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DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT Nunavut's new Liberal Member of parliament is due in Ottawa on Monday to attend her first caucus meeting.
| CANDIDATE | VOTES | % |
|---|---|---|
 NancyKaretak-Lindell |
3302 | 47.2 |
 OkalikEegeesiak |
1738 | 21.8 |
 HunterTootoo |
1710 | 24.6 |
 JohnTurner |
447 | 6.44 |
After a whirlwind campaign through Canada's largest riding, Nancy Karetak-Lindell took 41.7 per cent of the vote in Monday's general election, comfortably ahead of her nearest rival, but by a considerably thinner margin than her Liberal predecessor, Jack Anawak, who is now the interim commissioner of Nunavut.
Progressive Conservative candidate Okalik Eegeesiak and NDP candidate Hunter Tootoo both made significant gains for their parties, with the Tories winning a neck-in-neck race for second place by less than 30 votes.
Following a day-long briefing with Anawak, Karetak-Lindell flew to Yellowknife from her home in Arviat to meet with Premier Don Morin before heading south.
The new MP pledged this week to visit constituents in those communities she wasn't able to reach during the federal election, and to focus on work in the riding.
"I'm not exactly sure yet how I'll set up my summer, but my accessibility to people is going to be one of my priorities," said Karetak-Lindell.
Not only did Karetak-Lindell turn in a strong perfomance in Rankin Inlet, Arviat, and Baker Lake, the business woman and former secretary-treasurer of the Kivalliq Inuit Association also led in several Kitikmeot communities.
A majority of voters in the Baffin communities of Pangnirtung, Nanisivik and Arctic Bay threw their support behind the Liberal candidate, as did voters in Kimmirut.
With fewer members re-elected, however, Karetak-Lindell acknowledged that the presence of individual MPs in the House of Commons during the next session will be more crucial to the Liberal government than it was in 1993.
"We're down to 155 members, which means members will have more committees to sit on, said Karetak-Lindell. "Plus, the vote in the House will be a lot more critical because we're not a majority by much."
Support for the Conservatives was strongest in the south Baffin, with Eegesiak picking up most of the vote in Cape Dorset, Broughton Island, Sanikiluaq and Iqaluit.
Unofficial results at presstime showed Karetak-Lindell got 3,302 votes, while ballots cast in support of Eegeesiak numbered 1,738.
Support for New Democratic Party candidate Hunter Tootoo, who finished closely behind in third place with 1,710 votes, was strongest in Igloolik, Gjoa Haven, Pond Inlet and Taloyoak.
Reform Party candidate John Turner trailed far behind in fourth place, managing to attract just 447 votes overall.
Unofficial results indicate turnout for this year's federal election was only 60 per cent, with just 7,197 ballots cast.
The old Nunatsiaq riding was modified slightly in 1996, with borders redrawn to conform to the boundaries for the new Nunavut territory. This year the Beaufort Sea communities of Tuktoyaktuk, Sachs Harbour and Holman Island cast their ballots in the western Arctic.
Back to Nunatsiaq NewsThe Baker Lake Hamlet Council wants to separate from the Keewatin Regional Health Board, while the Arviat and Rankin Inlet councils say they want no part of a new deal aimed at changing dental services in the Keewatin.
JIM BELL
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT At least three Keewatin hamlet councils are outraged at a new dental services deal put together by the Keewatin Regional Health Board.
Under that deal made between the Keewatin health board and a new private company called Kiguti Dental Services all the Keewatin's dental therapists will be fired.
In their place, private dentists working for Kiguti are supposed to do the same job within the Keewatin's schools that the dental therapists used to do.
But three hamlet councils, along with the Keewatin Divisional board of Education, say the new deal will hurt preventative dental care for Keewatin children.
Baker Lake wants to go it alone
The hamlet council of Baker Lake has even instructed its lawyer to find a way for the community to separate from their regional health board.
They say a recent KRHB decision to dismiss the community's dental therapist without consulting the community is "the final atrocity that the KRHB shall inflict on the people of Baker Lake."
