Editorials
August 28, 1998
First Air's predatory pricing
When do the practices of a privately-owned business become the public's business? And when does a private business become a public utility?
The answer, it seems, is when the business in question is an airline serving Canada's Arctic.
Last week, First Air, the airline that provides Nunavut's Qikiqtaaluk region with its only transportation link to the South, admitted to experimenting with a new marketing plan that could have far-reaching consequences for Nunavut's economy. This plan may be beneficial for large organizations, and those who work for them. But it also threatens to drive up ticket prices for those who aren't part of a large organization.
First Air will protest, that, as a private business, they have the right to set their prices and sell their wares any way they see fit, and that the public has no right to pry into their internal affairs.
They may say all that, but in principle, they're wrong. In the Arctic, airlines have become essential public utilities, providing services as essential to us as the services provided to us by Northwestel or the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. First Air's owner, the Makivik Corporation, is also a "private" corporation, but only in theory. Makivik's real owners are the thousands of Nunavik Inuit who are beneficiaries of the James Bay land claim agreeement. That organization is a public organization in every sense - except the theoretical.
It's appropriate then, to bring First Air and its shareholders to account for business practices that could threaten the public interest.
In this case, it's a predatory pricing plan that's clearly aimed at First Air's competition - Canadian North. Canadian's North's operations in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have been taken over by Norterra, a company owned by Nunavut's Nunasi Corporation and the Inuvialuit Development Corporation.
It's no secret that Norterra wants to reinstate Canadian's North's abandoned north-south routes from Iqaluit to Montreal and Ottawa. Some observers say this might happen as early as this October.
First Air couldn't have picked a better time than now for scooping up the easiest parts of Iqaluit's growing airline travel market before Norterra gets a chance to set up shop in Nunavut's capital.
Under their plan, First Air would sell blocks of hundreds of tickets to large institutional clients, at prices far below what would be available to individual consumers. They say they're talking to two such groups in Iqaluit right now. Although no one will confirm who those clients are, one of those clients may be not unadjacent to the Office of the Interim Commissioner.
In Yellowknife, First Air has already done such a deal with a group of BHP mine employees for a block of Yellowknife-Edmonton tickets at a cost of about $350 per ticket. Not bad if you're lucky enough to be part of that particular group.
But that raises a rather large question. If First Air is successful in making block ticket deals with large numbers of local and regional organizations, what effect will this have on ticket prices for ordinary consumers who don't enjoy the privilege of working for these organizations? If First Air loses revenue by offering cut-rate prices to large volume clients, will this force them to recoup revenue from small consumers?
Only time will tell. These deals might even give First Air more flexibility in designing seat sales and other breaks for their long-sufering customers.
But if First Air creates a situation in which the poor end up subsidizing the rich, they had better be prepared to defend themselves against a powerful, angry consumer backlash. JB
August 20, 1998
The shape of Nunavut
In about a month, we ought to have fairly clear answers to most of the questions we've all been asking about the shape of the Nunavut government.
Some of them won't be the answers we've been hoping to hear. Some of them will.
But knowing them will provide us with at least some certainty about the future. Knowing those answers will give us the knowledge we need to plan our lives and decide how to approach Nunavut's first territorial election in February.
By the end of the month, the Office of the Interim Commissioner ought to have finished its revamped plan for a decentralized bureaucracy, produced a list of government services that will be contracted from Yellowknife and other governments, signed leases for some badly-needed staff housing, and recruited more headquarters staff.
At the same time, Nunavut and western NWT leaders will have before them a facilitator's report on how to share ownership and control of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation after division.
If leaders are reasonable and conciliatory, they'll negotiate an arrangement that will give each new territorial government an equal number of members on the corporation's board of directors, and an equal say in the management of the corporation after division. It may yet be possible for leaders to negotiate equal ownership shares for each new territory after division, although realistically, it may be necessary for Nunavut leaders to bend a little on that issue.
Leaders from each new territory will sign formula financing agreements with the federal government. The signing of Nunavut's finance agreement will mean that Nunavut government officials can prepare a budget for our newly elected MLAs to look at next spring.
What does this mean for you?
It means that you can start thinking about what you want Nunavut's MLAs to do next year. And that means thinking about the kind of people you should vote for and what what you want them to do on behalf of Nunavut.
Right now, people in most of Nunavut's 19 new constituencies are privately considering the idea of whether or not to run in Nunavut's first election next February. Since that election will be called around the end of this year, most serious candidates will have to make their decisions soon to prepare for a campaign that will likely start the first week of January.
Here's a few issues you might want to think about when the summer's over.
So don't ask your candidates to make promises they can't possibly keep. JB
August 13, 1998
A right to anonymity?
Should people be allowed to express strong, critical views without having to tell the public who they are?
Morally, most of us would likely say no. Most of us believe, on principle, that those who have the courage to attach their names to their views are morally superior to those who don't. Most of us also believe that statements made by people who identify themselves are somehow more "credible" than statements made by those who don't. And most have of us harbour a vague feeling that there's something sneaky and untrustworthy about people who hide behind a veil of anonymity.
Besides, there's no explicitly stated "right to anonymity" in our charter of rights, or anywhere else in our constitution. So why should we encourage - and even permit - anonymous speech?
