Dirty, filthy, nasty, but ... Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, August 7, 2015
The last two issues of the Friday Yellowknifer have revealed a dirty habit, an embarrassing tendency and a complete lack of civic pride in our community. From tires, oil barrels and bike parts pulled out of Frame Lake, to shocking amounts of glass dug up in playground sand, there is no shortage of evidence that Yellowknife has a problem.
We're dirty.
Rather than dealing with our junk, we have taken to tossing it away at our convenience, whether it's in a lake, a park or on the street.
Granted, not all residents are prone to freely tossing their trash - some even take it upon themselves to clean up after others - but there are enough litter bugs around to keep city staff on a daily rotation of scraping the streets for other people's scraps.
The fact that children are at risk when hopping onto the swing-set because some person felt their bottle was best left shattered at their feet, shows how bad the problem has become.
That residents would evade the proper recycling fee and trip to the landfill by opting to dump their refuse in a lake or on the side of the road, is just plain wrong.
And that despite the abundance of reasons not to litter - which people of any mental capacity can comprehend - people still do it.
This may not be groundbreaking news but perhaps it can be, in some way, ground-clearing.
If you're among those who litter public spaces, the solution is in your hands - as was the trash before you chucked it on the ground. Hold on to it. Find a garbage. Have a little pride in your community.
If you don't litter, keep an eye out for abandoned trash and, like the good people mentioned in stories over the past two weeks, lend a hand to pick it up. Your community will be better for it.
The state of our public spaces is embarrassing and city staff have much better things to do than clean up after residents who treat the city like the bedroom of their teenage years.
Let's clean our act up, Yellowknife. We're better than this.
Dedication required for seven terms Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, August 7, 20155
Longtime city councillor Bob Brooks said goodbye to city staff and council colleagues last week and was greeted with much applause and a few kind words.
First elected in 1991, he went on to serve seven terms. Brooks had already indicated earlier this year that he would not seek an eighth term during this fall's municipal election and is now stepping down early because of a new job at the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Yellowknifer has not always seen things eye-to-eye with Brooks on a variety of stances with issues affecting the city, whether it be obtaining geothermal energy from Con Mine or the purchase of property downtown.
For his part, Brooks rarely hesitated to provide us with a rebuttal in the form of pointedly written letter to the editor.
One thing worth noting is that it takes special dedication for politicians to stick around for so long at the municipal level.
Many political aspirants merely view a term on council as a springboard to territorial politics.
Aside from a failed run for mayor in 2000, Brooks has resisted the call to higher office, choosing to remain in the trenches of municipal politics where the hours are often long but the pay won't cover the rent.
"You really can't be doing it for the money," Brooks told Yellowknifer in 1999. "You have to do it because you want to get things done."
People can criticize Brooks all they want for ideas said and decisions made but they can't fault him for his dedication to city governance.
Who should hold keys to water plant?Deh Cho Drum - Thursday, August 6, 2015
On Aug. 4, Fort Simpson councillors voted to delay a policy that would require the village to promote local water haulers to out-of-town customers, allowing for more debate and revision of the policy.
The issue that sparked the policy started small, after local business owner Pat Rowe made a complaint. Rowe hauls water for in-town and out-of-town customers, both of which can currently get their water directly from the water treatment plant if they so choose.
Over the past few weeks, the question of allowing out-of-town customers to haul their own water spiralled into a debate over village council's role in upholding and promoting business in the community. How far is too far? At what point does support turn into favouritism?
During numerous committee discussions, council divided on the issue of whether forcing out-of-town customers to use local business would be an inappropriate use of the village's authority.
Last week, village councillor Leah Keats resigned from council altogether over what she saw as an attempt to undermine business. Her view was simple: business is the lifeblood of any small community, and the village should support its taxpayers.
Meanwhile, Mayor Sean Whelly upheld his belief that to tell out-of-town customers to go through local business would create an undue monopoly on water controlled by Rowe's company, P.R. Contracting, as he is the main water hauler in the village.
