'Exceptional' waterYellowknifer - Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Putting the seemingly never-ending boil water advisory aside for a minute, it can be safely said that Yellowknifers find much comfort in the source of their drinking water.
Two years before city council voted to borrow $20 million in 2012, ostensibly to fund a new water treatment plant but actually used to fund a range of much needed infrastructure projects, Dennis Kefalas - then director of public works, now city administrator - boasted that the quality of drinking water from the Yellowknife River is "one of the best in the world."
This is an important issue in Yellowknife. People in Toronto probably don't think much about the source of their drinking water, which is Lake Ontario - downstream of pulp mills, nuclear power plants and God knows what - but people in Yellowknife do because Yellowknife is downstream from Baker Creek and Giant Mine, which has 237,000 tons of deadly arsenic trioxide frozen and buried beneath it in perpetuity.
Kefalas has also previously said the quality of water from Yellowknife Bay is likewise "exceptional" and the "same as what comes out of the river," but those assurances were not enough for residents after spring melt caused Baker Creek to overflow its banks in 2011, leading to a momentary spike in arsenic levels near the creek of 700 times the acceptable level for drinking water. Normally the arsenic level in Yellowknife Bay is at around three parts per billion. Federal guidelines call for a maximum allowable level of 10 parts per billion.
Yellowknife Bay is clearly within the parameter most of the time, and if a special filter was installed at the new water treatment plant - valued previously at $3 million - arsenic in the water would likely never be an issue ever again.
Still, Yellowknifers' squeamishness over Yellowknife Bay water was enough for city council to scuttle the idea in 2012 and opt for much more expensive plan of replacing the eight-kilometre underwater intake line from the Yellowknife, projected at $10 million at the time.
Three years later that estimate has jumped to $20 million, the water treatment plant projected in 2010 to cost $20 million is now $31 million, and there are piles and piles more capital infrastructure items around the city in need of replacement. This is not to mention the as-of-yet undisclosed final price tag on Northland Trailer Park water and sewer line replacements, the excesses of which city taxpayers are on the hook for.
It can be safely assumed, considering the skyrocketing trajectory of construction costs in the North, that the underwater pipe will cost $30 million to replace by the time that is required in 2020. This will be a hefty bill for city taxpayers to pay, particularly if other levels of government don't help, and nothing has been said to date to indicate they will.
This fact alone ought to be enough for city politicians to reconsider putting Yellowknife Bay back on the table.
There may be misgivings but they might be unfounded. If sourcing the city's drinking water from Yellowknife Bay would cost a tenth of the price of a replaced water line to the Yellowknife River, city council should support research and public discussion to determine if residents would be willing to swallow this less-expensive option.
The long road of reconciliationEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Every media outlet worth its salt has weighed in on the best, and worst, of the 94 recommendations released by Justice Murray Sinclair in his role as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Ottawa this past week.
A fair number of the recommendations are no-brainers on the positive side of the ledger.
Moves such as restoring traditional names, annual reports on aboriginal issues, a monument to the residential-school tragedy (one well-designed monument in our nation's capital, preferably within eyesight of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office, should suffice, rather than the 13 recommended), and seeing residential-school history become part of the curriculum in schools across this great land should be moved on quickly.
Others have already sparked the kind of debate that makes you shake your head and wonder how the person doing the talking ever got into the position they hold today.
And still others make you wish you could personally write every aboriginal in Canada to point out this person does not speak for you.
One recommendation is to have the Pope issue an official apology by June 2016 for the role the Catholic Church played in the abuse of aboriginal children in Catholic-run schools.
Another asks for the development of a royal proclamation of reconciliation to reaffirm the nation-to-nation relationship between aboriginal peoples and the Crown.
Anyone who thinks lawsuits and calls for additional reconciliation of the cold-hard cash variety are going away anytime soon is dreaming.
Because of that -- and the small warehouse full of lawyers who have been and will continue to get rich from this process -- we must accept every statement, acceptance and admission will be poured over with an eye toward culpability in future actions.
But that's not what had Ottawa's Archbishop Terrence Prendergast upset over the requests for an apology and royal proclamation.
Prendergast wasn't particularly enamoured with the idea that Pope Francis was asked to come to Canada to issue the apology personally, while the Queen wasn't.
