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December 24, 2004

Christmas gifts we’d like to see

Have you ever wanted to give your friends the Christmas gifts they really deserve? Rather than the gifts they want?

Here’s our Christmas 2004 gifts, for a most deserving list of prominent people:

• To Nunavut’s finance minister, Leona Agglukaq: a big jar of red ink to ensure the Nunavut government’s growing deficit is recorded accurately;
• To the staff at Nunavut’s new, soon-to-be-opened regional health centres: a well-lubricated revolving door, to keep the departing staff from trampling their replacements;
• To Kuujjuaq’s renowned singer, Charlie Adams, and his family: a three-week stay in the Montreal hotel of his choice, courtesy of the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services;
• To Nunavut’s premier, Paul Okalik: a five-year gift certificate from a janitorial firm, to sweep up the dust gathering inside all the empty offices that are supposed to house Nunavut’s decentralized employees;
• To hockey star Jordin Tootoo: a signed collective agreement between the NHL and his union and a chance to play with the Nashville Predators again;
• To the prime minister of Canada, Paul Martin: a free pass on the Nunavut airline of his choice, because after every time he comes here, Nunavut always gets something from the federal government;
• To Keith Peterson, the hardworking MLA for Cambridge Bay: a spot in cabinet by the end of next year;
• To Ed Picco, Nunavut’s energy minister: a rubber suit to protect him from all the disgruntled power corporation customers who want to electrocute him;
• To Iqaluit’s numerous break-in victims: free sets of leg-hold traps to catch thieves with;
• To the president of the Nunavut Employees Union, Doug Workman: a big, new, over-sized filing cabinet to store all the grievances filed by abused GN workers;
• To the Baffin Fisheries Coalition: a fleet of life-boats to escape on if the Commons standing committee on fisheries manages to sink them next year;
• To the long-suffering residents of Kugluktuk: a new, finished arena, to give their many youthful lawbreakers something else to do besides theft and vandalism;
• To Nunavut’s minister of health and social services, Levinia Brown: a midwifery program for Nunavut;
• For Nunavut’s homeless and under-housed: a response from Ottawa to the recent GN-NTI housing proposal;
• To Olayuk Akesuk, the first cabinet minister to be found in breach of the Integrity Act: an oversized novelty cheque he can use to get rid of his housing debts once and for all;
• To Seemeega Aqpik of Kimmirut, one of the first Inuit to stake a claim on a gemstone site, and his brother Nowdluk, who noticed blue sapphires on an ATV ride: free gas for the rest of the year, courtesy of Nunavut’s Department of Economic Development;
• To Saul Kooktoook, Kokiak Peetooloot and David Tucktoo, the narwhal hunters of Taloyoak who are still defending their right to hunt marine mammals: a get out-of-court free ticket so they can take a day off and go hunting;
• To Hunter Tootoo, Nunavut’s most talkative MLA: a notepad to keep track of his questions, and a tin-can-and-string telephone so he can hear what cabinet members are whispering about him;
• To Iqaluit city council, and mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik: free cantilevers for everyone — if we all pull together, maybe we can get the sinking Arctic Winter Games Arena level again.
• To Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference: a white flag she can hand to Greenpeace the next time they run into each other in an alley somewhere.
• To Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General of Canada: a pair of rubber gloves and a haz-mat suit for her next foray into the GN’s toxic financial management system. JB and SM

December 17, 2004

Reason to hope

Not since John Diefenbaker has a Canadian prime minister ever promised as much to northern Canadians as Paul Martin promised this week, when he announced that he'll work with territorial governments and aboriginal people to create an overarching northern strategy.

To say that this is long overdue is an understatement.

Canada has controlled most of the lands that now make up the three territories since 1871 and the Arctic Islands since 1882. But throughout all those years, Canada has never quite figured out how to handle that enormous responsibility.

This week, Paul Martin gave notice to northerners, and to the rest of the country, that now is the time to answer that question. That's what the "northern strategy" is intended to do: create a plan stating what the federal government should, or should not do for northern Canada.