Both sides raised valid concerns, but should also take into consideration the nature of business in Fort Simpson.
For instance, the key question is simple: would requiring out-of-town customers to use local businesses hinder or dissuade someone else from starting their own local business?
Would a hypothetical local business have a harder time starting up if council were to pass this?
It would be interesting to hear arguments from that perspective. Instead, many arguments have been based on emotion and until now devolved into less-than-civil proceedings.
It can be difficult for a council to make decisions affecting the community without appearing biased in favour of or against something, especially where business is concerned.
Council members, like those in many public service jobs, often face tough questions from residents because as the saying goes, it is impossible to please everyone.
The fight to maintain credibility and integrity is a laudable one, as long as it does not cross the line into fear - whether of appearing corrupt or failing one's residents.
However, it is the village's responsibility to look after its residents, first and foremost.
When the fine line between good decision-making and favouritism rears its head, council members need to put aside their personal feelings and make a decision in the best interest of the community.
Our future is in the starsInuvik Drum - Thursday, August 6, 2015
With the announcement of the new satellite antenna outside Inuvik, the question remains: How can we best turn that to our advantage?
The answer is likely on its way.
The federal government recently made funds available to the Inuvialuit Community Economic Development Organization to provide workshops and initiatives to prepare for the expected economic spin-offs from the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway.
With the soon-to-be-completed Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link, there can be the same kind of funding made available to prepare for what we could call the "Inuvik-to-World Superhighway."
There are plans to install at least two more dish antennas at the Inuvik Satellite Station Facility (ISSF), one for the Swedish Space Agency - which is expected to arrive within the next couple of months - and one more slated to begin construction next year. When that happens, Inuvik will become Canada's premiere satellite sensing station.
That means Inuvik will become ground zero for a sort of satellite-uplink-to-world interface. If parlayed properly by local businesses, the education system and territorial and federal governments, Inuvik has a real opportunity to create amazing new jobs for our young people.
Imagine small local companies, staffed by young people fresh out of colleges, technical institutes or universities finding ways to create and operate information systems that take raw data provided by the satellite uplinks, crunch the numbers and turn it into information that can be used to help resource extraction companies, farmers, boaters, hunters and fishermen to find and harvest their bounty.
No other generation is better poised to take what we build today and turn these developments into real, creative and exciting future employment than the youth of today.
Nobody else is using (though some may say misusing) computers and technology as aptly as those currently coming up the ranks of our education system.
These are the kinds of jobs our youth are interested in. It is what inspires them to want to stay in school. It is what they need for their futures.
In the words of Premier Bob McLeod at the funding announcement for the ISSF on July 30:
"We ask our children to stay in school, and make sure they work hard and graduate. As a government, we must keep our end of the bargain, which includes providing opportunities for employment in many different sectors."
One can expect that in order to keep that promise, the government will soon be looking at what they can do to best use the satellite station and the fibre optic link to meet these expectations.
Lottery proves cabin demandYellowknifer - Wednesday, August 5, 2015
The takeaway from the land lease lottery is that demand for cabin lots around Yellowknife is extremely high and the territorial government has a long way to go to satisfy it.
Consider that 913 people were willing to pay $100 each for the chance to win one of just 22 Ingraham Trail cabin leases available at last week's lottery - the first in 30 years.
At this rate, people have a better chance digging a diamond out of their backyard than obtaining a legally available piece of land on which to erect their wilderness getaway.
Of course, there is lots of land out there, and lots of cabins - more and more are sprouting up all the time. Blink, and you might just open your eyes to find your favourite picnicking spot now has a dock at the water's edge and an A-frame standing behind it with a barbecue on the deck.
This is the legacy of unsettled land claims in a vast territory with very little enforcement.
So while government officials wring their hands about the need for consultation and studies before handing out more cabin leases, people are taking the calculated risk that as long as they are not being too obvious they can build an illegal squat by the lake - without paying leases or property taxes or submitting to building code requirements - with little fear.
