Filthy rest stops a disgrace Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, May 5, 2017
Highway rest stops are often a visitor's first impression of a new area or region.
There's nothing more natural than the need to stop and stretch one's legs or use the facilities after the
lengthy leg drive between High Level, Alta. and the NWT 60th Parallel Visitor Information Centre.
Officially the centre is only open May 15 to Sept. 15 but a pull-out remains cleared all winter and an
outhouse remains available and open.
One would assume this is in case a traveller needs to use the facilities. It's a benevolent gesture and many
a traveller is probably grateful for it. At least until they stop to use it.
Photos taken this past winter along with the recent observations of Ice Road Trucker columnist Alex Debogorski document a foul scene the description of which would turn stomachs if it were repeated here.
One can only imagine the reaction of a visitor coming across such a sight on his or her first visit to the territory. First impressions are lasting impressions.
While it would be hoped people using the outhouses would show consideration for those who come after
them, the territory should take more care to ensure that if facilities are made available, that they are maintained and cleaned regularly. To make matters worse, the phone number the GNWT provides to outhouse users takes callers to a voice-mail informing them that the number is disconnected and nobody is checking the messages.
Filthy rest stops and poor roadside maintenance have been a longstanding problem. When Yellowknifer investigated complaints of human feces being left at rest stops on Highway 3 in 2009 the departments of Transportation and Industry, Tourism and Investment both argued it was the other that was responsible for cleaning up.
If maintenance is impossible for whatever reason, simply lock the thing up. A disgraceful outhouse does
no one any good and only invites ridicule and disdain. A situation like this invites finger pointing and blaming as different government agencies pass the buck but this isn't about laying blame.
This is about the government of the Northwest Territories cleaning up its act and putting its best foot forward
when it comes to what visitors experience when they first arrive in the territory via the major southern highway artery.
Keep calm and think of arsenic Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, May 5, 2017
Knowledge is power but the latest batch of academics researching
arsenic might want to take a lesson from their predecessors.
When researchers from the University of Ottawa announced last
year that lakes around Yellowknife had dangerously high levels of
arsenic and mercury, it caused a panic. Not because the findings were false – they're not – but because researchers failed to explain what the situation actually meant for ordinary people.
The way the information filtered to the public painted Yellowknife as a
toxic stew bubbling with danger. The lakes in question, however, are all tiny – many mere puddles – and in close proximity to Giant Mine where people are not likely to fish or go bathing.
On the flipside, in the 1990s data from the Baffin region showed Inuit in Canada had some of the highest levels of toxicity in the world, thanks to country food that had been contaminated with around 200 different toxic pesticides and industrial compounds.
Health officials were stymied - there's no good solution when the
choice is eating contaminated meat or unaffordable processed food from the south. So in 1997, public health officials decided to just shut up, and tell people the benefits of eating their foods outweighed the risk.
This year's researchers, who took samples from people at a community consultation last month to study the human-health effects of the Giant Mine cleanup, need to tread lightly and strive for a similar balance. The research they're doing is incredibly important.
It needs to be done, and it needs to keep making headlines so the issue isn't literally buried. Ignorance isn't bliss-- but researchers have a responsibility in how they choose to ring the alarm.
Avoiding the broad brush of indigenous reportingInuvik Drum - Thursday, May 4, 2016
One of the most interesting things I was told at the 25th anniversary for the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement was that they weren't hosting any hand games for the evening.
All of the other communities had hand games for their corresponding celebrations.
Purely from my work-driven need for photography opportunities, I was hoping for hand games in Inuvik and curious why they weren't on the agenda.
Apparently not everyone here likes hand games.
Some view it, I heard, as a Sahtu tradition. It's not part of the history of the people here and not something many of them want to engage in.
Learning that made me reconsider how I report on indigenous issues in general.
Being non-aboriginal myself, it is natural and easy for me to report on indigenous people as a block, writing that they are engaging in an "aboriginal tradition" or showing their "aboriginal culture."
Even if I don't personally like to use those kind of blanket terms, a fast-paced reporting environment lends itself to easy turns of phrase.