And, of course, considering Pope Benedict issued an apology in 2009, Prendergast was further worried the asking for Papal apologies may become never-ending.
Not exactly what you'd consider getting off to a good start with the rhetoric.
There are also a few recommendations that leave you to wonder about the logic, especially the call for the feds to throw money at the CBC so the public broadcaster can support the commission's work.
There is absolutely no reason why the commission should expect the feds to agree to fund the CBC to be the commission's own private messenger in convincing Canadians it's in their own best interests to accept, and agree to implement, the 94 recommendations on their surface value.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission did an admirable job in fulfilling its mandate. And, hopefully, the seeds are being sewn to heal our nation and bring aboriginal and non-aboriginal people closer together as Canadians.
The road ahead remains a long one, however, and it's up to all parties involved to continue the healing-and-reconciliation process without making it too rocky to pass.
Don't wrap morels in red tapeNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, June 8, 2015
First you get the fires, then you get the rain, then you get the money.
At least, this is what Industry Minister David Ramsay is hoping when he touts the potential $10 million he says the frenzy of morel mushroom pickers and buyers could generate in the territory.
Indeed the little morels have gotten big play in the media over the past two years, starting last spring when Deh Cho MLA Michael Nadli warned the assembly an onslaught of pickers was on their way to harvest from a large burn area easily accessible from Highway 1 to Fort Simpson that burned in 2013.
Morels can pull in as much as $240 per pound once they are dried and packaged, so last year the pickers did come to take part in the approximately three-week harvest. The GNWT estimated the activity brought between $6 million and $10 million to the territory.
Now, after last summer ended up being the biggest wildfire season in the history of the NWT, the pickers are back but not everybody is happy.
Hay River South MLA Jane Groenewegen was in full panic mode in the legislative assembly last week, worrying that just one lit cigarette butt cast aside by some imprudent picker tromping through the woods could "burn the whole Northwest Territories down" and that pickers, many of them from out of territory and not in possession of the best wilderness survival skills, could wander away, never to be seen again.
There are currently no regulations regarding the harvest of morel mushrooms, which falls in the category of a non-timber forest product, but the GNWT has committed to creating a modernized forest management legislation which would include regulations around the harvesting of morels.
If the GNWT goes down a route that requires pickers to apply for a permit, it should tread lightly. Only one other jurisdiction in Canada - Saskatchewan -- currently regulates mushroom harvesting, and these regulations have damaged its harvest economy.
Transient pickers now mostly skip over Saskatchewan, where the government asks for a permit fee and wilderness restoration plan, in favour of non-regulated areas.
The NWT is already in a precarious spot when it comes to the morel economy, due to the fact that it's expensive to get here. This summer, for instance, our burn areas are competing with easily accessible ones in British Columbia, Washington state and Oregon. Further, the market price for fresh morels is around $7 per pound this year, a shadow of last year's $10-$13 per pound prices, making the incentive to trek all the way up here less appealing. Add too many bureaucratic hoops to the mix and nobody is going to associate the Northwest Territories with morels.
That being said, Groenewegen isn't totally off the rails when calling for some sort of permitting system, even if it's a cheap harvesting permit that will log a person's name and dates of harvest.
This could be a way to educate would-be pickers about treaty areas, forest safety and give authorities an avenue for wildfire investigations or find people who leave gratuitous amounts of litter.
Making it cheap and available online would be a must.
Mushroom pickers and buyers are just following the money, which makes them fickle. Just like the little morels themselves, they won't come to the NWT unless the conditions are just right.
Hopefully lawmakers keep that in mind and exercise caution when drafting morel legislation.
Large task ahead to find reconciliationNunavut/News North - Monday, June 8, 2015
It would have been nice to have more representation by Inuit from Nunavut at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission closing ceremonies in Ottawa last week.
Their experiences and the loss of their culture, identity and language was somewhat lost in the stories by the enormous number of people in Canada impacted directly by the residential school experience.
Thousands of people were taken from their families and forced to attend residential schools over the course of more than 100 years. It is estimated that 6,000 children died while in the residential school system. Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. estimates between 5,000 and 6,000 Inuit were taken from Nunavut communities.
The commission's final 384-page summary looks at the impact of the residential schools, which were open from 1867 to 1996.