At a council meeting held May 8, Baker Lake hamlet councillors passed an angry resolution condemning the health board's action.
"Local needs have not been addressed adequately by the existing KRHB," Baker Lake Mayor William Noah said in a letter to health board trustees. "Separation and the formation of our own local Health Society is the only course of action which remains open to us."
Arviat, Baker, Rankin want own funding
Meanwhile, the mayor of Arviat has written to Elizabeth Palfrey, the chair of the Keewatin health board, and to Health Minister Kelvin Ng, to say his hamlet council wants dental therapy funding transfered to it from the GNWT.
"Hamlet Council is extremely disappointed with the unilateral decision to cancel the dental therapy program without any consultation with the communities," Arviat Mayor Peter Kritaqliluk said in a letter to the health board.
"The Hamlet of Arviat will seek from the Minister of Health and Social Services block funding for the dental therapy program to the community of Arviat."
And in a separate letter addressed to Kelvin Ng, Kritaqliluk said Arviat eventually wants complete control of all health care in Arviat.
"In light of the total lack of consultation, or apparently the will to consult, demonstrated by the KRHB, the Hamlet of Arviat would like to have your department block fund this community for its portion of the region's dental therapy program immediately, with the intent being to assume all health care funding for this community in a block funding arrangement.
And at a May 15 meeting, the Rankin Inlet hamlet council passed a motion "to look into the possibilities of taking over the Dental Therapy Program in Rankin Inlet."
In a letter dated May 20, Rankin Inlet Mayor John Hickes told the health board's executive director, James Egan, that his council wants "to start negotiations immediately."
Board says dental care will get better
For its part, the Keewatin health board says the new arrangement will improve the quality of dental services in the Keewatin region.
"This new program guarantees preventive dental health care to all children, even those who may not be eligible under the non-insured benefits program or covered by private insurance," the board says in a May 8 press release.
They also say they'll help the Keewatin's fired dental therapists get new jobs.
"[The] KRHB has done their utmost to ensure an orderly transitiion and has tried to assist the therapists by facilitating two guaranteed positions for them elsewhere in the Territories and by facilitating a potential position with Kiguti Dental Services if the therapists so desire," James Egan said in the health board press release.
In addition, the health board says new Inuit "dental assistants" will get training for new jobs.
The new regional dental service is supposed to start July 1.
Kiguti Dental Services Ltd., the company contracted by the Keewatin health board to provide new dental care system, is owned 49 per cent by Tapiriit Development Ltd.
The rest of the company is owned by Yellowknife dentist Hassan Adam 27 per cent and Iqaluit dentist Charles Pastori 24 per cent.
Back to Nunatsiaq News
JIM BELL
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT Even if they want to, Keewatin hamlets can't go it alone in providing health care to community residents.
That's what Health Minister Kelvin Ng said last week in response to questions from Kivallivik MLA Kevin O'Brien, who represents two of three Keewatin hamlets who want to run their own dental therapy programs.
Recently, the hamlets of Baker Lake, Arviat and Rankin Inlet have written to the Keewatin Regional Health Board and to the GNWT, saying they want no part of a new health board plan to fire the region's dental therapists and replace them with dentists working for a private company called Kiguti Dental Services.
Arviat and Baker Lake are in O'Brien's Kivallivik consituency.
"Most of these individuals, these therapists, have worked for the past ten to 12 years in the school system with the children," O'Brien told Ng last week. "The parents and the teaching staff are very happy with them. They would like to see the system stay as it is."
But Ng said he supports the health board's decision to turn Keewatin dental services over to a private company.
"The board, I believe, has made a sound decision," Ng said.
Health board equals community empowerment?
And Ng said the three Keewatin hamlets are wrong in saying that their desire to run their own health programs is in line with the GNWT's community empowerment policy.
"We fund the Keewatin Regional Health Board as it stands now, that is empowerment," Ng said on Thursday.
But O'Brien warned Ng that the GNWT could be setting itself up for a repeat of the recent Rankin Inlet tank farm fiasco.