Describing something as a Gwich'in or Inuvialuit tradition would be more accurate.
Traditions across aboriginal cultures are not all the same, and neither are traditions across other cultures or any other ethnicity. Broad brushes paint a poor picture.
It bothers me to ever refer to someone's ethnicity or heritage, but as a journalist I can't escape the fact "indigenous issues" is a repeated theme of coverage in the North. Almost all the institutions, from the government to the private sector, use the same blanket terminology.
To an extent it makes sense, as the subject of indigenous history is its own niche considering Canada's history, whereas "Canadians" is used only as a matter of fact and identification.
Although many indigenous people speak proudly of their aboriginal heritage, I can't help but wonder if any get tired of being lumped together as a homogenous group.
I personally bristle at any sort of group identity being placed on me, whether it's Canadian, caucasion, male or what have you. I am all of those things but don't want to be reduced to one and equated to everyone else who shares those traits with me.
The same goes for women, who are also often treated by the media as a block, as if all women think the same and are invested in the same issues.
The blunt presumption of using group identity to determine an individual's opinions is inaccurate at best and downright offensive at worst.
When writing on a deadline, "aboriginal tradition" is an easy way to get through a sentence and move on, without being more precise.
But surely I owe the same nuanced view I have of myself to the people on whom I report.
Clear rules needed for mall washroomsYellowknifer - Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Nobody, other than the participants, knows exactly what led to an A&W customer being roughed up by security at Centre Square Mall late last month.
That said, one rhetorical question helps to put the situation into perspective: What would have happened if the mall security guard had just given Ranelda McNeely the key to the washroom?
McNeely, a 23-year-old pregnant mother, had just eaten with her family at A&W and needed to use the washroom. She found a security guard on the lower level of the mall and asked him for a key.
Somehow, the situation escalated into a three-way fracas between McNeely, the security guard and for some reason, his mother.
A&W serves food, so it has to provide a washroom. According to A&W's manager, customers have access to a mall washroom but employees aren't given any specific policy on how to guide patrons there.
They don't stipulate customers need to use a certain washroom, and they don't advise patrons to carry any proof they are A&W customers.
Obviously, something needs to change here.
Either the mall needs to come up with an easy-to-understand policy for accessing the washroom, or security just needs to provide access without question.
It certainly does seem like at the mall, the pendulum has swung pretty hard from a laissez-faire attitude on loitering to a crackdown toward it.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. As Felix Seiler, one of the mall's owners says, the mall has long been a rough place.
Nobody deserves to come to work to be harassed, spit on or swarmed. And shop owners pay good money to rent space, so they deserve to be able to run their businesses in peace.
There will be growing pains for sure but the transition will go much more smoothly if those in security roles at the mall use their heads before judging people and perhaps even post a clear washroom and loitering policy.
This is the song that never endsYellowknifer - Wednesday, May 3, 2017
After the summer of 2014 - the worst forest fire season on record for the territory - the Department of Environment and Natural Resources reviewed its firefighting performance.
The department assessed how it responded to fires, used resources, protected buildings and other values, communicated with people and monitored fires. One of the recommendations at the time was to improve communications with the public.
Two years later, the department is still making that recommendation to itself.
Last summer, a fire along the Ingraham Trail blazed its way through Namushka Lodge at Harding Lake.
On the day it happened, one of the lodge owners met with the department to warn that his brother and 21 guests were out there. Nobody in the government tried to make contact with the people at Namushka Lodge. Nobody even tried to warn a superior about the situation. The lodge was destroyed but fortunately, nobody was hurt.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been struggling with good communication for years, and post-mortem reports such as the one into the Namushka Lodge fire illustrate this.
At some point, the department is going to have to start taking its own advice before somebody gets hurt or killed.
The lunacy of over-sensitivityEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, May 3, 2017
I've been fortunate in Rankin Inlet during the past 18-plus years to have known a fair number of people who liked to discuss "hot topics" of the day openly and honestly, without playing the race card or firing about a bunch of impossible-to-disprove labels in an effort to force silence or capitulation.
