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By failing to evacuate neighbours during a deadly armed standoff with a suicidal woman March 14, 2012, Yellowknife RCMP put the public at risk.

The RCMP has finally admitted it.

Last week, G Division Supt. Wade Blake confirmed Glick Court residents were "in jeopardy" during the four-hour standoff. He was answering reporters' questions at an RCMP press conference called to respond to recommendations in a coroner's report into the Karen Lander shooting.

Three officers fired 12 bullets at Lander as she ran toward them with an unloaded rifle. Four bullets struck and killed Lander. Eight bullets missed, including five rounds that hit a neighbouring home while the occupants, oblivious to the danger outside, watched television in their living room.

One bullet shattered a large bay window and pierced a coffee table. Another landed in a bedroom, a third penetrated the kitchen, lodging in a bookcase. Two more bullets hit exterior walls of the home.

Even though the ordeal lasted several hours, RCMP merely phoned nearby residents, neglecting to send an officer door-to-door to warn of the danger in the street.

Although the coroner's report did not address the failure to evacuate residents, an investigation by the Medicine Hat Police Services did note the error. While finding the officers' actions lawful, the investigators highlighted the lack of due diligence.

"Resources are always an issue but when it comes to evacuating, those people's lives are potentially in jeopardy and that's kind of the foremost one of our considerations. So we would do that as soon as reasonable, as soon as we're able to," Staff Sgt. Brent Secondiak of the Medicine Hat Police told Yellowknifer earlier this year, adding in a similar situation in his community residents would be taken to a bus, an arena, a school or perhaps a church.

There was no mention of the potentially fatal blunder in the RCMP's official statement last week. Blake offered no apologies and fell short of admitting the force made a mistake by not evacuating neighbours.

The omission is perplexing because Blake welcomed for the third-party investigation immediately after Lander's shooting to bolster public confidence in his officers, which is essential to the RCMP's ability to protect and serve the public. When the Medicine Hat investigators concluded their work, he said the circumstances of the shooting had been examined fairly and thoroughly, yet there was no mention of corrective actions on a key finding.

By ignoring the obvious mistake made, Blake undermines his own efforts to regain public confidence, letting down both those officers he leads and the public they serve.

When you're learning to drive, or even well before then, you learn that many parking lots have spots designated for those with disabilities. It's only fair, after all, that someone who may not have the same mobility be able to park closer to the places they are trying to access.

You also learn that to park there, you need a tag in your front window. No tag, no parking spot. The rule applies to Yellowknifers, just as it does to any other Canadian.

So why is it that we have a resident splitting hairs over the wordings of a bylaw?

Last fall, Donald Weston successfully fought off a $250 parking ticket because he noted the city's bylaw dictated residents are to obtain parking stickers for spaces reserved for people with disabilities from the Yellowknife office of the Northwest Territories Council for Disabled Persons, an office that has since changed its name.

Name change or not, Weston should have known better than to park in a spot designated for people with mobility issues if he didn't possess a parking tag.

Whether the office distributing disabled parking tags has changed its name is irrelevant, you don't park in a parking space reserved for people with mobility issues unless you are a person with a disability. To do so deprives people in need from an essential service to accommodate laziness.

Likewise, if you're helping your wife with luggage at the airport, you don't leave your truck unattended in the passenger drop off area. Plus, parking at the airport is free for the first hour, so why not just park and walk the extra 15 metres and save $29?

If you break a bylaw, just pay the fine, because nitpicking over wording doesn't help anybody.

No one likes to be told their community has a problem.

Whether it is a prevalence of alcoholism, youth getting into mischief or loose dogs running in packs, communities often want to keep their issues to themselves. Sometimes, communities don't even want to deal with glaring issues and are willing to sweep them under the rug or look the other way or just use outright denial.

Unfortunately, it often takes a tragic event to shake residents from their complacency. Usually this event involves the death or serious injury of a community member.

All too often, when the event finally occurs, people comment that the incident didn't surprise them, that they'd been expecting something like this to happen for a while. Comments such as these are disheartening in a way, because they suggest the problem that caused the incident had been identified, but that no one was able to or willing to try and make changes before the inevitable tragedy struck.

Fort Liard might be on the cusp of just such an incident.