After a $100,000 government study initiated after numerous complaints from O'Brien and other Keewatin leaders, the GNWT's own plans to reorganize fuel distribution in the region turned out to be more expensive than other options.
"Mr. Speaker, once again the people want to be heard," O'Brien said. "They do not agree with this new proposal. In the end, Mr. Speaker, we do not want to see another David and Goliath story."
Another controversy for Tapiriit?
Tapiriit, a private Rankin Inlet "development corporation" that nearly won a lucrative GNWT contract to build a $6 million tank farm in Rankin, is also a major player in the Keewatin health board's new dental plan.
Tapiriit owns 49 per cent of Kiguti Dental Services, the company that's been contracted by the health board to replace dental therapists in the Keewatin after July 1.
On Friday, after more questions from O'Brien, Ng insisted that communities cannot break away form the Keewatin health board in order to manage their own health care funding.
"[Y]ou could not do it on a community by community basis, Mr. Speaker," Ng said. "So, no, I am not supportive of block funding individual communities for health and social services programs at this time."
Communities enraged by deal
Approved at an October 1996, Keewatin health board meeting, the deal with Kiguti Dental Services was announced in a May 8 health board press release.
Under it, dental therapists who have working within Keewatin schools will be fired.
After July 1, the work they used to do will be performed by dentists working for Kiguti. The health board says the fired dental therapists will be offered other jobs.
But after hearing about the new arrangment, the hamlet of Baker Lake passed a motion instructing its lawyer to find ways of separating from the health board.
Two other hamlet councils ­ in Arviat and Rankin Inlet ­ have also rejected the plan and are seeking to run their own dental therapy programs separately from the regional health board.
Back to Nunatsiaq NewsDWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT Nunavut consumers would pay more than twice what they're paying now for local phone service under a Northwestel plan to bring long-distance competition to the North.
In a proposal filed Monday with the CRTC, Northwestel says it will need to raise basic phone-service rates by $14 a month over the next two years in order to make up for an expected drop in long-distance revenues.
All that's in addition to a $4 per month increase the company has already asked the CRTC to approve this year.
Higher local rates, lower long distance
In return, Northwestel says that by 1999, they'll gradually lower northern long-distance rates to bring them in line with rates enjoyed by southern Canadians.
"Our objective here is to retain somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent of market share as we enter this competitive marketplace, and we believe we need this flexibility in pricing in order to accomplish that objective," Northwestel vice-president Ray Wells said.
The CRTC ordered the company to prepare the model for long-distance competition following a complaint filed with the regulator last October by Call Net Enterprises, better known as Sprint Canada.
Though Sprint had wanted to start competing immediately, the CRTC decided to give Northwestel more time to restructure.
$30 a month telephone service
Under the Northwestel proposal, the monthly basic cost of having a telephone would rise from about $12 currently to $20 in mid-1998. It would be increased to $24 in early 1999, and to $30 a month by the turn of the century.
Each increase in local rates would be accompanied by reductions in long-distance rates.
"There'll be more detail provided in the weeks to come, but with our rate rebalance proposal, you'd see decreases somewhere in the line of 40-50 per cent," said Wells.
Northwestel president Jean Poirier said the proposal would provide consumers with choice in long-distance services without forcing the company to further trim operating costs.
At the same time, the company will appeal to the CRTC to support demands for some form of compensation if the new competition is allowed to "skim" customers from lucrative long-distance markets in Yellowknife, Whitehorse and Iqaluit.
"We do have 600 employees in this organization and we would like to continue to exist and grow," said Poirier.
The Northwestel model proposes introducing long-distance competition in two phases.
In the first phase, in early 1998, Northwestel would act as a wholesaler of long-distance services, leasing its facilities to competitors, who would then resell these services.
In this first phase, Northwestel would reduce its own long-distance rates to within 15 per cent of the competition, and customers who switched to a competitor would probably have to dial additional numbers to place a long-distance call.
In the second phase, competitors would be granted "equal access" to Northwestel customers in Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Whitehorse and Fort Nelson.
Equal access means customers don't need to dial extra numbers to place a long-distance call using a competitor's service.
