A different approach Yellowknifer - Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Family violence is a rampant problem in the territory. In fact, this jurisdiction is well known to have the second highest rates in all of Canada, behind Nunavut.
It's an especially pernicious type of crime, as it has the potential to tear families apart and expose young children to violence. Because of the fact it happens within relationships, and because alcohol and drug abuse is usually involved, there tends to be a high rate of re-offending.
The Department of Justice's Domestic Violence Treatment Option Program offers some domestic violence offenders the option of taking counselling as a way to avoid traditional court punishment. In order to complete the program, offenders must take part in eight counselling sessions that address the emotional and psychological causes of domestic violence, according to the department's website.
While it is relatively new in the territory - having only been around for about five years - this type of program is fairly common around North America.
The Yukon Government, for example, has been doing this since 2001. In 2005, the Yukon Government released a report on the effectiveness of this sort of court diversion. Its authors found rates of re-assaults were "amazingly low." The study found that a year after completing the program, nine per cent of graduates had re-offended. Offenders who didn't go through the treatment program re-offended at a rate of 31 per cent.
The Department of Justice hasn't embarked on a study like this to examine the effectiveness of its own program but hopefully the approximately 80 men and women who have graduated are taking the experience to heart and making changes to improve their lives.
This batch of graduates seem to indicate this, as Judge Robert Gorin noted in court how each person participated in the program enthusiastically.
What's exponentially more important than seeing offenders be punished for the destruction they cause is to make sure it happens less often. If NWT's success rates are anywhere near the Yukon's, perhaps that is something to look forward to.
Minister must deliver on big promisesYellowknifer - Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Plane ticket prices are going up this summer, thanks to new airport fees from the Department of Transportation. The fees, which will add between $19 and $29 to the price of a ticket, is meant to make the Yellowknife Airport economically self sustaining.
The department is promising not only will the extra money fund other government initiatives but radically transform the building. In fact, Transportation Minister Wally Schumann promises a year or two from now, people are going to see a "totally different airport."
The Yellowknife Airport could definitely use improvements. For example, how is it that there is no water fountain beyond security? And of course, there is the constantly malfunctioning parking gate.
Faster security lines, better amenities and improvements to runways and baggage handling no doubt would be effective at making the airport better as well. Yellowknifer will remember Schumann's promise, and is looking forward to checking on the airport in a couple years to see what improvements have been made.
Junior 'C': a made-in-Nunavut successEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Whoa! Hold on there, folks. What happened in Iqaluit, with Baffin sweeping the Kivalliq Canucks to take the Challenge Cup junior 'C' championship, was exactly what should have happened.
Folks ragging on the Canucks, and putting our junior 'C' team in the same pot with the local teams who haven't won Rankin's biggest senior men's championship in an ever-growing number of years, are not the most knowledgeable of fans.
That's a bit of a surprise in our hockey-crazy Kivalliq communities, but there are all levels of fans when it comes to understanding the game at every level and being able to see the big picture.
Hockey brackets tend to be quite circular in nature in any region where drafting doesn't occur.
The Canucks were facing a highly-skilled and mature Baffin team, with a good number of their top players knowing what it takes to win and playing in their final year of junior hockey.
They are an experienced group of players who have a very strong sense of team identity from playing together for such a long period of time.
The players know their roles and what's expected of them.
There's no arguing Baffin coach Todd Gardner is one of the North's best, but, barring unforeseen circumstances with this group, he can call the line, open the gate, and let his players do their thing.
The rebuilding Canucks have a solid young core of players just starting out on the same length of ice Baffin has been skating on for almost five years.
If Sport Nunavut and Hockey Nunavut do, in fact, let the funding die next year that helps the Challenge Cup winner go to the Maritime junior 'C' championship representing Nunavut and the Hockey North Branch, it sends a terrible message to the youth across Kivalliq and Baffin who work their butts off every day to make their region's top team.
