The cost of fighting city hallYellowknifer - Wednesday, July 20, 2016
City administration wants to tack a $100 fee in order to appeal developments, claiming it has been dealing with instances of "frivolous appeals."
What are these frivolous appeals? Without going into specifics, administration wrote in a staff report to Municipal Services Committee last Monday that there have been "a few examples where a development permit has been appealed by dozens of people; however, each appeal application was a carbon copy of the previous or next application."
In an e-mailed response to a question from Yellowknifer, communications and economic development officer Stephanie Vandeputte stated the city can't comment on individual appeals.
Just going off of the available information administration used to make a case for a fee, the argument doesn't seem like it holds a lot of weight. What exactly is frivolous, for example, for a group to prepare a template appeal so community members with concerns about a development can have their voices heard?
Does this speak to the appeal's frivolousness, or to the fact those who oppose a certain development are organized?
Those who would be interested in filing an appeal are presumably people who already pay property taxes and other municipal fees, making them invested in the community. Why should a property owner have to pay to make an appeal if the city is proposing a development that would affect their lives or the value of their property?
A $100 fee would ostensibly, according to administration, show the applicant is committed to the appeal process, but going through the trouble to fill out a form and hand it in also showed commitment.
Without a strong justification for this fee - for example, if administration is just so horribly backlogged by appeals that it can't process them in a timely manner, delaying the issuance of development permits - Yellowknifer can't see why it should be put in place.
What council should ask is does the fee serve administration, or the people of Yellowknife?
In the absence of repeated abuse of the appeal process, it doesn't appear to serve the people.
Housing corp. going down right roadYellowknifer - Wednesday, July 20, 2016
There is finally a made in the North solution to the housing shortage.
The NWT Housing Corporation announced it awarded 39 contracts to build modular homes right in the NWT, with one of them being with Energy Wall and Building Products in Kam Lake that will stay in the city. The other 38 are going to Hay River, which will be distributed across the territory. This is a huge step forward for the territory in its efforts to solve the chronic housing shortage and supporting local businesses and the economy at the same time.
This also gives residents more choice over what kind of home they would want, explained Caroline Cochrane, the minister responsible for NWT Housing. Now people can choose between traditional stick-built homes, or modular ones.
The added bonus is the one home being built in the city is an original design developed by Manuel Jorge, who co-owns Energy Wall with his wife Marta Jorge. He described the homes as flex housing, which he hopes to develop into affordable, 700-square foot houses running around $100,000 not adding the land. The target market for these homes are single people, young families and retirees.
With so many young families and single people moving to the city for work, this will go a long way to help reverse the shrinking population by giving people a chance to own property rather than rent apartments or rooms in other people's homes.
The best part is this is a more efficient means for the GNWT to source housing options from inside its borders rather than ship prefab homes from down south.
Enjoying culture and communityEditorial Comment by Cody Punter
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Rankin Inlet may not be know as the hottest place in Canada but you sure could have fooled anyone who showed up for the Nunavut Day celebrations on July 9.
With no clouds in the sky and the sun beating down on crowds all day long temperatures were getting up around 30 C. Even by southern standards it was a scorcher. But that didn't stop people from coming in droves to celebrate Nunavut's 17th birthday, with organizers saying it was the largest turnout they'd ever seen.
Of course the rich culture and traditions of the Inuit are much older than Canada's newest territory and it was great to see so many people sporting traditional clothing to honour those roots.
The traditional clothing competition showed a beautiful array of colour, beadwork and design, and having Ottawa's Twin Flames judge the competition made for a touching moment, especially when the children's awards were being handed out.
Even those that weren't competing were getting involved with no shortage of kamiks and Nunavut toques on display.
It was also great to see so much local talent out to perform. Unfortunately I was watching the tea-boiling competition when Ashley Aupaluktuq-Burton and Christine Tootoo were wowing the crowd with their throatsinging.
When I apologized to Ashley for missing their set later that day, she said she was just glad to hear that people were watching the elders.
Mary Kapuk was especially impressive to watch as she stoked the fire beneath her large kettle, stopping every one in a while to blow on it gently to make the flames rise.
Although it was a competition, everyone sat around afterward sipping tea in the sun away from hustle and bustle of the crowds.
The music may not have been everyone's cup of tea but there were lots of people enthralled by the Twin Flames, who played for close to two hours under the unrelenting sun.
It seemed like many of the elders were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the lead singer, who is originally from Nunavik, was fluent in Inuktitut. Although he needed some help with the Kivalliq dialect, people were humming along the words and clapping their hands during the songs.
And of course who could forget Don Burnstick. The Winnipeg-based comedian was highly anticipated before he took the stage and boy did he ever deliver.
Nothing was off-limits as he rattled off joke after joke about everything from Justin Trudeau to the difference between a white person and an Inuit person passing gas.