This situation doesn't serve anybody well: neither the government that can't seem to get a handle on the squatters; the legitimate owners of the land, the Yellowknives Dene, who don't make a dime on the squatters building these illegal cabins; legitimate cabin owners, some of whom are watching helplessly as squatters build across the shore from them; and the hundreds of people who would like to buy a cabin lease while only a handful are made available.
The lack of cabin availability, as Yellowknifer has written before, merely further hamstrings the GNWT's attempts to convince people Yellowknife is an attractive place to live even though the government is desperate to increase the territory's population.
Yellowknives Dene First Nation has bristled at the possibility of more leases in the past, saying it would interfere with their traditional way of life.
But realistically, the Ingraham Trail is already cabin country for those lucky enough to have obtained their leases back in the day.
It should be reasoned that this is where future cabin development should take place, to discourage further incursions into wilderness areas so traditional harvesting activities can continue unheeded, and to provide the Yellowknives with some leasing revenue.
To allow the status quo to remain is to surrender to an increasingly irreversible situation with lawlessness breeding at our city's doorstep.
The indispensable value of eldersEditorial Comment by Michele LeTourneau
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, August 5, 2015
This past week in the Kivalliq region has given me much food for thought. The running theme is the incalculable value of elders.
It began with Louie Angalik of Arviat, to whom I was first introduced when I wrote about the projects going on in that community during the very first week I arrived. Elders are a vibrant well of wisdom with much to offer.
It continued with Madeline Makkigak's 100th birthday a few weeks ago, and featured in last week's paper. I cannot even fathom the wealth of knowledge this woman has from her experiences. One hundred years, plus all the years of learning from her own elders and going on through the past. Her children and grandchildren speak of the stories she tells.
Increasingly, over the last several years, I've spent time with elders and learned so much from them. I'm still thinking of the lessons from the two years I worked with elders in the Northwest Territories from 2011 to 2013.
But something else I witnessed and learned: there are two responses to elders these days ... listening and impatience.
On impatience first. In our speedy, speedy world, it's not surprising that younger generations may have lost the ability to sit still and listen. I'd lost it for sure, if I even ever had it. It's certainly not part of my upbringing, or my experience. I had to learn that. Hot under the collar, quick to freak out ... I had to learn to have patience. To hear a story out. To hear a story told in which I could discover the incredible wisdom spun out in words.
Then there are those who know elders carry within them that wisdom that comes from generations of stories and the knowledge they contain. For those, such as Tongola Sandy, the memory of him features large in this week's edition of Kivalliq News.
If there is something I do know it's that looking back over thousands of years of Western culture, humans repeat the same crazy mistakes over and over and over again.
Our so-called modern ways are not very helpful. We want to get things done. We don't take the time to look back and learn from the past. Speed forward, at whatever cost.
The story of Tongola and his solution to the trans-border issues between Dene and Inuit was: go to the elders. Rather than an all-consuming, never-ending fight in the courts, which is so much the modern way, elders insisted that Dene and Inuit had shared in the past. Were they not capable, then, of sharing in the present and in the future?
Tongola is respected and honoured for the esteem that he held for the elders.
Perhaps not every elder will solve a trans-boundary issue, but certainly every elder holds knowledge that can help make the future more sustainable.
It's a construct of the modern Qallunaat world to forget about the aging population, the "seniors," to set them aside as having passed their time to contribute to their communities and society. That is not a practice to embrace.
During my interview with Tagak Curley, he said the first thing he always did when he travelled was to go to the elders.
"I think it was my grandfather who told us to respect our elders. We took him seriously," said Curley.
On that note, the Inuit Heritage Trust has put out a call. If you know of an elder, and surely you know many, that bridges the past and the future, the old ways and the new ways, that shares Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit freely and with care with their community and the younger generation, put their name forward. The deadline is Oct. 1.
