NDP candidate takes aim at GN, MLAs on social issues

Discussing political issues with potential voters in recent weeks, I have been struck by the level of anxiety about the future that many Nunavummiut express.

Nunavut appears to be on the cusp of large-scale mining development, but without a devolution agreement with the federal government the royalties that those mining companies will pay will flow straight to Ottawa – bypassing the Government of Nunavut.

People are rightly worried that the GN will remain underfunded, understaffed, and unable to competently deliver the programs and services that families in Nunavut need, programs and services that other Canadians take for granted.

It is imperative that Nunavut demonstrate both political and bureaucratic accountability if we expect Ottawa to sign a devolution agreement.

The Qanukkanniq ‘report card’ (www.gov.nu.ca/reportcard/) documented many of the internal weaknesses of the GN, and was itself a kind of political accountability process. But what about bureaucratic accountability?

Listening to Auditor General Sheila Fraser present her scathing review of child, youth and family services in Nunavut to a Standing Committee of MLAs last week, I found myself wondering why not a single senior official has been fired over it.

After all:

• legislation that the GN has had in place since it came into being on April 1, 1999 has not been properly implemented, resulting in sexually abused children under 10 years of age not receiving the care that they were entitled to under the law;

• there has been a near total failure to implement the GN’s public health strategy; and,

• the GN has failed to deliver an implementation plan for the Nunavut Suicide Prevention Strategy that was developed in partnership with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the RCMP and the Embrace Life Council.

Who in the GN bureaucracy is responsible for these failures of leadership? Certainly not our dedicated front-line workers, doing the best they can with the resources available to them.

No, the problem starts at or near the top of the hierarchy. Might there be a senior official or two still making $150,000 a year despite having utterly failed in their jobs for several years?

I’m willing to bet that if a GN official had, for example, failed to order fuel for a community, and if fuel had to be flown in, at least one head would roll. The MLAs would ask much sharper questions than they did in Standing Committee last week. But when it comes to social issues, their backbones seem to turn to jelly.

The current Nunavut Cabinet is understandably struggling with the challenge of cleaning up the huge messes that they inherited.

One way to help things move forward might be to rid the bureaucracy of particularly incompetent senior officials — people who have failed to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, at-risk children and youth — and to demand action and results from the people hired to replace them.

@Ed-by:Jack Hicks
NDP Candidate for MP
Iqaluit

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