Although some jokes were a little on the racy side considering there were children around, Burnstick has never said a swear word while performing and he held to that promise for Nunavut Day.
The loudest response from the crowd, after his shoutout to Jordin Tootoo, came when he dropped a fairly long joke explaining the 11 ways an Inuit woman laughs.
The crowd was in stitches and some in tears. But amidst all the laugher Burnstick also tried to bring forth a serious message. Pointing to some of the tragedies that First Nations across Canada are experiencing he concluded his set by saying there is a need to teach young people to value their life and their culture.
"It's these types of events that strengthen the identity of these young people," he said, referring to Nunavut Day.
Based on the way the community came together to celebrate on Nunavut Day it seems like Rankin is on the right track.
Drive for Mackenzie Valley Hwy detours NWT's real road needsNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, July 18, 2016
Another roads funding announcement and another mention of the Mackenzie Valley Highway. The federal and territorial governments are spending $96 million for more than a dozen upgrades to sections of roads in the NWT. That's good news.
As News/North reported last week, the Government of the Northwest Territories says it chose projects "strategically" to improve safety, extend the life of roads and to support economic growth, job creation and stronger communities.
The funding from the federal government came after the GNWT requested it, according to NWT MP Michael McLeod.
"These were projects that were identified by the territorial government as areas that needed investment," McLeod said. "We are working on further projects."
Those "further projects" are identified in the NWT Transportation Strategy 2015-2040.
There has been no agreement among MLAs on the order of priority for development of its Top-Six projects, except for almost unanimous support for the extension of the Mackenzie Valley Highway from Wrigley to at least Norman Wells.
We suggest the GNWT place the Mackenzie Valley Highway further down that list, not because people don't want it. Many people living along the valley undoubtedly do. News/North columnist Cece Hodgson-McCauley has made the highway a singular life mission for 35 years. A Mackenzie Valley Highway would help ease the cost of living for winter road communities and open the area up to opportunity, such as tourism and, if and when interest from oil and gas companies returns.
The problem right now is that interest is zero. That ship sailed long ago. Low oil prices aren't the only problem. Beaufort-Delta and Mackenzie Valley oil and gas are in competition with shale potential in Alberta and B.C., where there is enough natural gas to supply Canada for 145 years. And, if the oil companies come back once the market rebounds, they will again face strong local opposition to fracking in the Mackenzie Valley, a drilling process that protesters across the world claim is bad for the environment and can cause the ground to become unstable. Deepwater drilling in the Beaufort Sea has likewise become more controversial since the Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
The GNWT is also dead broke and with the threat of diamond mine closures on the near horizon, the government's money troubles will only get worse - unless it prepares for it now.
Now that the bottom has fallen out of the oil and gas industry, the focus has to be on the mining sector where the potential for new mines and the expansion of existing ones is greater.
So we urge the GNWT to stop including the Mackenzie Highway in its infrastructure pitch to the Trudeau government and focus on an all-season road to one of the most promising mining regions in Canada, the Slave Geological Province, where the diamond mines are located.
With some money added from the mining companies to help grease the wheels, so to speak - yes, they should contribute -- the GNWT and feds should realize this project will reap continued riches for the territory.
With greater economic certainty, the GNWT could then make an even stronger proposal to the feds to partner on the Mackenzie Valley Highway, part of Canada's National Highway System.
Sure, it should be completed, providing there is overall support from the communities, but let's not play politics with the infrastructure funding. Proceeding with an-season road to the Slave Geological Province first would be a bitter pill to swallow for many, particularly for MLAs in the legislative assembly who are all too aware there are not a lot of voters in diamond country but they would make the territory more viable if they accepted it.
With the GNWT in cutting mode and the diamond mines in need of a reason to stay open longer and harness the potential for other possible mines in the area, the timing is just not right to dive into a massive highway-building project with limited economic potential down the Mackenzie Valley.
Norman Yakeleya, the former MLA for the Sahtu region, summed the situation up nicely when quoted by media in 2014 about another delay in the Mackenzie Valley Highway project.
"You know, we've been waiting since the '70s -- what's a few more years?"
Channel summer energy into productive activitiesNunavut/News North - Monday, July 18, 2016
We get that young people want to take full advantage of sun-filled, hot summer days. After months of snow, ice, cold weather and limited opportunities for outdoor activities, there is nothing like being outside for hours on end, despite the dust and dirt that is so characteristic of the state of Nunavut hamlets.
Children get to ride their bicycles, older youth roar around on quads and groups of people walk to the shoreline to watch the water, skip stones and enjoy the days without the burden of having to attend school.
The midnight sun gives people the energy required to stay up late, often into the early morning hours.
With the long days comes an unwanted side effect. Boredom among youth has seemingly led to a spate of vandalism in some communities.