Yes, there is an argument to be made the cost of the Challenge Cup and sending our players to the Maritimes every year comes with a rather high price tag for a relatively small, if elite, group of players, which is basically the same argument that could be used against the athletes of many team and individual sports we send to the Arctic Winter Games every second year.
It's the wrong argument!
The junior 'C' program is successful in a number of different areas and was made instantly credible with Baffin's 2015 championship run in the Maritimes.
And extremely high credit in hockey circles at that.
Our junior 'C' teams are competitive every year in the Maritimes and that's no small feat.
When you take into consideration the populations the Maritime teams draw from, and their advantage in cost, arenas and training facilities, it's valid to compare Nunavut being competitive there every year to a team from Chesterfield Inlet playing Rankin and Iqaluit and having similar success.
The competitiveness in the Maritimes is a testimony to the strength of the program.
I, myself, can bear testament to many occasions of having bantam- and midget-aged players in various communities tell me how much they want to make the Kivalliq Canucks
And I've seen many players walk quickly out of the Rankin arena with tears in their eyes after their names were not on the final roster posted for the team.
While it cannot be compared to the vast majority of southern programs, the junior program is a big deal here and if the sport's governing bodies want to get more involved, maybe instead of ending funding, they could start lobbying the Hockey North Branch to start sending teams from the NWT to compete annually in the tournament that flies its banner in the Maritimes.
What an awesome way to christen Rankin's new arena, by sending a positive message to hundreds of hockey-playing youths in the Kivalliq and Baffin, supporting a successful made-in-Nunavut program, and helping to boost the event's stature and competitiveness factor.
They could start lobbying the Maritimes hard to have Nunavut host the championship, just as soon as they took care of things in their own backyard.
Oh to have forward-thinking leaders in this part of the country.
And, finally, to those posting on Facebook and other platforms that the level of competitiveness that now exists between Rankin and Iqaluit is upsetting them, please!
This is junior hockey between two teams that are one-or-two-goals apart most years, with a chance to compete in the Maritimes on the line. The fact they have played each other for that right for the past 15 years has (gasp) created a hockey rivalry.
As far as the players might be learning to want nothing to do with anyone from the other region, the Challenge Cup winner always picks up players from the other team for the Maritime tourney and a number of Baffin and Kivalliq players have become fast friends over the years and still do today.
Knowing you were all upset by the intensity of the hockey, I hope I haven't written anything to offend you.
Will revitalized fishery net profits?Northwest Territories/News North - Monday, March 20, 2017
At first, we weren't going to bite at the release of another GNWT strategy. Even if it was about revitalizing the NWT's commercial fishery, which isn't a natural resource that receives a lot of attention.
The territorial government has issued far too many reports, frameworks and strategies over the years that simply end up collecting dust.
Consider the NWT Agriculture Strategy, released shortly after the fisheries document. Frame Lake MLA Kevin O'Reilly told the legislative assembly March 9, the strategy - the territory's first, in the works since 2015 - lacks "any specific targets or goals, or actual resources to carry out any of this work."
O'Reilly said he had "hoped to see something like 'increase the value of agricultural production by 50 per cent in five years.'"
Now quantified goals such as that is something the smartly named Strategy for Revitalizing the Great Slave Lake Commercial Fishery certainly does contain. It aims to triple lake production and infuse $1.4 million to revitalize the fishery.
While it's exciting to hear in the agriculture strategy that there are approximately two million hectares of potential land that could be used for agriculture in the territory - especially in the floodplains of the Hay River, Liard and Mackenzie rivers - it's really more of a report than a plan.
Or as Industry, Tourism and Investment Minister Wally Schumann said, "We see it as an economic development agenda."
Now there is much more meat on the bone with the fishery strategy, also under Schumnann's purview.
"Now it's not talk," an excited Schumann told News/North's sister paper, The Hay River Hub ("High ambitions for fishery," March 1).
"Now we have something. We have an actual document that shows what we need to do. There's been a lot of work put into it."