It has been my experience, those who employ such tactics usually do so when unable to counter a well-made point, get themselves involved in a discussion with someone of the opposite view who has a deeper understanding of the topic, or are really not interested in any opinion but than their own.
I've grown during the course of the discussions I've had with folks in Rankin over the years.
The most important lesson for me was learning to not only listen to an opposing viewpoint, but to try to understand it and where the person expressing it is coming from.
I can't say it's changed my opinion on a vast number of issues, but it has changed it on some, and a few of them were surprisingly so to me.
Learning how to properly evaluate the opinion of others, while being able to constructively examine my own way of looking at things, taught me to understand the different types of racism and how they differ.
It also helped me learn to differentiate between fact and wishing it were so in the opinion of others.
Learning these skills came at a vital time in my life, as the rules of debate were radically changing, and one was no longer allowed to counterpoint with the logically obvious.
If someone suggests every Canadian should have to learn Inuktitut, you risk having an ugly word tossed at you for asking is that after all English folks learn French and all Francophones learn English, our nation's two official languages.
We're supposed to be a great model of multiculturalism and racial harmony for the world, but we're becoming a nation where a minority of easily-offended types rule due to everyone's fear of being called a racist or a bigot, and it has transcended craziness to absolute lunacy.
There are two people considering court action because of the revocation of their personalized license plate.
In Winnipeg, a city with a population of 705,000, a man by the name of Nick Troller - a huge fan of the Star Trek franchise - had his plate taken when two people complained part of it was offensive to indigenous peoples.
Troller's plate proclaimed we are the Borg! Resistance is futile! And, here it comes, Assimil8.
So two people in a city of 705,000 ignored the Star Trek characterization of the evil Borg - a fictitious alien race that is, in reality, a collection of species who have been turned into cybernetic organisms to serve as worker bees while connected to a hive mind known as the Collective - and applied it to the struggles of indigenous peoples.
They're lucky Harry Potter wasn't there, or they may have quickly raised their tolerance bar.
But, if being offended by a Borg fan isn't enough, look no further than a Nova Scotia man who had his plate revoked for the spelling of his last name.
It made no difference to the handful who complained that Lorne Grabher was a real person, and there were no sexual desires or fantasies attached to his family name being on the license plate.
In Grabher's case, the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms - arguably this country's last true bastion of free speech and equal rights for all - is threatening to sue the Nova Scotia government for infringement of the freedom of expression.
We do live in the greatest country in the world, but the attack on free speech and freedom of expression, as well as the rampant over-sensitivity, has to end or it will not remain so for much longer!
Country food, not canned goodsNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, May 1, 2017
If a person could dine on bafflegab and bad decisions, then the Nutrition North program would be a hearty meal for all who use it.
Unfortunately, words and bad ideas don't fill empty stomachs or save money at the grocery store.
While people might not be dying as a direct result of Nutrition North's inadequacies, there is still an embarrassing lack of affordable healthy food in many Northern communities. The Hunger Count 2016 report from Food Banks Canada show the NWT had the sharpest spike in usage shown for all three territories – 24.9 per cent over 2015.
Nutrition North probably looked pretty tasty on bureaucrats' spreadsheets in Ottawa when it was designed.
Launched in 2011 as a replacement for the Food Mail Program, the national initiative is currently going through another round of navel-gazing. The evaluation of Nutrition North Canada is planned to be completed in fiscal 2017–18. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada will be leading the evaluation in partnership with Health Canada.
In the interim, there were some performance indicators for the current program that had deadlines of March 2017.
A few of these were: a requirement for major Northern retailers to show subsidy savings at the till receipt; 100-per-cent of funding recipients promoting nutrition education activities; and that all compliance or audit reports show that subsidies have been fully passed on to consumers.
It took veteran reporter April Hudson two weeks to get responses from various spokespeople to determine if those deadlines were made ("Nutrition North's hit or miss performance," April 24).