For starters, that means finishing long overdue agreements giving territorial governments control over public lands and natural resources. We hope it also means an honest acknowledgment of the many areas where the federal government has failed, and realistic, practical commitments to do better. Housing, the justice system, infrastructure, scientific research and the northern fishery are all areas that are crying out for action, not just for better planning.

For decades, the federal government has responded to the peoples of the northern territories in a confused, haphazard manner, marked by the evasion of serious issues until they can be evaded no longer.

Canada negotiated land claim agreements in the North only because it was forced to, and even now, federal officials mostly rely on a narrow, legalistic approach in their implementation of the Nunavut land claim agreement. At other times, the federal government has tended to respond to social crises only when it becomes too embarrassing not to.

At the same time, the long list of federal government departments and agencies responsible for providing various services to Nunavut and the other territories often seem to be working at cross-purposes. One example is how the Coast Guard decided to close its Iqaluit station before the shipping season ended this fall - in a year when the Department of National Defence vowed to make Arctic waters more secure.

Another is the creation of Nunavut itself. Federal government officials still brag about Nunavut when they're abroad, seemingly oblivious to Nunavut's worsening housing and infrastructure crises. The dream of Nunavut has soured badly, in part because of bad decisions made by some Nunavut leaders, but mostly because of federal government neglect.

Paul Martin says he wants to change all that, and until he demonstrates otherwise, we should take him at his word. As finance minister, he did what he promised: eliminate the deficit.

And when was the last time you heard a prime minister say something like this? "I don't know how you can say you are a Canadian, unless you have a deep love and deep commitment to northern Canada."

One of Martin's more heartening gestures was in bringing out a large group of cabinet ministers to accompany him while he made his northern strategy announcement. We hope this sends a strong signal to the rest of his cabinet, and to the federal civil service, that Canada can no longer ignore what until now has been its most ignored region.

And if Martin can keep his promises, northern residents have good reason to hope that his government will survive the current minority parliament, and that he will remain prime minister for as long as it takes to finish the job he started this Tuesday. JB

Shabby treatment?

The Legislative Assembly of Nunavut is now seeking a new language commissioner.

Based on how they treated Eva Aariak, the last and only person to hold that job, we wish them the best of luck. They may have to wait a long time before they find a qualified candidate willing to put up with the uncertainty that Aariak has put up with for the past year.

There are three "commissioners," all with watchdog roles, who are accountable to the legislative assembly: the languages commissioner, the integrity commissioner and the information and privacy commissioner. Because they're accountable to the assembly, their terms of office normally expire around the time that the assembly dissolves for an election.

The standing committee of MLAs that is responsible for making recommendations on the appointment of these commissioners is called Ajauqtiit - "those who push forward."

After some dithering, Nunavut's integrity commissioner, Robert Stanbury, and the information and privacy commissioner, Elaine Keenan-Bengst, were each reappointed to their jobs with no fuss and bother.

But in dealing with the status of the language commissioner's job, "those who push forward" got themselves stuck in a deep snowdrift. It's too bad there was no one around to push them forward too. Unfortunately, legislative committees can't be held accountable in the way that cabinet ministers are. Committee chairs aren't required to stand up in the legislative assembly to answer pointed questions.

The language commissioner - who knew, of course, that her term was expiring - waited a year for the Ajauqtiit committee, and the assembly, to figure out whether to reappoint her or put the job out for competition. By the time they did decide, she took a job with a private business.

Aariak is too professional, and too discreet, to complain about this in public. But since her appointment as Nunavut's first languages commissioner in November of 1999, Aariak has given excellent service to the people of Nunavut, and to the legislative assembly.

She is the first person in Nunavut to hold that job. That meant she had to build up an office from scratch. Then she had to develop the capacity to promote Nunavut's Inuit languages, monitor language use within government departments, receive complaints from the public, make annual reports to the assembly, and make proposals on how to change the official languages law that Nunavut inherited from the Northwest Territories.

There is no evidence that she failed to perform any of these responsibilities. And there is lots of evidence to show that she performed them well. She leaves two influential accomplishments. One is the work that she did to make her office known to ordinary people. The other is the work that she did on language legislation, when she recommended that the Nunavut government create a new Inuktitut Protection Act to complement the changes it must make to the Official Languages Act.

