Editorials
November 26, 1998
The election of a premier
It's too bad, really, that Nunavut leaders, when they were discussing the issue a couple of years ago, were not able to agree on a method by which Nunavut voters could diretly elect a premier.
Because when Nunavut voters go to polls next February 15, they'll know that at least one candidate – and perhaps more than one – is campaigning for the premier's job as hard as he's campaigning to become an MLA.
Under the version of consensus government that we're about to inherit from the NWT Legislative Assembly, voters, however, have no say over who gets to be premier.
It's no secret that Baffin South MLA Goo Arlooktoo wants to serve as Nunavut's first premier.
And why not? He's already the deputy premier of the Northwest Territories, and even though his four years as a cabinet minister were not always a happy time for him, he still has four solid years of cabinet experience. That's four years more than most of Nunavut's 18 other newly-elected MLAs can be expected to have on February 16.
Arlooktoo cannot be faulted for wishing to seek the premier's job. If Jack Anawak were to resign from the OIC to seek the premier's job, he could not be faulted either. Neither could any one else. This is what politicians are expected to do.
Nunavut's first premier will have to win two elections: an election within one of Nunavut's 19 constituencies, and then an election among newly-elected MLAs. The problem is that we only get to participate in the first one.
In the second, we'll have no choice but to look on, powerless, while 19 new MLAs decide among themselves who will head our government for the next four years. To gain an edge in that second election, it is to be expected that Arlooktoo, and others, are already forging alliances and creating informal slates of MLA candidates.
It's too early to say whether candidates in Nunavut's 19 constituencies various constituencies will align themselves with such informal alliances, and to what extent this will distort election campaigns in those constituencies.
But one issue is clear. Nunavut's legislative assembly must resolve the issue of how to pick a directly-elected premier.
In 1996, Nunavut leaders agreed to the idea in principle. However, after the Nunavut Implementation Commission presented them with a list of options, they were unable to agree on how to do it. They decided that the matter should be referred to Nunavut's legislative assembly.
It's now a certainty that in Nunavut's first election, our future MLAs will be presented with even more evidence to illustrate why they must act on the issue. JB
November 19, 1998
Hospital follies
Time after time after time, we've all heard the tired old cliches:
"Northern governments understand northern problems." "Northern governments know what's best for northern people." "Northern governments know best how to govern the North."
As our distinguished premier, the "Honourable" Don Morin, never tires of saying: "Northerners can do it better."
Sometimes, these slogans are actually true. But certainly not in the case of northern health care. In its mismanagement of the health care system, the GNWT has demonstrated that it cannot "do it better."
Within a year probably, after all the convoluted bureaucratic negotiations have lumbered their way forward, three Inuit development corporations will begin construction of three new "hospitals" in Nunavut.
Never mind that the Nunavut government may not ever find anyone to work in them. It's now accepted as holy scripture that these new hospitals represent three magic bullets guaranteed to cure all that ails us.
But are new hospitals the best way of investing close to $50 million worth of health care money, not to mention the annual operation and maintenance costs they'll impose on the government of Nunavut?
Many public health experts believe that new buildings are no solution to the health problems faced by underdeveloped regions of the world. We've been corresponding with some via the Internet. They've been telling us that the construction of fancy new buildings is a poor substitute for effective public health and social programs. (See letters to the editor.)
The arguments against new hospital construction in Nunavut are considerable. They include the following:
Demographics. Nunavut's population is predominately young. Young people don't need hospital care nearly as much as older people. And there are very few people in Nunavut over the age of 65.
The causes of ill health in Nunavut. The GNWT's own studies show that Nunavut's most serious health problems are cause by alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, poor nutrition, overcrowded housing, poor education, and other social and environmental factors. They're not caused by lack of access to hospitals.
Money. Building expensive new structures creates new, and permanent funding needs for the government of Nunavut. Every year, the government of Nunavut will have to find money to operate and maintain these buildings, and to pay doctors, nurses and technicians to work in them.
