Nunavut capital commission a good idea

The idea of a Nunavut capital commission is not new. Since Iqaluit became the capital of Nunavut in 1995, a variety of people have advocated the creation of a public body to help guide development in Nunavut’s capital.

This week, Iqaluit East MLA Ed Picco released a consultant’s study, funded out of his constituency budget, that thoroughly explores the idea of creating a Nunavut capital commission for Iqaluit.

The arguments in favour of creating such a body are overwhelming. The Nunavut government should now look further into the idea and find a way of creating a Nunavut capital commission by the beginning of its next fiscal year.

It’s predictable that at least some Iqaluit municipal officials might resent such a commission because of its perceived intrusion into Iqaluit’s municipal affairs. So be it. A Nunavut capital commission, representing all the people of Nunavut, would provide Iqaluit’s municipal government with some badly needed help. You don’t have to look far to find evidence to demonstrate why the municipality needs that help.

The Town of Iqaluit’s recent planning efforts have produced a planning disaster. The high concentration of government office buildings and apartment buildings around the four corners area has turned Iqaluit’s downtown into a nightmare for pedestrians and motorists alike.

At the same time, Iqaluit still has no properly recognized street names, no signs for tourists to tell them where they are or how to get to where they might want to go, and a collection of new office buildings distinguished only by their unrelenting ugliness. Even small hamlets like Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet have done a better job of handling development in their communities.

Historically, the municipality of Iqaluit has been plagued by weak, unstable, and sometimes incompetent town councils. Even during the best of times, which have been few and far between, Iqaluit’s municipal officials have struggled just to perform their basic civic duties.

The Town of Iqaluit’s senior administrative officer, John Raycroft, a resident of southern Canada who has not attended an Iqaluit Town Council meeting since last June, was expected to resign from his job this week. The Town has already begun to advertise the position, Finding a competent, professional municipal administrator to serve as SAO will be no easy task and may take many months.

The Town’s director of engineering, Denis Bedard, faces five criminal charges laid in connection with incidents said to have occurred when he was an employee of the GNWT’s Department of Municipal Affairs in Fort Simpson.

Another key administrator, director of finance Bret Dykstra, has handed in his notice, and the Town is now seeking a replacement for him — yet another job that won’t be easy to fill.

Given all this, it seems unlikely that the Town of Iqaluit will have the administrative capacity to do any long-term planning in the forseeable future. Until Iqaluit’s municipal election in the fall of 2000, it’s likely that that the Town will be so bogged down by day-to-day issues that they won’t have the ability to consider long-term planning with any degree of competence.

A Nunavut capital commission, which could include representatives from the Town of Iqaluit, the legislative assembly, and people from other Nunavut regions, is an idea whose time has come. JB