The neglected region?

What a coincidence.

Just three weeks after the people of Kugluktuk lost at least 14 jobs due to the shutdown of the Lupin Mine, Nunavut’s premier and justice minister, Paul Okalik, magically appears in the community to announce a project that will create – guess what? – 12 new jobs.

The project involves the renovation of an old building for use as a “correctional healing facility,” a kind of low-level jail that’s supposed to house offenders convicted of less serious offences.

So far, so good. The department of justice is woefully short of correctional centre spaces. It will have no problems filling the 20 new spaces to be created at the Kugluktuk facility, which is to open next summer. There’s no doubt that Kugluktuk, with its unemployment rate of 28.5 per cent, could use the 12 jobs. And there’s no doubt that community groups and the hamlet will be able to offer good programs at the centre, in partnership with the department of justice.

But the measure does little to address the two separate problems it’s aimed at addressing: the lack of correctional centre space in Nunavut, and the alienation of the Kitikmeot region from the Iqaluit-based Nunavut government.

Nunavut desperately needs a remand centre for women, a remand centre for men and a large, secure correctional facility able to house and offer programs to people convicted of violent offences, including sex offences – a category of crime in which Nunavut leads the nation by an astronomical margin.

Justice officials know, or ought to know this. In 1999, a committee of territorial corrections workers and experts recommended the construction of a $50-million federal-territorial facility. Little has happened since then. It’s not clear if anyone is even pushing the file anymore.

As for the alienation of the Kitikmeot region, it’s clear the Nunavut government must do more to acknowledge that it’s the Kitikmeot that will likely become Nunavut’s economic heartland in the future. It needs to do more to ensure that Kitikmeot residents receive training and other forms of support to ensure that they benefit from the numerous mining projects that lie just over the horizon. JB