The GNWT has committed $1.4 million to help revitalize the fishery, including the NWT Fishermen's Federation's Tu Cho Co-operative's plan to own and manage a new or rebuilt processing plant in Hay River.
The strategy, tabled in the assembly in late February, was developed by the GNWT in partnership with the NWT Fishermen's Federation. It aims to bring production back to historical levels by increasing production to 1.3 million unprocessed kilograms annually by 2021 from the 420,000 kilograms recorded in the summer of 2013.
The strategy envisions that 40 per cent of Great Slave Lake production will be targeted to the NWT market, either frozen or fresh fillets. And we applaud that goal, as the sharp increase in tourists to the North will have them looking for local delicacies on restaurant menus.
As the GNWT looks to support new types of businesses to cushion the economy from the boom and bust mining cycles, a modest fishery could certainly be a regional hit.
But the work isn't easy and attracting local people to the lake will be hard - especially since one of the strategy's goals is to revitalize the winter fishery.
It also hasn't helped that First Nations surrounding Great Slave Lake are angry as they claim the strategy was developed without "meaningful" prior consultation with them.
"This strategy was developed without meaningful prior consultation with the First Nations that are the rights holders with respect to the Great Slave Lake fisheries and therefore does not reflect First Nations' rights or interests," reads a statement signed by the chiefs of five First Nations and Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus.
We're not sure what "meaningful" consultation means but for some reason the GNWT failed to get the First Nations on side at the start.
Now it's time to mend some nets with them and get on with what could be a promising fisheries revival strategy.
Poor health care a fatal fact in NunavutNunavut/News North - Monday, March 20, 2017
Last week, the auditor general's office presented a damning report on Nunavut's health department, citing problems ranging from insufficient training to failures to protect staff from abusive workplaces.
For Health Minister George Hickes, "the report's recommendations did not come as a surprise."
While this may be true for Hickes and other department officials, we still have reason to be concerned about the problems in the system.
In the corrections system, complaints usually centre around inhumane conditions for inmates and staff. In other words, problems that can be fixed by throwing money at the situation to rebuild decrepit buildings, such as Baffin Correctional Centre. That money came through last month.
But Nunavut's health facilities themselves were not flagged as a concern - other than a shortage of office space and staff housing. Rather, the auditor's concerns almost exclusively focused on training, quality assurance, staff safety, human resource management and recruitment.
These are not easy fixes, although Hickes suggests the department has a plan.
That plan will need to include improving the way positions are filled. The process to fill a position in the department takes on average 18 months - starting with 222 days to decide the position needs to be filled, then 160 days to advertise the position, 21 days to process the request at Finance, and then 20 days to evaluate candidates. Imagine the number of bright minds who wanted to work on improving health for Nunavummiut but took other employment due to the long wait.
Perhaps the department is slow because it can't find housing. Or perhaps the staff have concerns about the safety of working at community health centres. There's no way for the department to know how safe they are, as it doesn't keep track of workplace safety incident reports, even when a patient assaults a nurse.
Pity those in important support positions in communities - X-ray technicians and clerk interpreters - for whom the department provides no base funding for orientation and training. We can't be surprised that X-rays taken don't help doctors outside the community to make a diagnosis, or that healthy people think they are going to die because an interpreter hasn't been told the correct word for a benign form of tumor.
And then there are the problem employees. Nunavut is an attractive place to work for those whose quality of care would not pass muster elsewhere in Canada. This problem penetrates deeper into the bureaucracy though, with officials accepting incompetency and unethical behaviour within their ranks.
The patient is not priority one, and outcomes prove this point. Compared to the rest of Canada, life expectancy is 10 years shorter, infant mortality is four times as high, smoking rates are three times as high, and there are six times as many suicides.
Regular MLAs have to start demanding action. Front-line workers need real supports and those who are complacent in their acceptance of these failures need to go. Nurses need their association to demand proper security and support staff training.
