the lights, and how they had just wanted to make sure I wasn't stranded with a broken-down vehicle. Then they headed off, and I decided to go a bit further to take some photos from a different angle.

Not 10 minutes later, the scenario repeated itself. Once again, headlights blazed from the north as I tripped the shutter. This time, it was an RCMP officer on patrol. As had the men before her, she stopped to ask whether I was all right and immediately realized I was taking pictures.

We chatted for a while, and she was delighted when I provided some advice on how to take photos of the lights. I'm no expert with a camera, but everyone thinks a reporter should know these things.

In other circumstances, and before I mellowed a little with age, I might have become annoyed with these interruptions. Here, though, where the pace is slower and the weather is colder, I appreciated that two drivers stopped to check on me.

That kind of courtesy is one of the things I like about a small town, and Inuvik has a lot of it.

What is often forgotten in the debate about Yellowknife's downtown day shelter is why it opened its doors in the first place.

Shelter staff are not there to rehabilitate anybody. They are not jailers or addictions counsellors.

There is no medicine, detox services or any other programming at the shelter. Only coffee, some couches and chairs, and a warm place to hang out and use the washroom.

That's not to say Yellowknife does not need addictions services, far from it. It's an absolute disgrace considering the number of addicts who come to this city from all corners of the territory that there is no clinical detox centre here.

But that's a different fight. Right now, as far as Yellowknife Centre MLA Robert Hawkins is concerned, the fight is about who should be running the day shelter. After two days of hammering Health Minister Tom Beaulieu about a need for "new leadership" at the shelter, Hawkins insists it's nothing personal. Lydia Bardak, who told Yellowknifer last week she "is the John Howard Society," the organization currently holding the contract to run the shelter. Bardak is the day shelter's public face, and she can't help but feel attacked.

It's clear after three years at its 52 Street location, there are still plenty of unhappy people when it comes to the day shelter. As of yesterday, Yellowknifer's online poll had received more than 1,200 votes - 81 per cent of them opposed to Bardak's leadership at the shelter. Hawkins accuses shelter management of being too lax in enforcing rules, that public drinking, fights and sex acts are frequent outside the shelter.

He suggests the Tree of Peace or the Salvation Army, which has expressed an interest in running the facility, would do a better job. But would it? In the same spirit of what the day shelter is now?

It's hard to imagine any organization having much luck instilling order inside and outside the facility when most of the clientele are intoxicated or mentally ill. And if they did rule with an iron fist, would any of these people still come? Or would they merely go back to loitering in bank lobbies and defecating in alleys like they did before the shelter opened?

No doubt Bardak tolerates more misbehaviour from her clientele than most people. But extreme patience would seem an invaluable asset in this job. This is something she deals with every day, and has been doing for many years. It's certainly worth exploring options, and Hawkins is right to point out problems when they do arise, but it's hard to think of someone more dedicated to caring for the needs of the city's downtrodden than Bardak.

Meanwhile, Hawkins is playing a risky game when he tells the health minister the day shelter should be closed until a new organization can be found to administer it. Given the government's reluctance to provide permanent funding to date, it's possible the territorial government could just call the day shelter a failure and close it down for good. After all, that's what the GNWT did following a beating incident at the Somba K'e Healing Lodge - a treatment centre outside of Dettah - in 2000.

MLAs should pay heed to how important the day shelter is to downtown businesses next time the issue comes up for debate in the legislative assembly.

The Nunavut Midget Territorial Hockey Championship was an interesting clash in what's right, and what's wrong, with the territory's most popular sport this past weekend.

From a competition standpoint, Team Iqaluit was head-and-shoulders above the other teams at this year's event.

The Iqaluit squad was undefeated on its way to the championship banner, winning all but one of the games by the mercy rule.

Minor hockey often changes from year to year, however, and any community can be a strong contender in a given year in any age group, although the larger communities do, of course, have an advantage due to their larger numbers.

Iqaluit aside, there were a number of highly-competitive games played this past weekend, including a pair of great games in the round robin of Coral Harbour vs. Arviat and Rankin Inlet vs. Arviat, as well as Rankin vs. Arviat game for the bronze medal.

The number of kids who played this past weekend, how hard they competed, and the fun they all had were check marks on the what's right with the game in Nunavut.

On the opposite side of the ledger, there were a number of significant injuries during the tournament.

At least one was the result of bad sportsmanship in what would be classed as a dirty hit at any level of hockey.

The others, however, were the type that have the potential to make the game, itself, look bad, when that's not actually the case.

Bodychecking in hockey must be taught. Players have to learn how to properly give a hit and, even more importantly, how to take one.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to not have injuries because of the way our current territorial is set up.

Too many players come from communities where they do nothing for the majority of the year but scrimmage against each other, usually with little contact and no coaching.

Then they're dropped into the middle of a tournament which the top teams take very seriously.

The teams from Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet, especially, are well-coached hockey playing machines when it comes to bodychecking.

For the most part the two teams play within the rules, but they're far more skilled in delivering and taking bodychecks than their competition.

The players on the other teams then try to hit more when playing each other, but, without the same skill sets, injuries are bound to occur.

There is nothing Hockey Nunavut can do to address the problem by changing the format of the territorial. It has to be addressed at the community level with more people getting involved to coach the kids correctly.

Proper coaching will not only improve their overall skill set, it will also lower the risk of injury in a sport that comes with enough inherent risk simply because of its physical nature.

Once again, more people have to get seriously involved to help a sport take the next step in our territory.

It's something Hockey Nunavut can help with, but not do on its own.

Better coaching equals better hockey, better and more equal competition, and safer playing conditions, and that's a win-win situation for everyone involved.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.