Does Canada give North cold shoulder?Northwest Territories/News North - Monday, September 12, 2016
During a rough point in the history of Canada's federation in the 1980s, Calgary mayor Ralph Klein said, "Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark."
A few decades later and the argument is being made that Ottawa is leaving the North to freeze in the dark.
Sure, we've had lots of lip-service paid by the federal government - not to mention plenty of parades through the NWT by cabinet ministers and prime ministers - but are we any better off than a few decades ago?
Maclean's magazine columnist Scott Gilmore recently wrote, "We are not a Northern nation, and we need to stop lying to ourselves that we are."
In the Sept. 11 column titled, "The North and the great Canadian lie," Gilmore writes Canada needs to stop pretending it cares about the North.
Noting the lion's share of Canadians live as far south in the country as they can, and being one of the wealthiest, healthiest, most successful nations on the planet, he suggests Canada "maybe doesn't need the North."
Gilmore adds: A lack of development and health infrastructure has created serious social problems and our mineral wealth is hobbled due to inadequate means to get ore to markets.
On another front, look at the state of the Canadian Rangers, our under-equipped volunteer militia, the backbone of our national military presence in the North.
As reported in the last edition of News/North, the feds have announced a contract for 6,820 new rifles to replace the Rangers' Second World War Lee Enfield rifles starting next year.
That's a sad measure of the investment Canada has put into backing our already shaky sovereignty claim.
Canada's Northern Strategy, launched in 2007, was a weak document to begin with as it contained no firm plans or timelines for solidifying that claim.
The current cap-in-hand stance the GNWT takes with Ottawa was recently characterized by Infrastructure Minister Robert C. McLeod, at a joint announcement of $51.7 million for water and wastewater projects in the NWT. The territory will have to pony up 25 per cent of the cost of each project.
"Any opportunity we have to access any federal dollars for any project in the NWT big or small we take advantage of this," McLeod said. "One of the things you learn as a representative of the NWT is to take advantage of money pots if we can get them."
The GNWT needs to be far more aggressive with Ottawa, especially during this first phase of the Liberals' promised 10-year infrastructure plan to repair aging roads, pipes and transit systems across the country.
Our hopes to move forward with just a portion of the Mackenzie Valley Highway towards the Northern coastline have already been put in park, as we now must wait for the second phase of the 10-year spending plan - which requires the Liberals to win the next federal election.
The second, more lucrative, phase of the Liberal infrastructure spending plan will address larger projects. And we have plenty of them.
Ottawa needs to hear loud and clear that we have no plans to freeze in the dark.
Shine bright lights on depressing topicNunavut/News North - Monday, September 19, 2016
It is well worth noting that while people across Canada marked World Suicide Prevention Day with events, publicity efforts and campaigns last week, there was a markedly different approach in Nunavut.
Here the territory held Embrace Life Day events, which included walks, cycling, a concert, a poster contest, a cake decorating contest, community barbecues and feasts.
As the name suggests, Nunavut is taking a proactive approach to addressing a major health issue with Embrace Life Day. Instead of focusing on prevention, the entire approach is positive, a method worthy of praise.
The usage of positive words is by design, first raised at the September 2015 coroner's inquest into the high rate of suicide where the government of Nunavut's director of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, Shuvinai Mike, said that the use of the words "suicide prevention" is "not culturally relevant" and suggested terminology should be chosen by Inuit.
Mike suggested the word inuusiqatsiaqujigatta, which means "we want you to have a good life," saying it is more appropriate because efforts should be focused on the present and on promoting life.
A made-in-Nunavut approach encourages people to talk about mental health issues and to recognize it is up to people in the communities to help each other to cope with loss.
Finally, as a result of the recommendations made by the coroner's inquest, the Government of Nunavut has provided a significant amount of money towards getting those positive messages out into the public. As revealed during the inquest, there had been talk within the government and the Department of Health about the development of a suicide prevention strategy, but no money had been put toward those efforts.
Thankfully, that has changed. There is now a division within the Department of Health, titled Quality of Life, with its own associate deputy minister to implement other recommendations from the coroner's inquest, take comments made by those who gave testimony to heart and make a difference in the context of traditional Inuit values and principles.