The department could empty its pockets throwing money at this problem. That's why Nunavut needs the federal government to recognize that Northern health care as it is presently funded and administered is an embarrassment for the country and a fatal fact for too many Nunavummiut.
Good time to seed city tourism growth Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, March 17, 2017
The City of Yellowknife is thinking big and into the future with its plan to develop a tourism marketing organization tasked with promoting the city.
A similar organization, NWT Tourism, is doing a fine job of promoting the territory in its Spectacular NWT campaign, and has increased tourist numbers to prove it. But it's not NWT Tourism's job to promote the capital specifically.
That's on Yellowknife itself.
The federal government, through the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency (CanNor),could give the city approximately $560,000 toward developing a Yellowknife marketing agency.
The city plans to use this funding, with a top-up from city coffers, to seed a $700,000 two-year marketing agency and advertising campaign.
A permanent marketing agency would eventually be funded through a hotel tax administered by the city should the territorial government grant it the legislative power to levy one.
In 2014, visitors spent $98 million in Yellowknife.
This is an impressive number and puts the sub-million dollar cost of setting up a marketing agency into perspective. A five or 10 per cent increase in visitors could mean $5 million to $10 million in extra spending annually in the city.
Tourism dollars demand a diversified economy with opportunity for artists and purveyors of entertainment, dining and retail establishments. More spending by tourists means a more vibrant city for all Yellowknifers.
There is a lot on the line for Yellowknife. It's not enough to pin the city's future on mineral extraction, government jobs and government spending.
While it's premature to suggest Yellowknife has entered a "post-diamond economy," as Coun. Julian Morse did in December there is no doubt tourism will play a key part in maintaining future prosperity for the city.
Promoting Yellowknife through a dedicated marketing body is such a good idea the only concern should be whether or not the city is putting aside enough money at the start to give this program an honest chance of making a difference. This is not the time for a furtive half-measures.
It is rare that a proposal should have so little, if any, downside.
The city should pull out all stops in moving forward with this opportunity.
The real danger here is that the territorial government will rest on its heels when it comes to approving legislation to allow the city to introduce a hotel tax.
It would be a shame for the city to launch this campaign only to find out there's no way to fund it beyond its first two years.
Budget proves MLAs are listening Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, March 17, 2017
Despite loud criticism from two regular MLAs over the 2017 territorial budget, the other 16 voting members were happy enough with it to stamp their approval March 3.
There's no denying it was a rough road for this year's $1.7 billion operational spending budget, with several changes being made along the way.
Those include adding $5.5 million in top-ups to program funding, as well as Finance Minister Robert C. McLeod announcing another $4.8 million for home care, an anti-poverty fund, youth in crisis, freight costs for the fishing industry, the Mineral Incentive Program and the Community Access Program. He also promised to defer $669,000 in reductions to Aurora College funding after public backlash arose to the college's proposal to cut its teacher education and social work programs.
The two dissenting voices raised some good points. Frame Lake MLA Kevin O'Reilly said significant cuts to environment, education and economic diversification funding remain in place.
These cuts will lead some losses in jobs, programs and services. Nahendeh MLA Shane Thompson called the retooled budget an improvement but pooh-poohed it nonetheless, saying the cuts went too deep and would impact smaller communities in particular.
No government budget is perfect. However, the last-minute and timely changes to this one show MLAs are paying attention to their constituents and doing the job they were voted to do by working to make changes where they think they will do the most good.
This is how democracy is supposed to work, with give and take from everyone involved in the process.
Don't dismiss wellness options out of handDeh Cho Drum - Thursday, March 16, 2016
Looking through the past 25 days MLAs have spent in the legislative assembly, it's easy to get riled up about one or two issues.
It was a tough assembly all around, and both Nahendeh MLA Shane Thompson and Deh Cho MLA Michael Nadli took their fair share of lumps.
