Iqaluit city councillor takes issue with newspaper headline

Thank you for publishing the article titled, “Look out hotel owners — Iqaluit might want more of your money: City council’s economic committee ponders voluntary hotel tax,” on the destination marketing fee, published Jan. 8, 2016 on your website.

I would also like to applaud your reporter Steve Ducharme for taking extra time to make sure that he captured accurate information for writing this story. It’s commendable journalism! His story is accurate.

I would however like to make reservations about the headline and the sub-headline. We understand your prerogative as a business as well as a democracy-promoting vehicle.

You need to write a captive headline and at the same time project a headline that accurately reflects the essence of the story.

I believe this balance is missing in this story. The headline is incongruent to the content of the story. The headline lacks the positive intention of our initiative, which is accurately captured in the body of the story.

The first part of your headline, “Look out hotel owners” suggests the Community Economic Development Committee is lurking and intending to pounce on the hapless and unsuspecting Iqaluit hotel industry and forcibly extract money from them.

Far from it, we are taking the initiative to bring together the industry players and make a suggestion to them on how they can collaborate amongst themselves to promote their industry, with the city providing some assistance where needed.

The Community Economic Development Committee nor the city want to benefit in any way from that fund. It is solely for promoting those who contribute to the fund, the Iqaluit hotel industry.

The second part of the headline reads, “Iqaluit might want more of your money.”

Absolutely not! The City of Iqaluit does not want to own or take a penny of the marketing destination fee. The hotel industry will contribute and have a say on how 100 percent of that fund is used because it is their money not the city’s. In that regard, it is not accurate for the headline to read that the city “might want more of your money.” There is absolutely no likelihood of that happening now or in the future.

The intention of the Community Economic Development Committee is to recommend to council a marketing destination fee that is voluntary and administered by the hotel industry. The envisioned responsibility of the city is to facilitate the discussions, collaboration and provide services under its mandate, which will enhance the viability of the Iqaluit hotel industry.

None of the members of the City of Iqaluit’s economic development committee want to “have their way” on this matter as you suggest in your story’s introduction. The hotel industry will ultimately decide and “have their way” not the City of Iqaluit or the Community Economic Development Committee.

Your newspaper is an important tool in fostering democracy at local level and two way communication between residents and the city. In that regard, it is important that the Community Economic Development Committee be held to account, and residents receive accurate messages from your newspaper to be well informed and make sound judgments about their affairs.

We look forward to working with your newspaper to further strengthen this relationship.

Councillor Kuthula Matshazi
Chair, Community Economic Development Committee
City of Iqaluit

Editor’s note: We have changed the sub-head of the story to replace the word “tax” with the word “fee.”

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