Nunavut can’t neglect its capital city

Like the reeking contents of a blocked-up sewage pipe, a decade’s worth of financial neglect, human incompetence and sloppy planning are about to burst upon the people of Nunavut’s capital city.

If that happens, people everywhere else in Nunavut will feel its indirect effects. After decentralization is finished, Nunavut’s capital city will still host the largest number of government employees, especially those key headquarters people who plan and direct government services for the entire territory. Even now, we have clear evidence before us showing that Iqaluit’s planning-related housing shortage is hurting the Nunavut government’s ability to recruit the people it needs to do its work.

But it’s not just one crisis that Iqaluit faces right now — it’s many crises looming at once. Here’s a short summary of them:

• Water treatment, the service that protects you from getting sick when you drink straight from the tap, will soon be inadequate. The city is already planning to spend money that it may or may not have this fall to increase its water treatment capacity.

• The water reservoir, without more expansion, will reach its maximum storage capacity in five years.

• Aging sewer pipes — some sections of Iqaluit’s sewer pipe system are already leaking, while are others are too small to handle the expected sewage flow in years to come.

• Inadequate sewage treatment —the city’s three-year-old, $7-million sewage plant still isn’t operating, while at the same time the city is now facing a serious set of Fisheries Act charges laid in connection with sewage spills from its ancient sewage lagoon.

• A desperate shortage of lots, especially lots suitable for badly needed multi-unit apartment buildings. At this moment there are none. That’s why the Nunavut government can’t offer staff housing for most of the Iqaluit-based jobs it advertises these days. As a result, many jobs go unfilled, and the quality of government suffers.

• An out-dated general plan and zoning bylaw. With public consultation meetings set later this month, the city has begun the laborious process of creating a new one. But reaching consensus among Iqaluit’s cantankerous residents won’t be easy, and implementing it will cost a lot of money — new subdivisions will require the up-front spending of millions on roads and utilidor lines.

• A dilapidated network of unpaved dirt roads, responsible for lung-destroying clouds of dust and vehicle-destroying potholes.

• No sidewalks — in some areas, such as the Highway to Hell in front of the post office, taking a walk can be a life-threatening experience.

• Garbage disposal — the overflowing causeway dump is on its way to being replaced, and the city is making some headway in recycling, but as Iqaluit’s population increases, the mounds of trash that need to be collected, dumped and burned will multiply.

Unless the City of Iqaluit can find the tens of millions of dollars needed over the next five years to fix all these things, Nunavut’s capital will become unlivable, a Third World barrio festering within the bosom of a wealthy G8 nation.

City officials are entirely aware of the urgent infrastructure and planning issues facing Iqaluit, because of information contained in a set of recent consultants’ studies, and because of the common-sense observations that we’re all able to make.

They’ve already estimated what it will all cost, and have put those numbers into their financial projections for the next five years. In 2003, they’re projecting capital expenditures of $19.4 million, with the spending of $20 million in 2004, and $10.8 million in 2005.

Compared with capital spending of $7.2 million projected in the city’s revised budget passed this week, that’s a quantum leap. But even at this late date, it’s unclear how the City of Iqaluit will get that money.

Ideally, the government of Nunavut should abandon the application of narrow per-capita municipal funding formulas for Iqaluit, and fund its capital city on the basis of need.

But politically, that’s not likely to happen. Big, bad, multicultural Iqaluit is resented by MLAs who represent people in most other Nunavut communities, and they believe, inaccurately, that Iqaluit already gets more than it deserves.

So the city’s only option is to borrow heavily, on an unprecedented scale. To do that, the city will need support and co-operation from the department of community government and from the department of finance, especially in the form of guarantees to secure debentures and long-term loans.

The city will likely hold a type of municipal plebiscite this fall to seek approval for its long-term borrowing plans. That means city officials must first convince Iqaluit residents that their municipal government now possesses the financial competence needed to handle big long-term debt-loads. After that, the Nunavut government must be there to back up those loans, and provide some oversight on behalf of the public.

Will the Nunavut government help its capital city in its time of need? We’ll see.

JB