Can the dream of Nunavut be salvaged?
Growing numbers of Nunavut residents are becoming disillusioned with the Nunavut project. The Nunavut they dreamed of for 30 years is not the Nunavut they see growing up around them. The government that was supposed to put power into the hands of Inuit is still a powerless shell, barely able to provide basic services, barely able to provide what residents took for granted under the old government of the Northwest Territories.
Just this week, the Nunavut government announced in its speech from the throne that only 53 per cent of positions within the Nunavut government have been filled. And that is only one example of the Nunavut government’s glaring incapacities, which no amount of empty symbolism or self-congratulation can conceal.
Inevitably, many residents are turning their anger against the Nunavut government simply because there is no one else around to complain to. Some criticisms, such as those arising from the Nunavut government’s single time zone plan, are petty and trivial. Others, such as those arising from Nunavut’s pitifully underfunded health, education and social housing systems, are substantial and deeply felt.
Can the dream of Nunavut be salvaged? Yes — but only if Nunavut residents take a long, hard look at the structural and conceptual weaknesses within the Nunavut land claim agreement and the Nunavut Act — and make necessary adjustments to their thinking.
The Nunavut project was not designed for the world of the 1990s and the world of the next century. The collection of political, administrative and legal institutions that we call “Nunavut” were designed for the issues of the late 1960s and 1970s, when industrial development in the Arctic seemed imminent, and no one ever imagined that governments would one day run out of money.
You can find one of the clearest examples of this within the Nunavut land claim agreement. One of its centre-pieces is its highly-touted set of interconnected management boards aimed at protecting Nunavut’s lands, water and wildlife from the effects of industrial development.
In the 1970s, northern political leaders, including aboriginal leaders, believed that such development was just around the corner, and with good reason, they regarded it as a threat to the very existence of northern Canada’s aboriginal peoples.
Heavily subsidized by Ottawa’s money and enthusiastically supported by Ottawa’s northern development policies, oil, gas and mining companies were proposing one megaproject after another — the Arctic pilot project, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, oil drilling in Lancaster Sound, natural gas extraction throughout the waters surrounding the Arctic Islands, uranium mining in the Keewatin. Aboriginal people feared that the land would be raped and that they would see no profits or benefits from its despoliation.
It’s no wonder, then, that Nunavut’s land claim negotiators worked so long and hard to create the family of public government management boards within which Inuit sit as equals with government.
But the non-renewable resource development that this elaborate regime was intended to handle never happened. And if the global economy continues to produce low commodity prices, that development won’t likely happen for many decades to come. In the six years since the signing of the Nunavut land claim agreement, the biggest environmental issue to come before Nunavut’s environmental protection regime is the status of Iqaluit’s municipal dump. Nunavut residents are now the proud owners of an expensive bureaucracy with nothing much to do — a brilliant answer to the issues of yesterday.
As for the Nunavut government, it too has been founded upon long-dead assumptions that date back to the1970s. When Nunavut’s negotiators first conceived the idea of dividing the Northwest Territories to create Nunavut, no one ever considered that a lack of money would would turn out to be the Nunavut government’s biggest problem. In those days, governments enjoyed access to a seemingly unlimited supply of money to spend on a myriad number of programs. Governments everywhere in the advanced industrial world expanded relentlessly, acting upon the naive assumption that no human problem is too difficult for government to solve.
Those days are gone. The Nunavut government has begun its life with a parsimonious bare-bones budget that was shaped mostly by Ottawa’s Office of the Interim Commisioner. So far, it’s Nunavut’s inadequate budget, not the ideas and dreams of Nunavut residents and government officials, that is the greatest single factor driving the formation of policy within Nunavut’s fledgling government. That is not power — that is the very essence of powerlessness.
Ironically, the organizations that have the smallest official role to play in dealing with Nunavut’s social and economic problems are now awash in money, thanks to the flow of investment income from payments made so far on NTI’s $1.1 million compensation fund. Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and its family of regional Inuit associations, designated Inuit organizations, and birthright development corporations are the only organizations in Nunavut that are adequately funded.
But thanks to another long-dead assumption inherited from the 1970s, they are, for the most part, not using Inuit money to meet the human needs of their economically deprived beneficiaries. Nunavut’s Inuit organizations have always taken the position that land claim compensation money should not be spent in areas for which public governments are reponsible — which includes health, social services, public housing, and education. In the 1970s, when public governments were able to spend freely, this position made sense.
In the 1990s, however, this position makes no sense at all. Nunavut’s health, social services, public housing and education systems are all in serious decline. The people who are suffering the most from this are NTI’s own Inuit beneficiaries. If NTI’s pampered and lavishly paid leaders aren’t capable of appreciating what this means, their organizations will become increasingly irrelevant in the eyes of their beneficiaries.
NTI, in co-operation with the Nunavut government, should use its money to help fill the gaps in Nunavut’s health, social services, education and public housing systems. One encouraging development is the trust fund that the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation is proposing to pay for patient escort travel to the South. However, there are many more public government projects, no doubt, that NTI and its associated organizations could consider to provide for the human needs of Nunavut Inuit.
For its part, the Nunavut government needs to acknowledge its incapacities and refuse to choose quick-fix solutions to its staffing and financial problems. For example, the practice of hiring unqualified non-Inuit for key Nunavut government positions must stop, as well as the equally odious practice of hiring consultants to cover up for people who have been hired for jobs they’re not capable of doing.
On the other hand, the Nunavut government’s throne speech this week shows that they are at least beginning to recognize that the world has changed: “Our government believes that as individuals we are responsible for our own lives…,” Commissioner Helen Maksagak said.
Taken to its logical conclusions, this position, however, will put the Nunavut government at odds with the expectations of many Nunavut residents. They had better prepare themselves now for the backlash. After they survive that they can begin the work of salvaging the dream of Nunavut. JB
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