In this community's case, it is arson that seems to be the problem. Robert Firth, the chief of fire and emergency services for the hamlet, said since he's joined the volunteer fire department in 2009, he's seen a variety of intentionally-set fires that are apparently increasing in severity from grass fires to vehicle fires to house fires.

Firth is concerned that someone, likely a firefighter, will end up getting hurt by one of these fires. There is also a chance that if abandoned houses that are known locations for parties are burned, such as the one destroyed on June 6, someone will eventually be trapped and killed by a fire. Arsonists, said Firth, are unlikely to check carefully to make sure intoxicated people are out of a structure before they flick a lighter.

Even the hamlet's mayor, Morris McLeod, said there are a few other party houses in the community that may be burned if they aren't demolished first.

It seems that Fort Liard has been given a chance to dodge a tragedy, to avoid being a community where people can say they saw it coming after someone dies or is seriously hurt as the result of an intentionally-set fire.

It won't be easy. The hamlet will have to face what is happening, realize there is an issue, and deal with it as a community.

With effort, the hamlet can continue to be a safe place for all of its

It may be wrong, but I've never had much interest in becoming a blood donor.

Our local insects, though, are intent on having me change my ways.

I've always been an ambulatory bug smorgasbord, but outside a foray into Labrador 10 years ago, I haven't seen anything like the Inuvik black flies, gnats and mosquitoes. On that visit, I grew claustrophobic from not being able to see past the black flies covering my bug jacket, but at least I didn't get eaten alive.

It's not the numbers here that's the problem. Nor is it their size, which is also admirable. I laughed out loud recently reading a Facebook post that said Manitoba has two sizes of mosquitoes. The first was small enough to squeeze through a screen, and the second didn't bother because it could open your door. The wit that came up with that line could have been here.

I don't think I'm getting bitten any more than normal, either. I remember going on a hike with my family when I was maybe 11-years old and being feasted on by a regiment of mosquitoes while the rest of my family sauntered nonchalantly along enjoying the tranquillity.

My parents upbraided me regularly for my complaints about the bugs until my father turned to me and saw how the back of my yellow T-shirt had turned black from the bugs.

The only person I've ever known to be consistently more attractive to bugs is my wife. I love hiking with her, since it gives me the chance to amble along in relative comfort through the woods.

What's really different here in Inuvik, though, is the allergic reaction I'm having to these critters.

Over the long weekend ,I spent a fair bit of time at the softball tournament. I even managed to watch some games in between drenching myself with Deep Woods Off and swatting the little so-and-so's. More than a week later, I'm still nursing a variety of welts that make me look as if I have some unpleasant skin disease.

That's a first for me. Normally, the bites disappear within hours to a day at the most, but these have some true long-term staying power. My skin is still crawling from them.

That's why Sunday, after being turned into hamburger again at the ball diamond, I outfitted myself with head-to-toe bug gear. It might look ridiculous, but I'm past the point of caring.

And I took great comfort in watching the people who smirked at me begin swatting as my personal swarm of little demons started looking for a new home. Turnabout is fair play indeed.

It was a disappointing start last week to the government's preparations to make Long Lake Beach safer following the tragic drowning death of seven-year-old Lodune Shelley on June 27.

Granted, the territorial government has contracted the Alberta-NWT chapter of the Canadian Lifesaving Society to come to Yellowknife and assess the beach July 15, which in the great scheme of things is not an intolerable delay when one considers the government's lackadaisical response to previous close calls at the beach. It's too bad it took a child's death to finally acknowledge that the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Nonetheless, the great divide between government and ordinary people was exposed last week when residents and businesses bandied together almost immediately and formed a beach patrol group and began designing lifeguard chairs in the perhaps vain hope that some level authority will finally take responsibility and fill them with real lifeguards.

Lifeguards for Lodune, a group of 20 concerned citizens who have taken it upon themselves to monitor Long Lake Beach until lifeguards are hired, were cautioned by Mayor Mark Heyck and the GNWT to be careful they don't get themselves into hot water should another swimmer get into trouble on their watch - even though the NWT's Emergency Medical Aid Act protects Good Samaritans from lawsuits. Meanwhile Yellowknife contractor Trevor Kasteel, and businesses he has partnered with, were dissuaded from rushing ahead with building the lifeguard chairs.