Commission chairperson Justice Murray Sinclair and his team of researchers spent six years compiling 6,750 testimonies and innumerable written documents into the definitive history of the residential school system, bound in a six-volume report, which concludes that the federal government policy was "cultural genocide." None of it is easy reading, chronicling horrific physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the teachers, nuns and priests who ran the residential schools and were tasked with assimilating students.
How do you make reparations for a tragedy of such enormous proportions?
That difficult question is answered in the commission's 94 recommendations, which largely call on the federal government and others for improvements in child welfare, education, social services, language, culture, mental health programming, justice and equity for aboriginal people.
There is much work to do, demonstrated by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister Bernard Valcourt's refusal to rise with the rest of those assembled when Sinclair, at the closing ceremony, called for a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
Education and awareness about this dark chapter in Canada's recent history received widespread attention because of the very public unveiling of the final report and its recommendations, including its summary that used the term cultural genocide.
Nunavut is one of the key supporters in the development of the first comprehensive teaching resource in Canada on the history of residential schools and their legacy. It is becoming a mandatory part of the curriculum in schools across Canada.
The final report represents some closure for many, the educational initiative means it will no longer be hidden and the report's recommendations point the way toward improvements and change in many levels of society.
The truth has been told. Now is the time to begin with reconciliation.
GNWT lacks urgency for emergency 9-1-1 Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, June 5, 2015
Unlike most capital cities in the country, Yellowknife does not have a 9-1-1 emergency service. Only Iqaulit shares this dubious distinction with us.
Its absence is not for a lack of government studies directed at the issue.
Since 1992 five studies have been completed, including the $47,500 2009 study that concluded the service should be phased in starting with the seven largest communities in the NWT.
This reasonable approach to implementing the service in the territory was shot down by Municipal and Community Affairs Minister Robert C. McLeod who said the GNWT would not get involved unless the service could be rolled out in every community within the territory no matter how small and remote.
This all or nothing approach was as ridiculous then as it is now.
It not only leaves the majority of NWT residents without an universal emergency phone service taken for granted in the rest of the country but it exposes visitors to our territory to a tragic flaw.
In an emergency visitors will be reaching for their cellphones to dial 9-1-1 only to receive a message stating the service is not available in the area.
The time it would take to figure out what and which local emergency number to dial is time enough for irreversible tragedy.
That the GNWT continues to deliberate on the matter is a sign of this government's inability to move forward on a service we believe most NWT residents would support -- a user-fee based approach to 9-1-1 service, starting in Yellowknife and other larger communities, and rolled out as expeditiously as possible to all the rest.
We learned last week the GNWT will again postpone making a decision on how to introduce the service until the sitting of the next government. But at least now Minister McLeod has acknowledged the service is "achievable."
Mr. Minister, of course it is achievable. The question has never been, "Is it possible?" The questions has been, "Is there a will to make it happen?"
Inuvik-based cellphone service provider Ice Wireless announced early last year that it was providing 9-1-1 service to its NWT customers by routing calls through call centres in Romania and Sudbury, Ont.
No doubt Ice Wireless' service is far less expensive to run than the $712,000 a year the GNWT expects it will cost to operate a call centre here.
If Ice Wireless can do it, why not the GNWT?
The most obvious answer is that the government, ponderous and rigid as ever, will go out of its way to avoid solutions both practical and simple, preferring to spend years "getting it right" even while lives hang in the balance.
Hats off to helmet use enforcement Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, June 5, 2015
Municipal enforcement has chosen to use the carrot rather than the stick while encouraging young people to wear helmets and that's a good thing.
Instead of cracking down on under-18 year old riders who bike without head protection, the city has chosen a different approach -- ice cream vouchers for those who follow the rules.
Since children don't normally carry ID, a crackdown on bare heads would require an awkward and ugly scenario of officers detaining children on city streets and then having to drive them and their bikes home in the back of their patrol cars in order to hand out tickets to their parents.
Enforcement has correctly determined that a lighter touch is necessary and that the best course of action is to give a thumbs up to those who follow the rules rather than alienate those who do not.
There is still more to be done. Ultimately, the responsibility for helmet-use lies with parents and guardians, not law enforcement.
And there's evidence that they're able to lead by example.
