Nunavut beneficiaries beware

If you’re a beneficiary of the Nunavut land claim agreement, you have good reason to worry this year.

That’s because one of the biggest private development corporation that you purportedly own, the Nunasi Corp. along with one of its biggest subsidiaries, Norterra Inc., have not performed well in...

Federal justice minister must act now

Justice Robert Kilpatrick, who as senior judge serves as the Nunavut court’s administrative head, had no choice but to send an urgent plea for help last month to Rob Nicholson, the federal justice minister.

“Nunavut’s judiciary is moved to seek additional assistance by a sense of urgency, and a...

Lancaster Sound: shout first, think later

If he was to preserve any respect in himself or his government, Nunavut Environment Minister Dan Shewchuk had no choice but to issue a research licence this past Friday to the team of Canadian and German scientists working for Natural Resources Canada whose vessel, the RV Polarstern, will arrive in...

Weak council, weak decision

Following the Oct. 19, 2009 municipal election, it was clear that Iqaluit voters had chosen a weak, inexperienced group of councillors to serve them over the next three years.

Just last week, at a meeting held July 20, Iqaluit residents got a chance to see how weak they really are.

That was when...

City should stick with current graveyard site

Over the 45 years or so in which some form of municipal government has served the people of Iqaluit, two big headaches have always bedeviled local administrators and elected councils: where to put the garbage and where to bury the dead.

It’s the latter issue that arose, yet again, at an emergency...

Inuit in the city: loathed and unwanted?

More than one in five Canadian Inuit now live outside the Arctic, where, with some notable exceptions, they live as a tiny and mostly invisible ethnic minority within big and medium-sized cities scattered from one end of southern Canada to the other.

So reported Statistics Canada in 2008, after...

New food subsidy: watch out for the details

Welcome to Nutrition North Canada.  By March 31 next year, most Nunavut and Nunavik residents will rely on this program, which replaces food mail, to keep their grocery bills from ascending to astronomical heights.

So far, the program that Chuck Strahl and Leona Aglukkaq announced May 21 looks...