June 29, 2007
A better way
For Nunavut government officials, an examination by the Office of the Auditor General must surely feel like a much-postponed visit to the dentist: a time to be poked, prodded and lectured about one's bad habits.
Since 2001, the GN has submitted to five of these examinations, each of which produced reports that territorial officials could not possibly have enjoyed reading. The auditor general's reports show that the GN's financial management system suffers badly, a diagnosis that is essential for MLAs and the public to know, even if it's embarrassing for the government.
In spite of all that, GN officials are taking a constructive approach to the findings of the auditor general's most recent report, on the Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students program.
Instead of biting the dentist on the finger, they're willing to open up and submit to the required treatment. When that document was ready for release to the public earlier this month, GN officials were not only armed with a full response - they also produced a work plan aimed at correcting the various problems that the auditor general's staff revealed.
So instead of filling the air with defensive denials and excuses, GN officials seem to be using the auditor general's report to actually improve the quality of a government service. How refreshing.
In the case of the FANS program, the auditor general's findings weren't as bad as they could have been, but they were bad enough. To the GN's credit, she found that student grant and loan applications are processed on time if students apply on time. That corrects a problem that students complained of for years, especially when the program was run by the Government of the Northwest Territories.
On the other hand, the auditor general also found that the FANS unit needs some serious work. For example, she found the GN now holds about $4 million worth of unpaid student loans, more than half of which is estimated to be in the bad debt category. At the same time she found the GN was doing little to collect that money, which is distributed among about 550 former students.
She also found the GN has no method of figuring out how many student aid recipients graduate from post-secondary institutions and how many go on to get better jobs as a result of the education that this money has paid for. Without that information, education department officials can't tell us how well that program works. Fixing that problem, as GN officials say they will, is a common sense necessity.
Another problem is to clarify who is eligible for student aid and who isn't. Because so few Nunavut residents graduate from high school, it's reasonable for the GN to help people who don't have Grade 12 diplomas. In most other parts of the country, only Grade 12 graduates are eligible for it. So it would be useful for the GN to clarify that issue.
To find ways of fixing these problems, as well as numerous record-keeping issues, it's obvious that GN employees have been working side-by-side with staff from the auditor general's office for many months.
That's a good sign. Nunavut suffers from a severe shortage of experienced administrators and financial managers, so the GN is wise to accept help from the outside, wherever and whenever it can be found.
Over the next year or two, the auditor general's office will issue a series of similar Nunavut reports, each focusing on a specific unit of government. The next one is a report on the Nunavut Business Credit Corp., followed by audits of the Nunavut Housing Corp. and the Department of Health and Social Services.
It's unlikely that these reports will produce findings that flatter the GN. But if GN officials adopt the constructive attitude with which they handled the FANS audit, Nunavut residents will in the long run end up with better services. JB
June 22, 2007
Berger report: dead on arrival
Nunavut residents first laid eyes on conciliator Thomas Berger's final report in March of 2006. How long ago that was.
Many, especially those in education circles, greeted Berger's document as if it were etched on stone tablets and fetched from a mountain-top by some all-seeing prophet. For a school system lost in the wilderness, this was the map that would lead the way to the promised land.
They needn't have wasted their time. Berger's report was dead on arrival. And the evidence shows that it's Nunavut leaders, not the federal government, who killed it.
For those of you who may have forgotten what it was all about, here's a refresher. The federal government hired Berger - a renowned judge, politician and aboriginal rights lawyer - to conciliate an intractable dispute with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. over a new implementation contract for the Nunavut land claims agreement.
Berger left the biggest disputed issue to the very end: the question of how to carry out - and pay for - Article 23, which says governments must do things to help Inuit get government jobs. In his 90-page final report, Berger devoted more than 60 pages to Article 23.
What he produced goes far beyond the vague words contained in Article 23, which don't actually say much and are capable of being made to mean almost anything.
Berger imposes his own meaning, not only on Article 23, but on the entire land claims agreement. He concludes that Nunavut's school system is a failure. To honour the spirit of the Nunavut agreements, he said Canada must pay to create a new school system that is fully bilingual. In a letter to Jim Prentice, he uses the language of apocalyptic doom to make his point: "Nunavut today faces a moment of change, a moment of crisis."
One might think that officials with Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. would greet this with ecstatic praise. Berger not only endorsed the $10 million to $20 million a year the two organizations said they want for Inuit training and employment, he even recommended more.
But neither the Government of Nunavut nor Nunavut Tunngavik have ever publicly endorsed the Berger report. It has never been debated in the legislative assembly. No Nunavut politician of any stature has ever campaigned for its implementation, or produced a clear position on it. Berger's report enjoys little or no political support among Nunavut leaders.
Now rewind to this month's release of Paul Mayer's report on Nunavut devolution. In it, Mayer said that right now the GN cannot hire and retain the people it needs to handle its existing responsibilities and is therefore not ready to take on more. He says this problem is "monumental." And like Berger, he concludes that Nunavut's education system is failing.
That's no surprise. To reach this conclusion, Mayer relies on information supplied by two sources: Berger's report - and the Government of Nunavut.
But though the information supporting this opinion originates from within his own government, Premier Paul Okalik' still reacted with anger when asked to comment on it, on the radio and in this newspaper.
Okalik said Nunavut is graduating high school students in "record numbers." For his part, Mayer actually said there is only "gradual improvement" and that the number of graduates "has increased slightly every year." In rejecting this, Okalik not only repudiates Mayer - he also repudiates the Berger report.
