Nunavut’s real test

Two weeks ago you could have seen them all over Iqaluit. Hungry, badly-dressed, nervous and ashamed, shuffling from place to place with their precious “job search” forms stuffed into their pockets or clutched in their often shaky hands.

These were Iqaluit’s social assistance recipients, sent onto the streets by social assistance workers to “search” for jobs among local employers.

The object of the exercise is to gather signatures on a piece of paper that asks employers to say if he or she has any jobs for the prospective social assistance recipient. The form also asks the employer to add comments about what the person may need to do to qualify for a job within their business or organization.

That part is usually left blank, since few employers have the time to interview people who walk off the street looking for non-existent, unskilled jobs. Many employers don’t have any unskilled jobs available anyway. And all employers do not relish the prospect of offering jobs to people who are obviously unemployable anyway.

They know that the sooner a prospective social assistance recipient can gather the required number of signatures on their job search forms, the sooner he or she can get a welfare check.

So most employers are happy to play the game. In a town whose unemployment rate hovers between 18 and 21 percent, they know that a “job search” is a farcical concept, especially for the unskilled, the addicted, the badly educated, and those whose minds and hearts have been shattered beyond repair.

The idea grew out an ill-fated GNWT initiative launched in 1994 called “income reform.” Well-intentioned in theory, the income reform initiative’s basic objective was to help welfare recipients get off welfare, especially young able-bodied people presumed to be capable of working. At that time, the federal government gave Yellowknife about $12 million to play with, and the GNWT went ahead and spent in on a variety of pilot projects.

After the GNWT finished playing with Ottawa’s money, the initiative appeared to fi le, leaving in its wake the lingering attitude that most people on welfare don’t really deserve to get it, and that the cure is to humiliate them into looking for work.

Few people recognize however, that many of these people are unemployed for good reason.

There are those who don’t know how to do anything useful for an employer, or don’t know how to read and write. In a society where academic standards are low and the school system barely has enough money to function, this is a pattern that is difficult to break

There are those who are often too stoned or drunk to hold a job. In a society that venerates intoxication, that too is a pattern that’s difficult to break.

There are those who are too mentally or emotionally unstable to ever hold a job for more than a few days. In a society where mental health care is virtually non-existent, that too is a pattern that is difficult to break.

And there are those who can’t get jobs because they have lengthy criminal records and who employers are afraid to trust. In a society that has the highest crime rate in the country, that is pattern that is difficult to break.

The poor who trudge the streets of Iqaluit every month in search of non-existent jobs in the name of a non-existent social policy and a social services system that offers no services, represent a seemingly hopeless conglomeration of human problems upon which Nunavut will ultimately be judged.

There are a lucky few who have done well out of the creation of Nunavut and the settlement of the Nunavut land claim. The speaker of the Nunavut legislative assembly, for example, will earn more money than the prime minister of Canada.

But there are the unlucky many, stuck in a morass of hopelessness, violence, and degrading intoxication. Add to that the growing numbers of working poor whose incomes are not keeping up with the cost of living and you have a recipe for an ugly, permanently institutionalized class system.

Nunavut will not be judged on how well it can put on fancy television shows. Nunavut will be judged by how well it can teach the young, heal the sick, and counsel the afflicted. This will be the real test.

If Nunavut’s new government fails to appreciate this, Nunavut itself will be a failure. And no one will judge this failure more harshly than the people of Nunavut.

In last week’s round of April celebrations, the people of Nunavut renewed their faith in the great dream. Those who govern Nunavut are now on notice. Don’t break that faith. JB