The advent of telemedicine. Even as you read this, the GNWT-sponsored health boards are preparing to invest heavily in telemedicine technology. Through telemedicine, doctors in Yellowknife and Ottawa and other locations will use high speed telecommunications links to examine patients remotely.
You don't have to be an expert to see the roots of ill health in Nunavut.
New hospitals will not prevent more outbreaks of RSV, hamburger disease and tuberculosis. New hospitals will not prevent diabetes and obesity. New hospitals will not prevent the countless accidental deaths and personal injuries caused by alcohol and drug abuse. New hospitals will not prevent cancers and lung diseases caused by smoking. New hospitals will not prevent mothers from giving birth to stunted babies, and they will not prevent those babies from contracting otitis media.
New hospitals will not prevent children from sticking their heads into plastic bags full of gasoline, and new hospitals will not dissuade anyone from sticking the barrel of a gun into their mouth and pulling the trigger.
In short, Nunavut's three new hospitals will not make us any healthier. But they may suck resources away from the badly needed public health and health education programs that could provide Nunavut's people with the information they need to help themselves get healthier.
None of this, of course, has recieved any public debate within those public forums where such issues are supposed to be discussed – the regional health boards and the legislative assembly.
And why should these issues be debated? When there are construction contracts and lease-back deals to be awarded and election campaigns to be planned, such debate is highly inconvenient to those who always profit from the erection of fancy and useless edifices.
Debate can also be harmful to your employment prospects. We've learned that when public health officials actually show some interest in public health, they usually end up getting fired. That was the fate suffered by Dr. Richard Bargen, when small business people whined about his attempted ban on smoking in public places.
Whether Nunavut really needs them or not, it's now likely that Nunavut will be stuck with three expensive new hospitals. Public health? Who cares about that? We've got three big ribbon-cuttings to organize. JB
November 12, 1998
Who works for Inuit culture?
The worst thing about loud raucous arguments is what gets lost amidst all the noise.
During the recent series of debates over the federally-funded creation of a French language school in Iqaluit, some Nunavut residents asked serious questions about why similar funding for Inuit cultural projects does not seem to exist.
Unfortunately, these serious questions were lost, unheard by those who need to hear them.
These questions, of course, are not directly relevant to the issue of French language schooling. But they are relevant to many other aspects of life in Nunavut, especially those that are dear to the heart and the spirit.
The answers to those questions aren't inspiring.
After years of inattention, well-intentioned floundering, and willful neglect on the part of Inuit organizations who should have known better, millions of dollars that could have been spent on the promotion of Inuit culture and language has gone to waste, ending up in failed projects or dysfunctional organizations.
That includes federal money given to the government of the Northwest Territories under various Canada-NWT language agreements, aboriginal culture money from either Heritage Canada or the Secretary of State. (Heritage Canada, by the way, is the federal funding agency that's making a $3.7 million contribution towards construction French school in Iqaluit.)
During the life of those Canada-NWT language agreements, there was a time not so long ago when the GNWT was actually returning millions of dollars of unspent aboriginal language money – because nobody was applying for it.
At the same time, many valuable Inuit cultural projects were – and still are – languishing in obscurity and neglect. In many cases, it's Inuit organizations, and no one else, who are accountable for that neglect.
What, for example, ever happened to ITC's Inuktitut magazine? Where is the Qikiqtaani Association's Baffin Cultural Institute? For that matter, where's the Inuit Cultural Institute these days?
At the present moment, there doesn't appear to be any healthy Inuit organization that's willing and able to represent the interests of Nunavut in the promotion of language of culture. That includes cash-rich land claim organizations such as Nunavut Tunngavik and the three regional Inuit associations.
Its fortunate, then, that a special department devoted to language and culture will operate within the government of Nunavut. With the creation of Nunavut's Department of Elders, Culture and Youth, Nunavut residents will finally gain the services of a publicly accountable organization dedicated to the health and well-being of Inuit cultures and languages.
