Editorial

The government of the Northwest Territories now faces yet another choice between the impossible and the inevitable: the question of whether or not to go ahead with the so-called “Keewatin pilot project” before the NWT divides.

It’s now inevitable that numerous groups and individuals will demand that the GNWT delay the project until after Nunavut’s legislative assembly is able to consider it. It’s now impossible for the GNWT to do otherwise — unless cabinet members wish to waste even more time and energy on yet another unneccessarily divisive battle against the obvious.

The three parties to the 1992 Nunavut accord agreed on the principles for Nunavut’s administrative design a long time ago. The Nunavut Implementation Commission constructed their Footprints blueprints for Nunavut on the basis of those principles, work that all three parties have mostly agreed to. Groups of officials from the three parties will now correct and adjust the interim commissioner’s version of that plan by the end of March.

One of those principles — adopted by the GNWT even before it was explicitly stated in its 1991 “Strength at Two Levels” report — is that there shall be two levels of government in the territories: local and territorial.

That report, which the GNWT enthusiastically endorsed, recomended strongly against the creation of regional structures. This was the seed from which the community empowerment policy was germinated — strong local governments, a strong territorial government, and few, if any, regional bodies.

But under the guise of community empowerment, the Keewatin pilot project provides for a vaguely defined “communities association” that would administer tens of millions of territorial government dollars on behalf of the Keewatin’s municipal governments.

The list of government departments whose entire capital and operating budgets would be transferred to this regional body is staggering: Municipal and Community Affairs; Public Works and Services; Renewable Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development; the NWT Housing Corporation; Health and Social Services; and Education, Culture and Employment.

Despite MACA Minister Manitok Thompson’s statements to the contrary, this is a proposal to create a regional government. As such, it’s a radical departure from GNWT policy on regional government, and a radical departure from the Footprints model for Nunavut.

In just 13 months, Nunavut will come into being. The GNWT has no legitimate mandate for making radical changes to Nunavut’s administrative design. Only Nunavut’s elected legislators will have such a mandate.

The GNWT has no choice but to delay the Keewatin pilot project until after division.