Windows have been smashed out of vehicles, bicycles and quads stolen and left abandoned on the land, business owners have arrived at their establishments in the morning to find that windows have been smashed and items stolen.
In one hamlet, a well-meaning member of the community built a free-standing basketball net with a reinforced base so children could have fun shooting hoops. One night it became a target for vandals, who left it bent and broken, rendered unusable by the very group of people the basketball net was intended to serve.
There have been howls of outrage on social media with people posting messages on Facebook calling on parents to monitor their children, for hamlet council to do something and for the RCMP to be more vigilant.
Others are calling for curfews to be re-introduced in some hamlets, which at one time legislated that children be off the streets at 10:30 p.m. or face a fine. Some hamlets marked the start of the curfew nightly by sounding a siren from the fire hall, signaling the time for youth to go home and stay indoors.
There is not one single solution that can fix the problem of vandalism.
One hamlet, Whale Cove, has very little vandalism, a result attributed to an RCMP detachment with officers who are very involved in the community.
Other communities have active youth centres, which provide young people not only with a place to go but also offers programs, games and theme nights to keep minds occupied on positive activities.
Investigating acts of vandalism and laying charges against young people suspected of committing the crimes could be a deterrent.
Each community has to find its own solution, whether it is patrols by bylaw enforcement officers, more police presence, involvement by citizens, implementation of a curfew, the introduction of programs for youth or pressure applied for parents to control their children.
Ultimately a message must be sent that young people are valued residents of the communities in which they live and that acts of vandalism only hurt themselves and their neighbours. They need to be told to find something productive to do, put that energy into bettering themselves and their community and focus on building up instead of breaking down.
Wild West on water must stop Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, July 15, 2016
The North is one of the last frontiers where people are relatively free to enjoy nature's bounty and beauty without excessive regulation.
On the water people are free to go just about anywhere they like, and camp wherever they fancy.
But as events demonstrated last week, when travel on water goes awry there is the expectation and hope that a co-ordinated emergency search and rescue response will take place.
The happy conclusions to last week's reports of three missing boats that included a family that spent five days stranded on an island in the East Arm of Great Slave Lake near Lutsel K'e are a testament to boater resolve and the excellence of search and rescue response in the North, but mostly to the excellence of search and rescue.
In the case of the stranded family, running out of gas and failing to ensure the batteries in one's emergency locator device are fully charged are two very avoidable situations.
The co-ordinated search and rescue response that followed was resource intensive and involved a CC-130 Hercules airplane dispatched from Winnipeg, a 440 Squadron Twin Otter (the planes dropped radios to the stranded boaters and maintained air support), and an RCMP boat dispatched from Lutsel K'e 40 km away.
Boaters, if they expect this kind of professional - and free - response when things go sideways, ought to accept some form of boater licensing as part of the social contract that allows them to head out onto open waters with the assurance that professional search and rescue resources are available.
Boaters elsewhere in Canada have been required to obtain a pleasure craft operator's card since 1999.
The exemption for the NWT and Nunavut has been dressed up as a desire from Ottawa not to interfere with traditional activities in the North but that rationalization merely sidesteps the main issue. The problem in the North is that there are not enough certified instructors to administer the course and issue the test.
The simple fact remains there is virtually nothing stopping a complete novice - aside from a lack of disposable income - from purchasing an $80,000 boat armed with a 200-horsepower motor and then blundering off into some of most treacherous waters on Earth.
Surely a compromise can be reached to help Northerners receive a bit of instruction before they blast off down the bay with a half-dozen passengers on board.
It's a project that should be handled by the Canadian Coast Guard or perhaps delegated to the coast guard auxiliary. Providing instruction and licensing is more of a challenge in remote communities outside of Yellowknife. Perhaps a course can be implemented in schools in communities that rely on water for sustenance and transportation.
At the very least, people should be required to take some kind of online course and pass it before being allowed to operate a boat in the Northwest Territories.
People are loath to new rules where there once weren't any but the alternative is more boater safety illiterate operators heading out onto the water, putting themselves, their passengers, other boaters and rescuers at risk.
Striving for equality a good move Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, July 15, 2016
Earlier this month, women's groups across Yellowknife and cabinet minister Caroline Cochrane challenged Yellowknifers to complete a course called Gender Based Analysis Plus Training.
Some of the first MLAs to rise to the challenge — Glen Abernethy and Kevin O'Reilly — were men, which is kind of the whole point. The online training course is geared toward combating assumptions that anything with the word 'gender' in the title is only talking about women.
This training goes beyond gender or sex (there is a difference), to include identity factors such as age, culture, language, geography and income in how government policy is created and implemented.
It sounds complicated but it's really not. The training points out disparities such as "pink taxes," as in the BIC company's line of pastel pens 'for her.' They retail for double the cost of the regular, or 'male' equivalent. Another example is the outrage over stores such as Target desegregating its toy aisles. Even if they're gender neutral, the Barbie aisle will still be a swirling headache of neon pink hair — only now it may be a little easier for boys who want dolls to get one.