In ordinary circumstances, at public, government-run beaches, it would seem prudent to leave matters such as monitoring swimmers and installing lifeguard chairs up to the proper authorities, but what do people do when the government has abdicated these responsibilities?

That's what the city and GNWT did when they tore up an agreement to staff Long Lake Beach with lifeguards nine years ago. They couldn't agree on how to split up the $21,000 bill to pay for them so the impasse continued despite several close calls, including a near drowning of another young child last year.

If a squabble over money was the issue 10 years ago, liability appears to be the primary one today.

Richard Zieba, the director of tourism and parks for the Department of Industry, Tourism, and Investment, says the government might have to limit the number of beach-goers if lifeguards do return. That's because today's life-guarding requires a certain number of lifeguards in ratio to the number of beach-goers, depending on the beach.

It's a sad indication of how risk-adverse governments have become when they're more worried about lawyers than people drowning on their beaches. Take a look at the 1967 photo of McNiven Beach and the lifeguard chair on page A13 of today's Yellowknifer. What were governments more concerned about back then? Their liability, or providing taxpayers with safe, comfortable recreational areas to frolic in?

Driving people away from Long Lake Beach to other unmonitored beaches on busy summer weekends shouldn't be a precondition to bringing back lifeguards.

Long Lake is where people, especially parents with young children, should be encouraged to gather and swim. It should be fully staffed with lifeguards, even if it does cost more money, and its drop-off areas should be located and marked - which would be a simple short-term solution.

Anything short of that will only prove to people that the GNWT and city, while quite capable of regulating just about everything, are increasingly unable or unwilling to do what's necessary to keep people safe.

There's an old adage: if you don't use it, you lose it. The phrase rings especially true when it comes to language.

There are many Canadians who become fluent in French after taking immersion all through elementary school and high school and yet years later struggle to use the language. Why? They rarely, if ever, use it.

If a language is to remain vibrant and widely spoken, it needs to be a part of everyday life. It's not enough to just learn it in school.

That's why the newly-formed partnership between Isuma TV and community members in Arviat is so exciting.

Isuma TV is an organization which provides Inuit and indigenous people a multimedia platform to express themselves in their own languages. There are plans to set up equipment at Arviat's high school so a TV channel can be run starting this fall. Residents will be able to broadcast community events, music videos, programs about social issues and whatever else they can dream up.

However, for the channel to be a success, it has to have the support of the people in Arviat. When it gets going, residents should lend a hand by watching, creating content, agreeing to an interview or offering to share a story in Inuktitut.

It's important to get involved because if the project gets off the ground, it has the potential to positively impact the community in many ways.

First, it will encourage greater use of Inuktitut by getting youth and other community members excited about creating videos in their mother tongue and by promoting the language in the home. Instead of sitting down to watch an English show, residents can view culturally-relevant programming featuring faces they recognize. In a time when Inuktitut is being spoken less and less in the home, this is key.

Second, those who participate in the creation of content are likely to gain valuable skills and knowledge from the process. Technology is becoming more and more a part of the business world and everyday life. Someone with the ability to use editing software, audio equipment and a video camera would be a great asset in various workplaces.

Furthermore, participants would learn communication skills through conducting interviews, writing scripts and creating songs. Knowledge such as this is so essential and it can't be bought.

Thirdly, by integrating more culturally-relevant knowledge into day-to-day life, the community will help to instil a sense of identity and pride in youth that will give them confidence. As they say, you have to know where you came from in order to know where to go.

Finally, those who leave Arviat will still have access to the channel through the Internet. This means they too can share in the learning and keep up to date with what's happening in the community.

In short, Arviat has been given a special opportunity and the community needs to take advantage of it. Don't let it go to waste.

• Miranda Scotland is interim editor of Kivalliq News while editor Darrell Greer is on vacation

The chorus of voices demanding a performance audit of the Nutrition North Program is getting louder.

The Auditor General of Canada has received calls for such a task to be done from all three Northern territorial governments, and last month, Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington added his voice to the mix.

"This program is not serving the needs of our people," Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya said in the NWT legislative assembly before a motion calling for an audit was passed unanimously.

Yet, the loudest and strongest voices come from the mouths of the people, who must stomach $10 for milk in Lutsel K'e or $8 for a head of romaine lettuce in Paulatuk.

The federal government has been touting the program's success since it replaced the Food Mail program in 2011, and retailers say the subsidies are being passed to the consumers and prices of nutritious food are indeed cheaper.