Subsidy for small communities?
Northwestel also proposes introducing two new subsidies. The first would take the form of a contribution payment, charged to all long-distance providers, and modeled on a system known in the South as the Carrier Access Tariff.
Northwestel says the contribution payment would replace the built-in subsidy to small communities that long-distance sales in larger centres have have traditionally provided.
"Sixty-three percent of our revenues are long-distance. We're making a fortune on long distance but we're losing a lot of revenues on local," said Poirier.
The company is also proposing a second subsidy, to be determined by the CRTC, that would cover revenue shortfalls arising from the provision of long-distance service in small and remote communities markets unlikely to appeal to competitors from the South.
"I don't think you can ask a private organization to let go a portion of its high-contribution market and then be stuck with the portion of the market where it's unecomomic to serve. We're a private organization, we want to continue to operate, we want to continue to live, but also we want to continue to make a profit."
Northwestel must now make its proposal available for public inspection during normal working hours at every Northwestel business office.
The CRTC has planned a single regional consultation meeting for the NWT, in Yellowknife, on June 24. Iqaluit will be linked to the meeting by video-conference.
Back to Nunatsiaq NewsANNETTE BOURGEOIS
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT The territorial government plans to inject $32 million into small make-work projects over the next two years to create 1,000 short-term jobs.
Finance Minister John Todd announced the Northern Employment Strategy last week in the legislative assembly. He said the money for the plan has, in part, been raised through the recent sale of government staff housing.
"We cannot wait for our economic fortunes to improve before we act," Todd said. "We face a socio-economic crisis that demands an urgent response."
The money will be spent on six existing GNWT programs and two new programs.
Todd said the new money will directed at youth employment and the 9,000 or so NWT residents who find themselves currently unemployed. The funds are earmarked for private-sector and community-based economic development projects.
"When combined with existing budgets," Todd said, "this means a total of $30 million will be strategically invested in community, economic and labor-force development initiatives this year."
Three million dollars has been earmarked for business development; $3 million to replenish and expand the Community Futures programs in the Sahtu, Deh Cho and Kitikmeot regions; and $2 million for community projects, including municipal spending on infrastructure.
Two million dollars will go toward training and short-term jobs under the federal-territorial infrastructure program; $2 million in adult education; $2 million as subsidies for employers who hire students or young people; $1.5 million for municipal governments taking on responsibilities transferred from the GNWT; and $500,000 in grants to welfare recipients who wish to start their own businesses.
Nunakput MLA Vince Steen criticized the plan, saying the government should spend the money instead on a few large capital projects. Without these projects, he said, the smaller communities have nothing to offer.
"It has been my experience that hamlets can only do so much towards hiring students," Steen said. "They can only paint the graveyard and the buildings so many times until it become ridiculous."
He said the "have-not" areas of the territories should be given more funding, instead of throwing money toward Nunavut, which is currently in a construction boom preparing for a de-centralized government.
"Those guys are going to have opportunities to expand, get in business, hire these people and have access to this program," he said. "The federal government is already throwing $150 million that way."
Todd said the funds were distributed to areas based on unemployment figures. He predicts the strategy will create about 1,000 short-term jobs.
And he urged private employers to do their part to help provide more long-term jobs for northeners.
"Sustainable jobs simply cannot continue to come from the government," Todd said. "We're going to have a tough enough time just keeping our heads above water delivering essential services."
Back to Nunatsiaq NewsANNETTE BOURGEOIS
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT A western MLA has vowed to make Nunavut pay its share of any compensation awarded to GNWT workers to settle a dispute over pay equity.
"I would not like to see the West get stuck with the total bill if this matter is not resolved before division," Yellowknife MLA Roy Erasmus said in the legislative assembly last week.
The territorial government and the Union of Northern Workers have been squabbling over the issue of pay equity since 1989, when the union first lodged its complained with the Human Rights Commission.
The union says the GNWT's practice of paying female employees less that men violated the Canadian Human Rights Act. The GNWT argued that it wasn't bound by federal legislation because it follows its own Fair Practices Act.