If you think you're confused, just imagine how Jim Prentice feels right now. Ottawa's biggest worry is obvious: that Nunavut does not have the capacity to take on more responsibility, for obvious reasons related to the poor performance of Nunavut's education system and Nunavut's poor quality of governance.
But now federal officials have something new to worry about: the fact that Nunavut leaders, as revealed by their reaction to the Berger report, simply don't get it.
Until they do, Jim Prentice would be well advised to play for time. If that means waiting until Nunavut gets new political leadership capable of admitting reality and putting forth coherent, consistent positions, so be it.
However, Prentice must begin some kind of devolution process with Nunavut. Simple justice demands it and the federal government is already committed to the idea in principle.
But any progress on Nunavut devolution must be tied to improvements in human resources and governance, including financial management. That could take a long, long time. JB
June 1, 2007
Nunavut’s debatable windfall
Before you read this, get yourself a strong cup of coffee.
That's because we're going to talk this week about a dreary eye-glazer of a topic: devolution, and the current dispute between the Government of Nunavut and the Nunavut Association of Municipalities.
"Devolution" is the word now used to name the proposed transfer of responsibility for managing public lands and resources from the federal government to Nunavut, coupled with an agreement between the two governments to share royalties from non-renewable resource development.
If that doesn't make you yawn and fidget, you're probably not human.
But devolution may be biggest project the Nunavut government is ever likely to do. It would give the GN big new province-like powers and a big new source of money. If Nunavut's oil and gas reserves are ever developed, that royalty money could benefit you, your children and your grandchildren for many years to come. So take a swig of that coffee and listen up.
The GN is at odds with the NAM over how to spend that resource money. The NAM says that after a devolution deal is done, municipalities should get a share. Premier Paul Okalik says no way: not now, not ever.
Okalik's hardline approach is not entirely unreasonable. In the Northwest Territories, devolution talks have been plagued for nearly 20 years by squabbling between the GNWT and the NWT's long list of regional aboriginal groups, each of which wants its own share of resource royalties to help pay for their little regional governments.
That's likely what Okalik alluded to last weekend when he told reporters that he doesn't want to "add 25 other parties to the table."
That's a reasonable position. But it's founded upon a fallacious straw-man argument. The NAM, you see, does not want to sit at the devolution negotiating table. Neither do any of Nunavut's 25 community governments.
Okalik also said, reasonably, that devolution talks have not yet started, so it's too early to talk about what to do with resource royalties.
His premise is true. Since the appointment of Paul Mayer, Jim Prentice's point man for devolution, the two governments have talked only about what to talk about in the future. Devolution talks won't start for real until after Prentice ponders a report that Mayer has recently submitted and then decides how and when to proceed. In doing so, he'll likely decide if Nunavut is ready to handle new responsibilities. Given the recent findings of the Auditor General, that's a very big "if."
But does this really mean that it's too early to have a public debate on a big issue like devolution and resource royalty sharing?
You could start to answer that question by trying to see the issue the way community governments see it.
Right now, the complex superstructure erected under the Nunavut land claims agreement gives community governments little say over big mining projects and no method of gaining benefits from them. When a new mine gets built near a community, their elected representatives must sit on the sidelines while others negotiate for them, usually in secret.
Under the land claim regime, it's regional Inuit associations who negotiate impact and benefit agreements. They do so in secret and the precise contents of their agreements are also kept secret. If a project lies on Inuit-owned land, the regional Inuit associations have another tool for extracting benefits - land leases. Those deals are kept secret too.
This is already creating tensions. The mayor of Cambridge Bay, Michelle Gillis, complained last month about her community getting shut out of IIBA talks.
Even the Government of Nunavut recently invented a tool for extracting benefits from mining companies: development partnership agreements. Under them, mining companies agree to hire certain numbers of local people and get a fuel tax rebate in return.
But elected community governments have no direct say in these deals either.
At the same time, it's individual communities that are most likely to feel the effects of mining projects - positive or negative. Take the people of Arctic Bay, for example. They watched the owners of the Nanisivik mine extract hundreds of millions of dollars worth of zinc and lead over two decades. It's true there were good jobs for those who wanted them. But at the end of it all, Arctic Bay was left with next to nothing.
You can't blame municipalities for wanting to avoid another Nanisivik. And you can't blame them for seeking new sources of revenue to fix their aging infrastructure and beef up their budgets.
It may be reasonable for Okalik to proceed with caution when responding to the NAM. But it's not reasonable to eliminate all possibility of public debate on an issue of such crucial importance.
Nunavut's minerals, oil and gas are finite. One day, in the distant future, they'll be gone. As well, the resource extraction industry runs in boom-bust cycles. Right now we're in the middle of the biggest mining booms in history, but one day it will be all over - jobs, royalties and other benefits will dry up.
That's why the question of what to do with resource royalty revenues is a question that all Nunavut residents have a right to talk about. For example, would all this money flow directly into the GN's coffers to be used for short-term political gain? Or should it be saved in a trust fund that could generate revenue even after the boom is over? Should a portion go to municipal governments? These are all legitimate questions.
This past weekend, the three northern premiers released their promised "northern vision" statement, accompanied by a press release laden with the usual public relations clichés and platitudes. Okalik, in words attributed to him, says this: "The Northern Vision represents an invitation to federal, provincial, Aboriginal and community governments, the private sector and non-governmental organizations to partner with the territories..." (The italics are ours.)
That's an excellent piece of advice. Okalik needs the NAM as a partner, not an adversary. JB
