Union boss: trade layoffs for more programs

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A union activist running in the Feb. 16 territorial election warns that his campaign promises would require layoffs if he’s elected.

In his faceoff against premier Paul Okalik for Iqaluit West, Doug Workman said this week that if elected, he would cut the GN civil service to pay for his list of priorities for the next government.

Workman, who has been president of the Nunavut Employees Union for five years, said Nunavut’s first government failed to put “people first,” and instead created a bureaucracy with deputy ministers who ran their departments like their “own little basic kingdoms.”

“What I’ve found is it’s a servant of itself. It doesn’t serve people effectively,” Workman said of the Nunavut government.

“We need to streamline the public service… There’s a lot of duplication of work,” Workman said.

Okalik responded by saying that the government can tighten its belt in areas like human resources, but he rejected Workman’s idea as misinformed.

“It’s coming from a person who has never worked in government,” Okalik said. “So I think he needs to understand a little better how government works.”

Okalik said if his opponent wants to reduce the size of government, he should be clear on exactly where the cuts would be made.

Workman said the government could afford to close down four of 11 departments – more than a third of the current government structure.

However, Workman refused to name the departments that he thinks are expendable.

On the flipside of his cutback proposal, Workman said government needs to boost salaries and benefits offered to front-line employees, such as nurses and social workers, to stem high staff turnover.

He said the extra cash from government cutbacks would also fund new training programs in Nunavut, to boost the lagging numbers of Inuit in the public service. Workman cited an immediate need for home-grown mental health workers, as well as addictions counsellors and teachers.

Workman’s push for small government marks a clear break from the big-spending promises often made by candidates with ties to the labour movement.

At his platform release earlier this week at the Grind & Brew coffee shop, Workman stressed that he is not a “union candidate,” despite his position on the NEU executive and the support he’s receiving from them.

“The union is not running any candidate,” he said. “The union does not have a strategy in place to run candidates at all.”

Workman’s focus on streamlining government springs from the fiscal challenge facing whoever wins the Feb. 16 election. Finance Minister Kelvin Ng warned future MLAs in the last assembly that the GN’s spending is growing faster than its revenues.

Despite the cash crunch, Workman argued the next government should be able to improve education and housing in Iqaluit.

According to Workman, Nunavut education system needs “a complete overhaul,” including a review of how to improve Inuktitut services within schools. He said Inuktitut schooling under the previous government was starting too late to ensure students learn the language.

Workman’s changes to education would also include a junior kindergarten program, and new support services for special-needs students.

Calling for a housing “boom” in Nunavut’s capital, Workman said he would push government to build more social housing in Iqaluit West, subsidize housing renovations, and look to reduce the cost of leasing a home.

Workman said he would fulfill these promises as an MLA, and does not want to be the next premier of the territory.

Before press time, Okalik had yet to formally release his platform. But in an interview, he highlighted education and training as a priority for the next government.

For education, Okalik said he wants to keep the government on track with a goal to have every student in Nunavut speak Inuktitut and French fluently by the time they graduate.

“We don’t want to tinker with it [the goal] unnecessarily… because if we screw up, we could lose a generation of young people,” he said.

In training, Okalik lamented the low level of Inuit participation in the territorial government – 29 per cent in Iqaluit-based jobs, 43 per cent overall – but said training, such as Arctic College’s law program, was already underway to change that. He said he hoped to add further training programs, especially in health, by working with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. to find funding.

At the constituency level, Okalik focused on business incentives and job creation.

He said he would work to remove regulation and financial obstacles in the city, including giving the territorial government more control over housing, health and safety regulations.

Okalik said regulations imposed by health and safety inspectors, as well as quasi-judicial boards like the Liquor Board, are adding unnecessary expenses to doing business in Iqaluit.

“These boards or agencies are not elected, they’re not accountable to anybody,” he said. “We [the government] have to have some safety regulations, but we have to get rid of barriers that may exist in those areas.”

If re-elected, Okalik wants to change legislation inherited from the Government of the Northwest Territories that puts territorial inspectors and agencies like the Liquor Board at arm’s length from government.

Okalik said by reducing regulations, the government would be encouraging the private sector to create more jobs because business expenses would be lower.

To pay for his promises, Okalik said the next Nunavut government can expect new money from federal aboriginal initiatives, and future corporate taxes from mining companies in Nunavut.

Although the federal government currently reaps the royalties from mining activity in the North, Okalik said Prime Minister Paul Martin’s ascent in Ottawa suggested this fundraising power would eventually be handed over to territorial governments.