Iqaluit is like a Third World city

I have travelled quite a bit over the past years and every time I mention that I come from Iqaluit, people invariably tell me how lucky I am to live in a place with clean air and water. I always kind of nod and try to change the topic.

I wish it were the case — and it should be — but it is not. Because of the lack of vision of past and present administrators, we live in near-Third World conditions. We have to smell our own sewer on a daily basis. We have to suffer smoke from the dump and we drive on roads that are nothing but trails. For a good part of the year, we have to suffer an unbelievable dust problem.

This is not rocket science. If your garbage dump is half a mile from your community, you will see it and you will smell it. If you dump your raw sewer 500 feet from houses, you will smell it. If you don’t pave your roads, they will deteriorate daily, you will destroy your vehicles and you will breathe in the dust.

It is nearly impossible where I live to open the windows in the summertime because of these problems.

There are thousands of square miles between Iqaluit and Pangnirtung. Can’t we move all this away from under our nose?

The present administration of the City of Iqaluit is constantly beating its chest about the fact that Iqaluit is now a city and the capital of Nunavut.

In certain aspects of public administration, it insists on buying the biggest and the best. It worries itself over the colour of the flowers on the carpet while the house is falling down.

It is time to get our priorities in order. The Government of Nunavut and the federal government also have responsibility in all this and it’s time that all three parties get together with the people of Iqaluit to set an agenda.

A long-time resident of Iqaluit