Gender based analysis, in many ways, is not for people who actually don't understand the concept of gender equality and probably now are wondering why women are in their workplace instead of at home making their men sandwiches.
It's for people who are already striving for equality -- it's to highlight what even the most well-intentioned may miss.
It's about embedded structural inequality that people might not even notice, until suddenly it's effecting how health research is done, for example, or which bathroom people are allowed to use.
The 'plus' is about how policies and practices affect actual people, with all their diversity.
For a community such as Yellowknife, growing and changing so rapidly, it's an exceedingly excellent thing that so many of the people in positions of influence have jumped on board with both feet.
A Deh Cho expressionDeh Cho Drum - Thursday, July 14, 2016
There is a common inside-joke of an expression in Yellowknife I've heard since arriving in the North in May.
"I once came up for a visit for two weeks, stayed for 30 years" it goes, referencing how sudden people decide to move there.
Even when I was accepting the job at Northern News Services I was surprised when my boss, Bruce Valpy, told me he was born in the same New Brunswick town as I was.
"I'm down for adventure," I said, taking the job.
"That's what I said 30 years ago," he replied, with me paraphrasing.
But if that is the inside-joke for Yellowknife, since arriving in Fort Simpson earlier this month and seeing some of the Deh Cho for the first time, I've been left wondering what its expression should be.
The first weekend I arrived here was the Open Sky Festival and, while I can only assume it's not like that every weekend, if you were trying to make a good first impression you succeeded.
There was a sense of openness I felt in Fort Simpson that I didn't feel back in Yellowknife (not to knock the city, cheddar cheese that isn't $14 has its appeal).
It's clear to me that communities in the Deh Cho have a greater sense of community than other parts of Canada and I appreciate that.
Anyway, the main point of this column is I want to introduce who I am. My name is Joseph Tunney and I'm filling in for April Hudson while she's on vacation in the Yukon until the end of the month.
I'm a maritimer, I like to read and write, I'm a bit of a dweeb, elderly ladies constantly ask me if my hair is fake (it isn't) and I don't bite.
While I realize it's sometime difficult to trust outsiders, I hope that I can I get a chance to meet many of you.
And, hey, if you really don't like me, at least it's only for another two weeks. That's easy enough medicine to swallow (as long as Canada Post still delivers it).
Speaking of my hairdo, if you see a large puff of dirty blonde hair walking around town, don't be alarmed; I'm not a dust bunny.
Feel free to come up and strike up a conversation. I'll be all ears.
Anyway, I'll keep trying to think up a good expression that sums up the region and get back to you.
If all else fails, there is at least one sentence I've learned that sums up what I want to say to you, the people, so far: masi cho. I was told this means "thank you," and I look forward to learning other phrases in the language.
Small steps a big dealInuvik Drum - Thursday, July 14, 2016
I must admit, I was disappointed when GNWT specialists told town council a renewable energy project would only displace about 10 per cent of Inuvik's current diesel consumption.
The turbine -- possibly two of them -- would cost about $25 million at current estimates and wouldn't be able to run when the weather is at its coldest, although they are designed for places that hit -40 C regularly. The system that would allow it to contribute to the local electricity grid is complex and expensive, according to these specialists, but the real barrier to using more renewable energy is battery technology.
$25 million is a hefty price tag for something that has yet to be tested by this government, although the same technology has proven itself in other similar jurisdictions like Alaska. With the inevitable hiccups and bugs that will need to be worked out, getting technicians and specialists out to Inuvik to work on the turbine project could very well be an added and ongoing cost on top of that. Still, we have to start somewhere.
This is an excellent time and place to start moving towards renewable energy in a meaningful way, and -- albeit small -- this is indeed meaningful.
We just finished up with the first ever Arctic Energy and Emerging Technologies conference and tradeshow which, beyond being a mouthful, had as its mission to bring exactly this kind of development to Inuvik.
A few hundred people came to town to talk about energy needs and possibilities in the North, and wind power is just one of them.
We know that renewable energy development, like all infrastructure development, will come at a pretty high cost, especially here. Still, it is a cost that pales in comparison to that residents are paying and will be paying as a result of a continued dependence on fossil fuels.
No conversation with anyone who has lived here a reasonable length of time doesn't involve some observations of the way the weather has changed in the past 20 years.
The technology is not perfect. The turbines themselves are made using massive amounts of petroleum products in their manufacturing process, and getting them here remains a fossil-fuel-laden endeavour. But all that is outweighed by the good they would do, even in just changing the energy mindset in the area.
A wind turbine or two would maybe only reduce our diesel consumption by 10 per cent, but it would be one whole step forward in changing the energy future of this community.