Some were, some weren't. The answers were vague and, as expected, dense with bureaucratic jargon that simply doesn't translate well into the language real people speak. For example, Indigenous and Northern Affairs had four other goals to meet by March 31, including having 100 per cent of audit reports show subsidies were fully passed on to consumers. The department couldn't say whether all of its goals had been met.
But spokesperson Valerie Hache said the government will be reforming the program based on feedback from Northern families when the major review of the Nutrition North program is complete.
That feedback, by the way, was partly in the form of meetings in communities across Northern Canada, including Wekweeti and Ulukhaktok.
At the Wekweeti community meeting people wanted nutritious foods to be more affordable and for flour and butter to be at a higher subsidy level since they are staples in many family homes – and are particularly important for country food preparation.
Residents also asked for assistance in starting a community garden.
At the Ulukhaktok community meeting it was made clear that the subsidies should include help to access traditional and country foods such as supplies to hunt, fish and trap these types of food.
Concerns raised regarding the quality of shipped food being sold and relying on airlines to ship food, which can mean delays in bad weather.
The Nutrition North program was also described as too complicated and not understood in the community.
There were calls for Nutrition North to support the building of greenhouses, educational programs related to developing greenhouses (and canning for preservation), and the related materials needed (vegetable seeds/seedlings, soil).
We hope the feds listen to the people in the communities when they ask for help accessing country food, which has plenty of nutrients and is enjoyed much more than canned goods, wilted veggies and small pieces of expensive meat from the south.
Community gardens should also be a major component in the revamped Nutrition North's mission statement, as it helps people grow nutritious food in a sustainable fashion and also gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment.
Nutrition North as it stands has been a failure. It needs a complete overhaul, since it's not keeping people from going hungry and it's not lowering the costs of food Northerners really eat.
Vacant buildings waste moneyNunavut/News North - Monday, May 1, 2017
Iqaluit city council last month committed $150,000 per year for five years to support the city's homeless shelter.
Having visited the facility, we know that the support is critical. In January, we called on the city and its residents to help the city's most vulnerable men, and the city is showing it is prepared to do its share.
Now it is time for the territory to step up.
In communities across Nunavut, buildings – offices, apartments, and homes – sit empty while the government decides what or who will use the space.
In many cases, it's wise planning. Apartments are reserved for health professionals who might only be in town for part of the year but they stay long enough when they come that hotels become cost-prohibitive. Others are waiting for long-term workers, such as teachers, to be hired.
This is easy for regular folks to accept.
What is unacceptable is the number of buildings sitting vacant for ages without explanation.
Iqaluit city councillor Joanasie Akumalik has flagged the former Akausisarvik mental health centre as one such building. As Uquutaq Shelter Society executive director Doug Cox says, "It's heated, plowed, the lights are on."
Akumalik wants the territory to donate the space to the city. The government moved the mental health centre to a renovated facility four years ago this month. Uquutaq has paid $8,000 per month in rent, $96,000 per year, for a total of $384,000 over those four years.
In that time, what good work could that money have done to the benefit of the city's homeless men? While the old building continues to sit empty – burning territorial funds to keep it warm, lit, and plowed – the city is forced to duplicate that spending.
Iqaluit is not the only place where this issue is on people's minds. Tununiq MLA Joe Enook has raised the point in the legislature since he first took office to represent the people of Pond Inlet in 2011.
Under pressure to move to the hamlet after his election, he did so without a space for him. He lived in a shack for months, while GN staff houses sat empty. He said at the time that some had been empty for years.
Enook eventually found a house but just over a year ago, he raised the point again in the legislature. Finance Minister Keith Peterson, whose department is responsible for human resources, noted that the government was aware of the issue but indicated no end to the situation.
Enough is enough.
As an October election approaches, Nunavummiut deserve to know what is happening in their communities on this file. Which buildings are being held for which positions, how long have they been vacant, and what progress is being made to fill them?
It may not solve the problem but some transparency would help people decide whether their MLAs are doing a good job on this file and perhaps offer some advice on how to fix the problem.