The government followed up by creating new positions for mental-health workers and addictions counsellors. Many communities will have access to services offered by child and youth outreach specialists and psychiatric nurses.
The key to success is for all agencies to work together to develop trust between the people they are trying to help and the front-line workers. The partnership of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Government of Nunavut, the RCMP and Isaksimagit Inuusirmi Katujjiqatigiit (Embrace Life Council) is intent on using the funds provided to reach people in need.
One of the most important methods is the offering of a two-day Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training course within the communities so that elders, school teachers, youth leaders and others can learn to recognize the signs and react in an appropriate manner.
We are optimistic that a well-funded, positive and proactive approach rooted in traditional values will show proven results when a full evaluation of progress is carried out.
Spending starts at home Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, September 16, 2016
The mining and resource industry is the largest private sector contributor to the NWT's GDP, so when that sector stumbles the North shudders.
Speakers at last week's Opportunities North conference highlighted the importance of economic diversification in the development of a robust economy less tied to the vagaries of international commodity markets.
Tourism was highlighted as a shining star in the North's economic constellation.
It's well and good that tourism spending has been on the upswing. Tourist and adventure market dollars are certainly something all levels of government should be pursuing. But another core industry easily overlooked for the lack of glamour associated with it is government spending.
It is not easy to parse out exactly what the value of government spending in the North amounts to, but it certainly represents more than a billion dollars annually.
While much of that is absorbed in salaries, administration and upkeep of public infrastructure, some of it is spent on goods and services provided by the private sector.
The NWT Chamber of Commerce carefully tracks resource sector spending and does a good job keeping its finger on the pulse of the private sector economy. But it needs to expand its vigilant gaze on the who, how much, and where of government private sector spending.
For example, the GNWT recently award a contract for close to 40 modular homes to NWT-based construction facilities.
Previous contracts for modular homes, which have become widely used in the communities for the cost savings involved, had gone to southern contractors who took the money, built the homes, and installed them in communities while giving almost zero benefit to the Northern economy. For example, according to MLA Shane Thompson, southern contractors would even bring their own food, fuel and accommodations to the communities instead of spending locally.
It may be that some sections of the North's private sector are not ready to handle government-sized contracts.
If that is the case, those areas should be identified as potential sources of further northern economic diversification and immediately targeted for development.
Phone calls for seniors may be lifeline Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, September 16, 2016
Isolation and loneliness are well-documented triggers for a host of mental health problems, including depression.
Seniors can be especially vulnerable if they have limited mobility, they've lost friends or family or relatives spend less time with them due to busy schedules.
It can be especially hard for Northern seniors. Many young people move away to pursue jobs and schooling in larger centres down south, leaving elderly parents and relatives who may not be keen on picking up and moving, especially if they lived most of their lives in the city.
One way to help seniors connect to the outside world is with a simple phone call. The Status of Women Council of the NWT is launching the Friendly Calls to Seniors program, where volunteers can phone up elders to chat with them, even for a few minutes, depending on what the volunteer and client agree upon.
The idea, according to council executive director Lorraine Phaneuf, is seniors really do appreciate hearing another person's voice and talking about things they have in common.
To make this program work, like a conversation, it needs people to speak up and volunteer, to be the callers and the called.
Yellowknifers skilled in the art of conversation should consider signing up, as should seniors who could use a little social time, even over the phone.
This is a case where a simple telephone line can be a lifeline.
Solutions neededDeh Cho Drum - Thursday, September 15, 2016
Anyone who has lived in one of the smaller communities in the Northwest Territories for any length of time knows the story: a friend has been couchsurfing for years, or a relative spends their summers on the street and seem to vanish in the winter.
Where the government seems to have failed on the issue of homelessness, the people of the North find their own solutions.
Homelessness in the Deh Cho is largely out of sight, out of mind. It's well-known that the issue doesn't take traditional forms - you generally won't find people without homes sleeping out on the street in the middle of winter.
But they are there. To think otherwise would be a mistake.
In Fort Providence, the Community Advancement Partnership Society has been raising money for the better part of a year in an effort to aid the situation.
The organization wants to build spaces for people who have no homes. It would be transitional housing, with members of the society helping clients to eventually get a regular housing unit.
One affiliate, Pat Mazerolle's FP Management & Consulting, compiled the data he has seen over the past nine months into a document for the NWT Housing Corporation's perusal.
