Nothing new in Berger’s report

If you want to measure how much dysfunction exists within a particular community, just walk into a local grocery store and take a look at the restricted items kept inside a locked cabinet, and which you can’t buy unless you get a store employee to open the cabinet for you.

It’s a good indicator.

In Iqaluit, of course, you’ll find the usual things inside those locked cabinets: mouthwash, rubbing alcohol, after-shave lotion, and other popular intoxicants. But you will also find the kinds of things that, just about anywhere else in the world, would be kept out in the open: halibut liver oil, garlic pills and aspirin. Yes, that’s right. In Iqaluit, aspirin is considered too dangerous to be distributed freely without the supervision of a store clerk.

It is into this dysfunctional swamp that Thomas Berger would have the federal government shovel even more money for the education of the young. This money would pass through another dysfunctional swamp known as the Government of Nunavut — but we’ll discuss later what that implies.

As most readers may know by now, the esteemed jurist, in a report leaked to Nunatsiaq News about a month ago, recommends that Ottawa spend, more or less immediately, an extra $20 million a year to help the Government of Nunavut find, recruit and train more Inuit to better meet their obligations under Article 23 of the land claims agreement. On top of that, he recommends that Ottawa spend even more to help the GN build a truly bilingual school system, more or less from kindergarten to Grade 12.

Berger doesn’t put a price-tag on this recommendation, and the federal and territorial governments haven’t even begun to think about studying its costs. But it’s fair to assume that the cost of recruiting and training hundreds more Inuit teachers and principals, creating complete Inuit-language curricula for all 12 grades for most school subjects, and publishing many more Inuit-language school books would cost many millions more, over and above the clearly-defined $20 million. This part of his report, presumably, would be done outside the confines of the land claim agreement and its implementation contract — if it’s ever done at all.

For Nunavut residents, Berger’s report contains nothing that is new. The facts upon which he relies — the school drop-out rates, the crime rates, the overcrowded housing — are well-known and well-documented. So is his proposal for a fully bilingual school system, an idea that’s at least 30 years old. In many ways, his report is an artful re-invention of a very old wheel. But the report is still of enormous value to Nunavut residents, the federal government, and all Canadians, whether or not one accepts his logic and his recommendations.

And that is simply because it’s such a plain and direct statement of the obvious.

In finding that Nunavut’s school system, with its 75 per cent drop-out rate, is a failure, and that the supply of qualified Inuit job applicants is “exhausted,” Berger states what just about every government official and every thoughtful Nunavut resident already knows to be true, and has known generally for decades.

But it’s a truth that most officials are loathe to admit in public — partly out of the fear that somebody somewhere might feel bad about it, and partly out of the fear that they might be held accountable for it. And there are still a few who don’t admit it because they still don’t get it.

Berger’s recommendations for $20 million a year in immediate spending between now and 2013 mostly vindicate long-held positions taken by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Government of Nunavut. Those recommendations rely heavily on a lengthy report on Article 23 and Inuit employment within government that the two organizations produced in 2003, called Anaumaniq.

But in 1992, it was NTI, with the other two parties, that signed off on an implementation contract, the first one, which provided only $175,000 to implement Article 23 for the 10 years between 1993 and 2003. And all throughout the many years in which the land claim agreement and the division of the Northwest Territories were negotiated, many voices warned of the dysfunctions that plagued the school system and the vocational training system. Those voices were ignored — especially by those who worked hardest to put the Nunavut proposal into law by 1993.

In his report, Berger says that Article 23 is at the “heart” of the land claims agreement. That may or may not be a valid opinion. But that is not what Nunavut officials said about the land claims agreement when they negotiated it.

For them, the heart of the agreement was either Article 4, which triggered the creation of the Nunavut territory, or the wildlife and environmental sections, which define Inuit hunting rights and provide for Nunavut’s family of co-management boards. The truth is, no one paid much attention to Article 23 when the Nunavut project was first set into motion.

But now that reality has finally overtaken the dream, Nunavut leaders, to their credit, are willing, at long last, to get serious about education and training. Once again they will take their begging bowls to Ottawa to ask for the means to pay for things that should have been paid for long ago. JB

See next week’s paper for more comment on Berger’s report.