When an important government agency loses a talented and competent professional in Nunavut, it's always a serious loss. But we wish Eva Aariak well in her future endeavors. And we hope the legislative assembly is more thoughtful in their treatment of her successor. JB

Congratulations to Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik

The people who work at the Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik legal aid organization had much to celebrate last week, when they marked the organization's 30th birthday.

They've helped sustain one of Nunavut's most useful and durable organizations. Since the fall of 1974, they've played a vital and influential role in the development of Nunavut's justice system. As "the place to understand the law," Maliiganik's hardworking but underpaid lawyers and courtworkers have helped more people than most other Nunavut organizations have ever helped.

Their core function, of course, is to ensure that accused persons have competent lawyers or courtworkers standing beside them when they come to court. Without defence lawyers, accused persons cannot get fair trials, and the court system cannot work.

We hear a lot of complaints about the justice system these days. It's clear that most Nunavummiut have little faith in it right now - and for good reason. But those who make such complaints should remember this: there is no greater miscarriage of justice than a wrongful conviction. No other event can bring more disrepute to the system.

Although there is some evidence suggesting that some people in Nunavut have sometimes pleaded guilty to relatively minor crimes they didn't commit, simply to get the process over with, Nunavut has never seen a scandal that even comes close to what happened to Donald Marshall in the 1970s. A Micmac living in Nova Scotia, Marshall was convicted in 1971 of a murder that he did not commit and spent 11 years in prison, giving rise to a national scandal.

Maliiganik's work has gone a long way towards ensuring that such an enormity never occurred in Nunavut. Their work has ensured that when people in Nunavut are convicted and sentenced in court, it's done in a fair and lawful manner. But that's not the only valuable service that Maliiganik performed over the past 30 years.

Their other contributions include:

• numerous legal education activities aimed at helping people understand Canadian law;
• the widespread use of Inuit paralegal courtworkers, who not only help accused persons understand the system, but often represent accused persons in JP court;
• lobbying for administrative and legislative changes aimed at making the court system work better for Inuit;
• lobbying for the passage in 1989 of a law that allows unilingual speakers of an aboriginal language to serve on juries;
• lobbying for the use of legal interpreters, the creation of training courses for them, and recognition of legal interpreters as essential members of Nunavut's court system;
• the creation of a legal aid model that is now used in the Kitikmeot and Kivalliq regions, and administered by the Nunavut Legal Services Board.

And the future? It's obvious that if the territorial and federal justice departments don't act soon, Nunavut's court and corrections system will continue to deteriorate, and public dissatisfaction will grow.

A 2002 study paid for by Justice Canada, and led by Dennis Patterson, Maliiganik's first lawyer, reveals the wide extent of this deterioration. Much of the report, called the "Nunavut Legal Services Study," is a discussion of what they call "unmet needs" within Nunavut's court and corrections system.

Those problems include:

• the location of the legal services board's head office in Gjoa Haven, forced on them by the GN's decentralization policy, creating extra travel and administrative costs;
• a serious shortage of criminal defence lawyers in Nunavut - many practicing lawyers left after 1999, and legal aid suffers serious recruitment and retention problems;
• crushing workloads borne by those defence lawyers who do still work in Nunavut - some lawyers often walk into court with 40 to 60 case files in their briefcases;
• numerous scheduling problems within the travelling court circuit, causing needless delays in the processing of criminal and civil cases, and needless suffering for victims and accused persons alike;
• the lack of an adequate remand centre at the Baffin Correctional Centre;
• lack of access to the civil law among Nunavut residents, and the low priority given to civil cases within the court system, a situation that causes particular hardships for women;
• misguided attempts by non-aboriginal people in the justice system to show "sensitivity" to Inuit culture, with the result that family violence is condoned and perpetuated.

The new justice building that the GN will build in Iqaluit over the next two years is badly needed. But it will house a system that is now in an advanced state of disrepair. Nunavut's high rate of violent crime is becoming more lethal, and there are many signs that those who commit property crimes are now better organized and more professional than they once were.

All this will produce more work for Nunavut's already overworked legal aid lawyers, as it will for everyone else in the system: judges, Crown lawyers, corrections workers and the RCMP. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that territorial and federal justice officials are even thinking about it. JB

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