However, the existence of such a function within the government of Nunavut may not be enough. Thanks to the recently signed formula funding agreement with Ottawa, the Nunavut government will have enough money to function. But only at the reduced levels of government service that have been the norm since 1996-97.
Since no new Nunavut-Canada language agreement has yet been announced, we have no choice but to assume that Nunavut's culture department will not be overflowing with money. It's capacity for providing financial support to Inuit culture and language projects will surely be limited by the Nunavut government's own spending constraints.
Next week, at its annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut Tunngavik will present a $20 million budget to Inuit delegates from around Nunavut. They'll be doing this in a community whose main local language is widely acknowledged to be in deep trouble.
That may be an appropriate time for NTI officials to reflect upon their mandate, now that the work of implementing the Nunavut land claim agreement is mostly done.
NTI already participates in a program for helping hunting families, and also runs a program through which the three regional associations distribute economic development money.
Given the millions that NTI is now responsible for, would it not be right for them to dedicate even a tiny portion of Inuit money to Inuit language and culture projects? JB
November 6, 1998
Should the GNWT delay new hospitals?
Is it time to contemplate the unthinkable? Perhaps.
As most readers know the government of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut's three regional health boards, and Nunavut's three regional birthright development corporations have been involved for nearly two years in a convoluted process aimed at the construction of three new hospitals, or quasi-hospitals, in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay.
At the end of it all, the Inuit corporations will build them, while the territorial government will lease them back, over multi-year agreements. The GNWT now refers to such arrangements as "P3" projects.
So far, so good.
But there's one little problem. How will the Nunavut government find the staff they'll need to operate these fancy new buildings?
As Nunatsiaq News reported last week, the Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board doesn't have enough people on staff to even operate their old hospital at full capacity.
At one time, we had a 34-bed hospital. Now we have an 18-bed hospital, operated by a disgruntled, dispirited shell of an organization. The board is now flying patients to Yellowknife and Ottawa, and most of what's left of its once-proud staff are no doubt rushing home every night to dust off their résumés and fire off letters of inquiry to American hospitals.
It's too bad that Finance Minister Paul Martin couldn't have fallen ill when he came here a couple of weeks ago to sign Nunavut's first formula financing agreement. We could have given him a first-hand look at the havoc that the federal government, along with their Liberal friends in Yellowknife, have created within the territorial health care system.
The problem is money. Health workers in the Northwest Territories can make a lot more of it elsewhere than they can make here. Martin foisted that problem upon us with a cutback budget several years ago that gave the GNWT less money to operate with, and less money to cope with our rapid population growth.
The GNWT then passed the problem on to its own employees, cutting their salaries by 6.5 per cent, removing their vacation travel assistance, and eliminating their housing allowances.
For GNWT employees in low-cost southern-style towns like Yellowknife and Hay River, this was an inconvenience. For employees in high-cost Arctic communities like Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit, it was a mugging. Professional health workers have been fleeing Nunavut ever since, while few have moved North to replace them.
There's no reason to believe that this will change anytime soon.
The new job classification system that the GNWT is proposing to use as a way of resolving its pay equity dispute with the Union of Northern Workers would pay nurses thousands of dollars more every year than they now get.
But, under instructions from their Ottawa-based masters in the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the UNW is opposing the GNWT's offer. For it's part, the GNWT is refusing to separate collective agreement negotiations from pay equity negotiations.
The whole mess will likely land in the laps of the Nunavut government next year. Our only hope is that they, and the Nunavut Employees Union, may demonstrate more maturity and statesmanship than has been displayed by the GNWT and the UNW.
Other than that, there's little hope that the territorial government will find real money to pay nurses, doctors and technical workers to work within the territorial health care system.
And that means the Nunavut government may end up spending our money on long-term leases for $40-$50 million worth of new hospital buildings that may remain closed, or partially closed, for the foreseeable future.
Delay new hospital construction? In an election year? Unthinkable, and no doubt impractical, since that would likely result in Ottawa withdrawing the money it originally committed for building new territorial hospitals.
But if common sense ruled the world, it might not be a bad idea. JB