Resist the urge to spend

Last week, some Nunavut community leaders and MLAs have suggested that the Nunavut government should provide Nunavut’s community health committees with more money to help them deal with health care issues after Nunavut’s three health boards dissolve on April 1.

It’s understandable why some of the more active health committees might make such a request. In some Nunavut communities, it’s to be expected that well-intentioned health commitee members or other community leaders may feel the need to do research, policy analysis, or even conduct their own health promotion projects within their communities. They may also feel that they need more resources to fill the advocacy role that health boards once played.

Sincere though these requests may be, however, the Nunavut government has no choice but to turn them down.

A major rationale for the territorial government’s decision to dissolve Nunavut’s health boards last year was to simplify the administration of health care in Nunavut. Another was to save money.

Neither of these principles will be served by shoveling money into 26 new community health commitees that would presumably emerge in the place of the three outgoing health boards. It make no sense at all for the Nunavut government to divert money from primary health care and health promotion into support for community health committees.

Nunavut should spend its health care money on health care, not honoraria. JB