Canada’s newest colony?

As we approach the end of Nunavut’s fourth year, it’s now obvious that the creation of Nunavut was a great victory — for the Government of Canada.

As to whether it was also a victory for the people of Nunavut, that’s still an open question.

But throughout 2002, the federal government has displayed a consistent attitude toward Nunavut, an attitude that in the absence of a coherent approach to northern development, amounts to a de facto policy made up of two key elements: calculated neglect, and thinly disguised neo-colonialism.

Ottawa’s real policy toward Nunavut — as evidenced by its actions, rather than its words — amounts to a policy of maximum political benefit for themselves — at minimum financial cost. In its management of the Nunavut project, which they inherited in 1993 from the Progressive Conservative government they replaced that year, the Liberal government has served its own interests far more effectively than it’s served ours.

The first element of Liberal policy, calculated neglect, has been obvious to all who care to look even before the date of Nunavut’s creation. This neglect was displayed at least as far back as 1996, when Ottawa committed only $150 million to pay all the one-time costs of creating Nunavut — despite at least two consultant’s studies showing that two to three times that much money was needed. Ottawa, and various members of the land-claim elite also manufactured the creation of the Nunavut Construction Company to build roughly half the office and staff-house infrastructure under a privatization scheme whose full financial impact on the Nunavut government is still unknown.

Since then, of course, Nunavut and Inuit leaders have reminded the federal government of its obligations to Inuit and to the people of Nunavut many times. They’ve talked about the disgraceful shortage of social housing, and the outbreak of killer diseases such as tuberculosis and RSV that are associated with it. They’ve talked about Nunavut’s dilapidated municipal infrastructure, and the unfairness of Ottawa’s per capita infrastructure funding formula. They’ve talked about Nunavut’s inability to get more than a small share of commercial fish quotas in adjacent waters. They’ve talked about Nunavut’s lack of transportation infrastructure, including roads and wharves. They’ve talked incessantly about Nunavut’s Third World health outcomes and our underfunded health-care system.

Invariably, the federal response is the same: Make do with what you have, because we know your needs better than you do.

But the neglect is obvious. Most Nunavut residents, especially Nunavut’s young, do not enjoy equality of opportunity with other Canadians. The things that governments create to ensure it barely exist in Nunavut.

Equality of opportunity is not produced by new flags, new acronyms, and endless gatherings of professional meeting-goers. It’s produced by good schools, accessible health care, adequate shelter, and a healthy mix of private- and government-driven economic activity. None of these things exist in Nunavut. Until they do, Nunavut’s young will be guaranteed a future of inequality in comparison with other Canadians.

The second element in Ottawa’s attitude toward Nunavut, neo-colonialism, is not so blatant.

But Indian Affairs Minister Bob Nault let us catch a glimpse of it last November, when he told a group of reporters that he believes Nunavut is “not ready” to handle a share of royalties from non-renewable resource development, and to handle the administration of mining, and oil and gas drilling.

In effect, Nault admitted that his government is content to see Nunavut become an economic colony of southern Canada. Without a resource revenue sharing agreement, mining development will do little to improve the Nunavut government’s nearly complete dependence on Ottawa. Profits from that development would flow south, and Ottawa, not Nunavut, would collect millions of dollars worth of royalties, or mining taxes, on such development.

Yes, it’s true that the Nunavut land claims agreement provides that a small amount of federal resource royalty revenue will flow to the Nunavut Trust. But it’s a pittance. Article 25, which sets out rules for resource royalty sharing, says government will give the Nunavut Trust 50 per cent of the first $2 million of resource royalties collected in any given year, and five per cent of royalties collected on amounts in excess of $2 million.

But there’s nothing for the government of Nunavut, the body that’s responsible for the things that actually produce equality of opportunity: education, health care, housing, and strong public services.

A resource revenue agreement could one day help pay for better schools and better health care in Nunavut. But when mining development starts up in the Kitikmeot and Kivalliq, Nunavummiut may get some minor spin-off benefits, such as some menial jobs and contracting opportunities. The Nunavut government, however, will be have been denied a tool that it could use to improve public services and build self-sufficiency.

As usual, whenever Nunavut shows any sign of lessening its dependence on Ottawa, at one day standing on its own feet, a federal politician jumps up to break our knee caps with a baseball bat. Welcome to Canada’s newest colony.

JB