The figures he cites, if applied anywhere else in the country, would be staggering. Mazerolle estimates between six to eight per cent of Fort Providence's adult population is homeless, hard-to-house or underhoused.
They couchsurf, live in shacks and abandoned buildings or pile into the units of friends and relatives.
The society has 13 people registered in its waiting list for housing already, when not a single bed is yet available.
Mazerolle said he is tired of the issue being swept under the rug. Every winter, he says, he hears people talk about the problem of homelessness - only to have it forgotten a couple months later.
So how do you talk about an issue nobody really wants to discuss?
Mazerolle's report puts the blame on the NWT Housing Corporation for a failure to address the needs of the homeless population.
The corporation's rules, he says, do not fit the Northwest Territories.
Need rent support? Fine, say the rules. Just apply to be on the public housing wait-list and you qualify for a subsidy to tide you over. Of course, those who owe money to public housing don't qualify for the list. Funny how people suffering from chronic ailments be they related to physical or mental health would be the most likely to fall behind on their rent, and therefore more likely to need a helping hand and yet less likely to receive the help they need.
Everyone deserves to have a roof over their head, whether they are in the grasp of an addiction or have simply fallen on hard times.
It is up to everyone who knows these people to turn up the pressure on the government.
Role on the team impacts later lifeInuvik Drum - Thursday, September 15, 2016
When I was young, gym class was an easy 'A,' a small hope for floor hockey and a brief respite from the stress of regular school.
As an adult, I see how much youth sports influenced my development and correlate to how I operate in the workplace.
Now I can't evangelize it enough, and I was glad to check in with East Three Secondary School's running club this week.
It could be my own bias, but I also see a correlation in my peers between dedication to youth sports and future professional success.
As a disclaimer, not everyone takes to sports naturally and many develop a similar foundation through other venues.
In school, I was good at grammar and struggled through everything else. I didn't want the teacher to ask me questions, put in just enough work to pass the class and let the dedicated students take the lead in group assignments.
In sports, I was the complete opposite: a leader, the one calling out the plays, extremely competitive and committed.
It was through sports that I learned how to operate in a team, follow a coach's command, run plays, guide teammates and set up each situation for success.
Sports taught me how to find and play my role in the workplace.
I grew up playing baseball and hockey, and in both I was defensively minded. I took care of my own end before going on offence.
In baseball, I was a lead-off batter with a high on-base percentage. I was not a big hitter.
For hockey, I was a defenceman entirely focused on getting the puck out of my end. I wasn't cherry-picking for breakaways.
And at work, these same instincts run true. I take a defensive, low-risk, high-percentage approach to get my job done, and I don't go swinging for the fences if it's going to leave me exposed.
I see in colleagues the big hitters, closing pitchers and other role players that all help make a good team.
In so many young people, I see a real passion during sports that might not always be on their face.
Far from an easy 'A' or simple extracurricular activity, sports are a key developmental experience for youth.
Poisoning children must stopYellowknifer - Wednesday, September 14, 2016
In the list of pressing issues facing the NWT today, fetal alcohol syndrome should be at the top.
Caused by drinking during pregnancy, fetal alcohol syndrome (FASD) occurs when alcohol damages the fetus, putting the future child at real risk for cognitive impairment, intellectual disability, mental-health, behavioural problems and physical disabilities.
People with FASD are likely to struggle. They will find it harder than the average person to maintain relationships, be successful at school and keep a job. The territorial government does not keep FASD statistics and not everybody with it has been diagnosed. There is no definitive way to diagnose a person with FASD, unless a mother is open about whether she drank during pregnancy. This means there are people living in the NWT with FASD who don't have access to the support they need. Too often the tragic result is a troubled child shunted between foster care, the police, the courts, the corrections system and homeless shelters.
This is why the Yellowknife Association for Community Living's project to distribute 500 pregnancy kits to bar bathrooms and liquor stores across the city is such a vital step forward.
The kits include information about FASD, a condom, a helpline for more information and a pregnancy test. It's a valuable resource for people to learn what FASD is and how it happens, and provides a discreet way for women to see if they are pregnant.