But residents of the North disagree, saying the program is not working and they aren't seeing any improvements when it comes to healthy choices for a reasonable price. Northerners want, and deserve, transparency when it comes to what they pay for food.

Perhaps the most fundamental change introduced by Nutrition North is that subsidies are now provided to retailers and suppliers, rather than Canada Post as it was under Food Mail. While the Tories might have tried their best for the Northerners of Canada, there must now be an objective, universally-trusted third party to assess progress and suggest improvements.

While retailers are audited by Nutrition North, the program itself must be put under the microscope. The federal government cannot be expected to be unbiased when it comes to the success or failure of its new program. Ottawa bureaucrats aren't pushing their carts down the grocery store aisles, deciding whether they will buy milk or bread this week because they can't afford to buy both.

There is only one process that will alleviate doubt, stop the questions and create positive suggestions: follow the money.

Last month, Fort Resolution's Sharon Lafferty set up camp on the lawn outside the Roman Catholic Church and went on a hunger protest to bring attention to the community's issues.

She was asking for a meeting of the community's three governing bodies: the Hamlet of Fort Resolution, the Fort Resolution Metis Council and Deninu Ku'e First Nation.

While in the end, Lafferty didn't get her meeting, she did bring her issues to the forefront.

Changes start with an idea, but they don't happen overnight, as she probably hears from the chief and MLAs.

Committed people like Lafferty are needed in the North, especially women. If Lafferty sees the potential for positive change in her community, she should try her hand at leading it.

Lafferty was calling for more training programs for women, an improved home-care program for elders, more recreation and more programs for youth, as well as for governments to take action and make a concrete plan to help the community heal from drug and alcohol abuse that plagues it. Sounds like a platform she could run on.

This is her chance to work toward a place in politics so she will have the power to make more of the changes she wants to see.

Educators and leaders in Nunavut who are keen observers of the human condition have discovered that some incentives work to encourage young people to do the right thing.

Case in point is an initiative in Cape Dorset, where the vice-principal of Peter Pitseolak High School has spearheaded a project to offer more extra-curricular sports in an effort to boost attendance.

Simply put, the teachers are inviting students to play on soccer teams at the school. The catch is that students who want to play soccer have to adhere to strict rules related to attendance and academic performance, they have to participate in fundraising activities for sports teams to travel, volunteer in the community and they have to attend all soccer practices.

It all started when teachers observed that attendance at the school was at about 95 per cent during soccer season and dropped to around 75 per cent when a soccer tournament ended.

There have been positive results from the project. Young people who want to play soccer make sure that they go to school. We cannot overstate the positive benefits of the other requirements, which make for well-rounded, contributing members of society who understand the benefits of contributing to their communities.

In a similar vein, an initiative by Nunavut Community and Government Services Minister Lorne Kusugak has the potential to encourage young people to get involved and work toward excelling in sports. He went to bat for young athletes who were robbed of the opportunity to aim for participation in Arctic Winter Games (AWG) events. He is supporting an initiative to create an alternate event that will feature the six disciplines which will not be hosted by Greenland because of that country's lack of facilities or ability to host.

A plan is in the works for athletes in midget hockey, gymnastics, figure skating, speed skating, dog mushing and curling to showcase their abilities in either Nunavut, the NWT or Alaska because they will not be going to Greenland.

Kusugak's take on the situation isn't about athletes winning medals at the 2016 AWG. Of more importance is that athletes have a desire to participate in sports by creating a goal - an incentive for them to improve their skills and prepare to be on a bigger stage. Although the AWG International Committee made the decision not to include those six sports in 2016, the athletes will still have an alternate event to set their sights toward.

It makes sense for the Government of Nunavut and educators in the North to give high priority to anything that increases participation and encourages attendance in sports and schools. One has only to look at the number of Nunavummiut who graduate from high school to understand the importance of creating incentives to get young people involved. The latest numbers from Statistics Canada, for the 2006-2007 school year, peg the graduation rate at 29.7 per cent in Nunavut, compared to 71.3 per cent for all of Canada.

The development of future leaders and successful people is realized by challenging young people to achieve their potential through the creation of opportunities and encouraging them to create goals.

We applaud the educators and government leaders who recognize the need to create incentives to get young people active and involved.

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