The answer to that question is that if we don't, the robust, uninhibited, wide-open expression of free speech that democracy requires cannot occur. Without that kind of free speech, democracy itself cannot function.
That's why Canadian society has long recognized and valued anonymous speech. And whether we realize it or not, nearly all of us have expressed anonymous opinions.
For example, the most important opinion that many Canadians get to express is during elections, when all of us are allowed to cast secret, anonymous ballots. This is to ensure that voters will make their choices freely and without fear of intimidation.
There are many other ways in which we encourage and sanction anonymous speech. Police tip lines such as Crimestoppers allow callers to report crimes without having to identify themselves. Telephone services such as the Baffin crisis line allow people to ask for advice in confidence without having to reveal their identities. Self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous require that people use only their first names.
And that leads to yet another reason for acknowledging a right to anonymity: the protection of privacy. Where there is no privacy, there is no freedom, and on many occasions, people need to remain anonymous to protect their privacy.
Most other modern democracies also recognize a right to anonymity. The U.S. Supreme Court had this to say in a 1995 decision: "[A]n author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."
Regular readers of Nunatsiaq News have seen many concrete examples illustrating why this must be so:
There are limits to the exercise of anonymous speech, however, but they are no different than the limits that ought to be applied to free speech in general. Canada's defamation laws may be narrow, outdated and repressive, but they're still the law, and they still ought to be applied to anonymous speech.
The problem, of course, is that those who have been harmed by anonymous statements may find it impossible to seek redress against those who have damaged them. There's no easy solution to this problem, but that doesn't mean that we should use it as an excuse for stifling the free expression of anonymous opinions.
Nunavut is still a highly bureaucratized society, in which arrogant, vindictive public officials wield enormous power over the lives of many residents. For that, and many other good reasons, Nunatsiaq News will continue to publish anonymous letters to the editor and unsigned commentaries. JB
August 7, 1998
Dueling strategies
How much paper does it take to make an economic strategy?
If you believe the Government of the Northwest Territories, you'll need $500,000 worth of pressed wood pulp to make a pile of paper big enough to call an "economic strategy."
That's how much of your dough the GNWT plans to give a guy called Roland Bailey.
Bailey, former deputy minister of economic development, former deputy minister of the executive, current part-owner of Lahm Ridge Tower and investment manager for the $60-$70 million worth of immigrant money stashed away inside the GNWT's two Aurora funds, will take that $500,000 and bring back an economic strategy for the Northwest Territories.
Not bad pay for two months' work.
Actually, he'll bring back two of them: one for what's left of the NWT after division, and the other for Nunavut. Bailey won't likely have to sweat too hard for his money, though, since he'll sub-contract big chunks of this work to other consultants.
And if he pays a visit to the legislative assembly's library, he can find lots of old paper to plagiarize, courtesy of the brainiacs who toil within the bowels of the Department of Renewable Resources, Wildlife, and Economic Development. Thanks to them, he can steal all the ideas he wants from a 12-volume pile of paper called "Economic Framework," published, at the taxpayers' expense of course, in 1997.
Since no one seems to know the difference between an "economic framework" and an "economic strategy" anyway, the long-suffering taxpayer isn't likely to notice that the "old" work sitting on GNWT office shelves throughout the NWT is covered with less than a year's worth of dust.
And, of course, no one will notice either that the Nunavut portion of Roland Bailey's $500,000 economic strategy will be duplicated by a group called the Nunavut Economic Development Forum.
That group has been formed by Nunavut Tunngavik, the Office of the Interim Commissioner, Nunavut's three regional Inuit associations, along with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the Association of Nunavut Municipalities.
They say they'll hire their own consultant to do pretty much the same thing for Nunavut that Bailey's been hired to do for the NWT - and Nunavut. Not much overlap there. Of course, they too will likely plunder RWED's 1997 "economic framework" for ideas.
Curiously, the GNWT department that has responsibility for economic development isn't involved any of these expensive attempts to produce new piles of paper with the words "economic strategy" printed on them.
The Department Wildlife, Renewable Resources, and Economic Development, better known by the ugly acronym "RWED," is curiously absent from these processes. For example, all questions about Bailey's lucrative contract are being directed to Andrew Gamble, the secretary to the cabinet. That means Bailey is reporting directly to cabinet, not RWED.
Remember Steve Kakfwi? In theory, he's still the NWT's minister of economic development - but only in theory. It appears as if the Todd-Morin-Ng triumvirate who really run things in Yellowknife have cut Kakfwi's legs off.
Given the stench of corruption that now hovers over the GNWT, it's probably to Kakfwi's benefit that his name won't be tainted by the Bailey economic strategy contract. Bailey, because he's a partner in the firm that's leasing the Lahm Ridge building to the GNWT, is therefore implicated in Hay River MLA Jane Groenewegen's confict of interest complaint against Premier Don Morin.
Bailey was also the beneficiary of another lucrative GNWT contract for work the GNWT didn't need. Last year, they paid him $250,000 to do a report on the idea of privatizing the GNWT's petroleum products division, an idea that MLAs shelved as soon as they got their hands on it. That contract is now on the list of items that Conflict of Interest Commissioner Anne Crawford will probe in her upcoming public inquiry.
So how many economic development strategies do two territories need? Depending on how you count 'em, three, maybe four.
And when there's money to be made by cabinet cronies, maybe more. JB