For Thompson, those lumps came with the territory of being one of two MLAs to vote against the budget. But even more controversial was a proposal he put forward that public service employees receive five wellness days per year.
To support that idea, Thompson referenced an increasingly hostile work climate for employees due to layoffs and lack of job security as factors leading to added stress on employees.
The idea was met dubiously in the assembly, with Finance Minister Robert McLeod stating the GNWT is not looking to expand its leave provisions. McLeod also said the government will have wellness specialists research the topic of wellness days.
McLeod also noted the current round of negotiations with the Union of Northern Workers includes a proposed memorandum of understanding that the employer and union work together on recommendations for improving mental health in the workplace.
The existence of that memorandum is already a positive
step forward when it comes to mental wellness.
The specific notion of wellness days had a less generous reception outside the assembly, with people taking to social media to ridicule Thompson for his idea. But whether public sector employees deserve more days off is not really at issue here - rather, the question that should be addressed is how the GNWT can most effectively bolster the mental health services it provides to employees. Whether that comes in the form of extra days off or something else altogether remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, mental health is still not taken as seriously as it should be. It is still not seen as equally important to physical well being.
That's not a territorial issue. That's a nationwide issue, and it needs to be addressed everywhere. But there are certainly challenges unique to the North when it comes to mental health, especially when factoring in long periods of darkness and isolation.
In any case, Thompson got the ball rolling by opening up the conversation about employees' mental health needs. And as someone who worked for the GNWT for decades, Thompson likely has an intimate knowledge of what these employees need.
The memorandum of understanding McLeod alluded to is a great first step in the conversation about mental health. But it's all too easy to let something like that fall by the wayside during and after negotiations without actually addressing it properly.
Thompson is looking for real-world solutions to help people. Hopefully this is the start of a conversation that keeps moving forward.
Greenpeace's fear mongering is unfairInuvik Drum - Thursday, March 16, 2016
Inuvialuit harvesters should soon be able to market their sealskin products to the European Union, a goal the Inuit in Nunavut recently achieved.
The crash of the sealskin market worldwide was initially caused by fear mongering from Greenpeace and other organizations that painted the practice as barbaric and cruel.
Greenpeace has since apologized, long after leaving a trail of economic devastation, but their modus operandi today hasn't changed.
Greenpeace is more a rabid political group than innocent, pro-nature charity.
Montreal-based Resolute Forest Products Inc. sued Greenpeace last year after years of attacks on its forestry practices.
In its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Greenpeace admitted its attacks on Resolute "are without question non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion and at most non-actionable rhetorical hyperbole."
It's safe to assume that goes for many of the organization's campaigns.
These organizations get a lot of rope to smear industries they don't like. They tug at heart strings to pit good versus evil.
Their rhetoric centres on pitting faceless, ravaging Big Business over the innocent, life-giving environment. Or in the case of the seal hunt, the supposedly greedy and cruel human slaughtering the cute puppy-eyed seal.
The fact that human lives and economic sustainability are at stake doesn't matter. Those people can just get some other job, maybe building greenhouses.
These organizations jet set around the globe in planes, cars and boats to shake their fists at the very industries affording them that luxury.
Devastation abounds. Apocalypse is near. We must repent for our sins. It's pure environmental fear mongering.
Greenpeace slipped up going after a traditional indigenous practice. Best stick to the faceless corporate entities. They're harder to sympathize with.
Today, Greenpeace is still very active in the Arctic, now heavily involved in the Clyde River seismic drilling debate. They get a lot of play. It makes a good story: little hamlet vs. industrial giant.
Time, courts and history will decide which side of that debate has it right.
It's a win for the Inuvialuit to be on the path to getting their industry back.
The moral of the story is to be equally skeptical across the board. The world is made up of infinite shades of grey and actions have consequences.
The fact we all want a healthy environment and ecosystem is a given.
But the same skepticism shown to a corporation claiming its practices are environmentally friendly should be shown to the boy crying wolf repeatedly.