"Ninety per cent of kids will wear a helmet if the adults are wearing a helmet, versus 40 per cent when adults aren't wearing helmets," said Jackie Hardy, who provides helmets for children and families through Helmets for Hardy.
She founded the organization after her son died while skateboarding without a helmet on the McMahon Frame Lake Trail.
So it seems a good way to encourage young people to wear helmets is for older people to wear them too - parents in particular.
Although these older riders may not be able to enjoy the ice cream cones their younger counterparts do enjoy, what they get is far greater -- head protection, plus the knowledge they're setting a good example for young people.
Youth deserve running trackDeh Cho Drum - Thursday, June 4, 2015
The old adage that children are the way of the future has never rung truer than in the legislative assembly on May 27.
That was the day 13 students from Bompas Elementary sat in on assembly debates - including a topic they brought forward themselves: the issue of sport facilities, or lack thereof, in Fort Simpson.
It's no secret the area needs a decent facility. Each year, when the NWT Track and Field Championships rolls around, Fort Simpson students are out training hard. Many of them are excited about the prospect of testing their skills against youth from other areas, and many of them hope to bring back a medal or two.
Some of the students who went to the legislature have been to the championships in the past. On behalf of them, Nahendeh MLA Kevin Menicoche let the legislature know Fort Simpson has not had a proper track facility since the 1990s.
That is more than 30 years worth of students training in sandboxes and playgrounds for one of the territory's most popular summer sports.
The response Menicoche received in legislature was that communities can utilize some of their public infrastructure funding, while the territory helps out with technical and financial advice.
It is unfortunate that communities - which in many cases are already strapped for cash - would have no other way of paying for such a facility than through their own municipal infrastructure dollars, much of which is already earmarked for other much-needed upgrades. Not many communities have a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around to build a track facility.
The government needs to listen to its communities and its youth and provide more opportunities to access the funding required to build such facilities.
A new track facility would be good for the region and it would be wonderful for Fort Simpson.
It could help to draw more people the community, and it may even give the village the chance to host its own sports tournaments.
Imagine how great that would be for our youth.
Strange fascination with midnight sunInuvik Drum - Thursday, June 4, 2015
Inuvik residents have been buzzing - and likely amused - by the way that some American media outlets in the last week have picked up on the long Inuvik summer days.
First ABC News came calling to chat via telecommunications with town tourism manager Jackie Challis about the streak of polar days - or midnight sun - the town is experiencing at the moment.
The story was then picked up on by other outlets, including AOL and the mycentraloregon.com website.
It's good to see Inuvik hitting the news, and Challis certainly is to be lauded for her keen eye on what attracts attention to the town.
It's also a bit amusing to see how excited the American media is to "discover" the fact that anywhere north of the Arctic Circle sees this phenomenon.
It's making me laugh primarily because, to quote a line from Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, it stands as a bit of an indictment of the public education system on at least two or three fronts.
First, it seemingly hasn't occurred to these eager reporters that many Alaskans - you know, American citizens all - experience the same thing in communities such as Barrow, which is slightly further north than Inuvik.
I'm thinking I'm not alone in wondering how long it will take for that little nugget of information to be recognized.
Second, I'm a little puzzled as to how people aren't aware, at least in general, of the whole "midnight sun" phenomenon in the North. The phrase is more than well known enough to have permeated the public consciousness all through the Northern hemisphere, I would think.
While what we experience here in the Arctic Circle technically goes beyond the midnight sun, it's a close enough term to work with.
I also smiled a bit when I saw a reference to the "total darkness" description of our polar night during early winter in December.
I think most people here would roll their eyes a little at that, since residents are well aware that what is experienced, depending on how clear the skies are, is more like a prolonged twilight of the sunrise and sunset type rather than "absolute darkness."
One of my favourite stories about the polar night was told to me by someone who grew up in the high Arctic on Banks Island. This elder explained to me how people there would look south towards Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik during the polar night just to catch a glimpse of the elusive daylight they weren't receiving.
That should put the issue into perspective for everyone.
It certainly is more than enough to make any resident here who has experienced both seasons mutter "darned southerners" under their breath.
Still, I guess the "any publicity is good publicity" cliche applies here.
So I'll try to stifle my eye rolls and just smile more widely, but I'm not sure I'll be successful.
Happy summer everyone!