But initiatives to combat FASD shouldn't end with a project for FASD Awareness Day. The rest of us have the opportunity to utilize this project as a way to get comfortable talking about alcohol abuse, family planning, safe sex and sexual health.
The government also plays a role in making sure women across the territory have easy access to family planning tools such as birth control, condoms, pregnancy tests and abortion procedures. Once women are armed with knowledge, feel confident enough to get past the taboos and receive tools to proactively manage their fertility, FASD rates are bound to go down.
So start talking about it. The Yellowknife Association for Community Living has opened the door - let's join the conversation.
Ordinary MLAs an untapped resourceYellowknifer - Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Two MLAs who want a greater role for standing committees at the legislative assembly are revealing the flaw in wrapping consensus government in a parliamentary cloak.
Frame Lake MLA Kevin O'Reilly and Kam Lake MLA Kieron Testart shared their thoughts with Yellowknifer last week, both pointing to untapped opportunities provided by standing committees that regular MLAs can use to provide more oversight over cabinet work and engage the public.
Sitting across from all-powerful ministers backed by a standing army of 4,000 bureaucrats, they can only snipe at policy decisions made behind closed cabinet doors. Hardly a shining example of consensus.
Through standing committees, MLAs can hold public engagement sessions, go on fact-finding missions, study issues in depth and critically review departmental programs. Those bureaucrats serve them in that setting.
Anything that leads to MLAs becoming more informed about ongoing government work is a good thing. More public engagement about these issues is also a good thing, as is committee oversight into cabinet business.
In the end, the ordinary MLAs are all that stands between democracy and a five-year-long dictatorship.
Safe-sex message still unheededEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, September 14, 2016
The fact of the matter is, the ongoing trend of people having unprotected sex in Nunavut, especially in the Kivalliq, dictate we're damn lucky the AIDS virus has not become prevalent in our neck of the tundra.
As of Aug. 1, the Kivalliq has 49 confirmed cases of syphilis according to the Department of Health. This is more than halfway to the 94 syphilis cases recorded in all of Nunavut during the 2014 outbreak.
And, the region is more than two-thirds of the way to the total number of cases (68) recorded in the entire territory in 2015.
The two culprits behind the Kivalliq outbreak are bad decision making and consenting to unprotected sex.
Our youth take most of the blame for syphilis's return with a vengeance, but the sexually-transmitted infection seems to be just as rampant among 20-somethings as our teenage population.
Any worker on the front lines of public health will tell you the confirmed cases do not represent the whole picture when it comes to dealing with sexually-transmitted infections.
And that can be especially true with syphilis, as there are an unknown number of people walking around with the bacteria infection who haven't been tested yet, while still others don't show any sign they've been infected.
Syphilis can be diagnosed with a blood test and can be fairly easily treated with antibiotics, but, left undiagnosed and untreated, the infection turns especially nasty and can cause a number of severe problems in the body, eventually leading to death!
Having unprotected sex in this day and age is mind-baffling enough, but it's even more brain numbing to realize how many people realize there's a huge breakout of syphilis in the region, know they've been sexually active without protection, and still adopt the it-can't-happen-to-me attitude and refuse to have themselves tested for the disease.
In those cases, this is not a matter of only harming themselves.
Although their future partners live just as risky a lifestyle by consenting to have unprotected sex with them, they unwittingly contract the infection, risking health problems in their own bodies, and can pass it on to other partners before becoming aware they've been infected, keeping the cycle going in the region.
Nunavut is not alone in this battle.
The number of sexually-transmitted infections such as syphilis, chlamydia and resistant gonorrhea has been rising steadily across Canada since the late 1990s, with outbreak levels of gonorrhoea and syphilis reported in Alberta, syphilis on the rise in Manitoba, and Ontario seeing 5,932 confirmed cases of gonorrhea in 2015 alone.
And, while still mainly a problem of the young, the numbers of confirmed cases in people middle-aged and older are rising at an alarming rate.
With the advances in condom technology during the past decade, which has led to sexual intimacy feeling a whole lot less like one washing their feet with their socks on, there is less reason than ever for people to knowingly, and willingly, put their health -- or even their very lives -- at risk by having unprotected sex.
The message, for whatever reason, is still not being received effectively, and communities everywhere continue to deal with a major problem that should have been resolved decades ago.
