Iqaluit councillor losing patience with staff, mayor

Iqaluit City councillor Kenny Bell took the opportunity at a city council meeting June 9 to get a few things off his chest. Bell told Nunatsiaq News that “dealing with this council has just been like shooting yourself in the face.” (PHOTO BY DAVID MURPHY)

“I found myself in a position where I’d rather dig my eyes out with my bare fingers than come to this room,” Iqaluit city councillor Kenny Bell said at a city council meeting June 9.

If it sounds like the renegade councillor is a little frustrated, that would be putting it mildly.

The outrageous eyeball comment was only one of several that Bell delivered in his councillor’s statement after first apologizing for being absent four times from various meetings this past month.

Bell said he hasn’t shown up for a few reasons, but mainly because he’s tired of asking for updates from various government departments and getting no response. His requests for those updates to be added to council agendas go unheeded, he says.

Bell blamed Mayor Mary Wilman, saying she doesn’t reply to his emails.

“I’ve been sending emails to the mayor on so many occasions it’s not even funny,” Bell said.

Iqaluit mayor Mary Wilman was not in the room. She’s away, at a Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Edmonton.

Bell said he wants to hear from specific departments, such as the Workers Safety Compensation Commission and the Nunavut Fire Marshall.

He says he doesn’t want another fiasco like when Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada threatened the city with a fine of $100,000 a day or jail time for not updating its solid waste management plan.

“We have been in a position before where our staff have failed to provide information and we have gotten direction that we could be liable for $100,000 a day and-or time in jail,” Bell said.

Despite Bell’s angst, he said he’s not about to quit.

“I’m going to stick out the next four months specifically because I really want to piss the rest of you off,” Bell said, drawing snickers from a full crowd inside city council chambers.

After the meeting, Kenny Bell told Nunatsiaq News that meeting with different departments is essential, especially after the AANDC threat.

“It’s not that I don’t trust staff, but there are some grounds to not trust staff,” Bell said.

“I want to make sure that that’s not the case on another front too,” Bell said.

Deputy Mayor Romeyn Stevenson said he knows where Bell is coming from, in that regard.

“I, certainly, like Kenny, worry about when the city is in trouble and we don’t know about it,” Stevenson said.

“And he has a point in that we were once, not too long ago, in the situation where the city had been given an order by a federal department to do something and we didn’t even know about it as a council,” he said.

Stevenson, however, was satisfied that at least one of Bell’s issues involving the WSCC was resolved in city council last night.

“Councillor Bell was asking about the WSCC and our record with them. Our safety officer was there today saying we don’t have any issues with the WSCC. I think that’s the end of that conversation,” he said.

“The precedent is there to be worried, but what I saw today … I’m satisfied.”

Bell said he’s not trying to make Iqaluit look bad — he’s just trying to make the city a better place.

And he didn’t pull any punches when identifying who around the table is committed to council and who isn’t. Councillors like Stevenson, Noah Papatsie, and Terry Dobbin do a good job, he said, but he was critical of Simon Nattaq.

“Councillor Nattaq hasn’t picked up a binder in 13 years. He’s not on our emails. So he comes here blind every meeting. That’s unbelievably pathetic to me. It drives me right up the wall.”

And to top it off, Bell said he can’t understand his city council T4 slip which he says misrepresents his councillor’s honorarium.

For some reason, the tax slip only shows a portion of what he’s actually getting paid. “My T4 is strange. They admitted that they don’t give us the proper amounts,” he wrote in an email.

He’s attempted to find out why but responses from city staff, and the mayor, imply that it’s just always been done that way.