Election questions can't go unansweredNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, August 3, 2015
When it comes to elections, if everything is not above board the only thing to follow is acrimony and conflict. And very little gets done.
We've seen examples of this with the Salt River First Nation and Deninu Ku'e First Nation in Fort Resolution. The controversy that surrounds an election does not disappear after the vote - although, in the re-election of Gwichya Gwich'in Chief Phillip Blake, no votes were ever cast.
Blake was acclaimed to the position under an unratified election code, after filing an appeal toward his only challenger's submission to run. Grace Blake, a former Gwichya chief, threw her name in the hat despite not being on the band's membership list - a point on which Chief Blake took issue.
Whether or not a non-member should be eligible to run for chief is a fair question. Unfortunately, before an objective-seeming answer could be given, the band's chief election officer Graeme Drew resigned, citing a lack of official laws to govern the election process since ratification had not yet happened. Along with Drew went the election committee.
The band was left with a one-person election committee appointed by council, consisting of the community's director of finance. At this point, Grace Blake was deemed ineligible to run and Chief Blake, along with three councillors, was acclaimed.
It is not Chief Blake's suitability for the position that needs to be challenged but the process that has left members crying foul.
Calls from band members for the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, and the federal department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada to intervene in the process went unanswered.
The members are not happy and as a result, this will not be the last we hear of this issue.
Whether or not there were nefarious dealings, the perception of the process carries a heavy weight that will continue to bear down on the band.
Time and money will be wasted to clarify the murky areas of the election process and these are resources that will be taken away from community projects. A chief appointed under steep criticism with band members questioning the outcome heralds a difficult fight ahead.
Based solely on his own merits, it's quite likely that Chief Blake could very well have been re-elected. But with so many twists and turns along his path to acclamation, those merits are no longer the focus.
Crucial need for better connectionsNunavut/News North - Monday, August 3, 2015
Tens of millions of dollars are being spent for marginal increases in Internet speeds for residential and business customers in Nunavut communities at a time when computer connectivity has become vital.
The federal government's Connecting Canadians program has earmarked $305 million to bring high-speed Internet services to households in rural and remote regions of the country. From that fund, Northern telecom service provider SSi Micro will receive $35 million to extend and enhance satellite Internet service for approximately 8,600 homes in Nunavut after being selected through a request-for-proposals contract selection process. The company will need to contribute $15 million of its own money as part of the project. SSi company officials said that money will be applied to new hardware and facilities to upgrade infrastructure in all 25 Nunavut communities.
The problem is that, despite this significant outpouring of money, the actual increase in speed for Internet users to stream video, post on Facebook, check e-mail accounts, monitor online banking and Skype with relatives in other communities, will be nowhere near what customers in southern Canada enjoy. Certainly, southern communities are served with fibre-optic services while remote Nunavut communities rely on fixed satellite services for their connection to the World Wide Web.
SSi Micro purchases satellite connectivity from satellite operator Telesat, which falls woefully short of its target mandated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which in 2011 set a nationwide minimum speed of five megabits per second for downloading and one megabits per second for uploading (Megabits refers to download speed, whereas megabytes and gigabytes refers to the size of files).
Nunavut customers now buy a maximum speed of 1.5 megabits per second, which is set to increase to three megabits per second with the new funding. That's well below the CRTC target and woefully short of the 29.7 megabits per second download available to people in the rest of the country, according to the Ookla Net Index.
The Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation was quick to criticize the anticipated result of the new funding, with its executive director saying the small increase will make little difference for Nunavut Internet users while the gap between the North and the rest of Canada gets bigger and bigger.
Another part of the problem is the fee Telesat charges SSi, which is significantly higher for Northern customers than southern customers, according to an October 2014 Satellite Inquiry Report by the CRTC.
A good Internet connection has become vital for education, health-care delivery, jobs training, employment applications and everyday life.
The CRTC is undertaking a review of the fees Telesat charges for satellite access. It is crucial that the need for higher Internet speed also be addressed so Nunavummiut are not left behind.