But a Federal Court of Appeal ruled last February that the territorial government is indeed bound by the Act. It's estimated the GNWT could end up owing as much as $70 million in back pay.
Finance Minister John Todd responded that the issue of future compensation isn't considered a liability and is not, therefore, part of the division plan for the territories.
Todd told the House he's willing to settle the dispute quickly, but only if the UNW is reasonable in its demand for compensation.
"If it is affordable and equitable, I am prepared to come to the table," Todd said. "If it is unrealistic and pie-in-the-sky, I am simply not."
In the past two years the GNWT has cut about 1,000 jobs and nearly $200 million from its budget in an effort to eliminate its operating deficit.
"If they do not come to the table with affordability, what do you want me to do? Lay off another 1,000 people?," Todd said.
"If it ends up where there's a huge fiscal cost attached to this for a variety of reasons, it will mean less jobs, not more jobs," Todd continued. "It will mean less services."
He seemed grim, though, about how soon the issue could be settled.
"We are not close to it now, based upon what the expectation is out there and what I hear from the UNW," Todd told the House.
The GNWT is currently attempting to bring its case before the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn the Federal Court of Appeal ruling.
Back to TopANNETTE BOURGEOIS
Nunatsiaq News
BAKER LAKE Victoria Mamnguqsualuk sits in a metal chair at one end of a hollowed-out building in Baker Lake, concentrating on her task.
She's oblivious to the leaky roof, the cracked concrete floor, the dampness creeping through the walls. And if she has to squint a little because the lighting's poor, she doesn't seem to mind. In fact, she's happy just to have a place to practise her craft.
The Baker Lake elder was one of the founding members of the Sanavik Co-op, formed in the 1970s by local artists. The members of the co-op, which included renowned artist Jessie Oonark, developed Baker Lake's reputation for fine prints and wall-hangings.
It's Saturday afternoon and the building is quiet. Most people are out on the land hunting and camping, but Victoria is putting the final touches on her prints, which are destined for galleries in the South.
Although she's been making prints for decades, she had to become a student in order to work in the only print shop in the community.
Shop converted into store
In the late 1980s the co-op converted the printmakers' old space into a retail area to bring in more money and the print shop was scrapped.
Two years ago, though, the territorial government made money available for artist training. Nunavut Arctic College offered a drawing and printmaking course and Kyra Fisher came up from the University of Calgary to teach.
"There was no money to start a print shop, but there were training funds," Fisher said. "So it meant the artists had to become students." Students actually got paid to take the course.
Nine students started the program and this year eight, including Victoria, have graduated. But she doesn't want to leave the shop. Here she feels she can make a contribution to her family by bringing in a monthly cheque and the occasional few dollars she can make from the sale of her prints.
Fisher believes it's wrong to think high-tech jobs will be available for everyone; art and culture must have a place in Nunavut, as well.
"When you're living from hand to mouth, economics is very important. You can still produce wonderful art even though your prime motivation is to survive physically and financially."
For years Victoria kept her skills honed by creating print designs and wall hangings in her home. In school, though, she she's been able to expand her artistic abilities.
When Victoria sits down to create a drawing, she says memories of stories she heard from her grandmother as a young child fill her mind. Tales she thought she had forgotten, come flooding back.
Cultural revival or survival?
Victoria and Simona Scottie, who's also in the shop today, think storytelling is vital to the survival of Inuit culture.
"It's really important because there are lots of people coming every day," Simona said. "I want my grandson to speak Inuktitut and know how it used to be a long time ago, out on the land."
A first-year student in the course, Simona explains the technique she learned to create three miniature prints and where she gets her ideas.
"My father was always telling stories of long time ago," she said. "When I heard them, I always tried to picture them."
For the first time in seven years, the Baker Lake printmakers will release a collection of 18 prints. But it may be a long time before there's another collection.
Fisher said there's no guarantee there'll be money for first-year students to continue in the program. Some graduates, she says, would also like to want to continue, but they'd probably benefit more from a course in the business aspects of running a printshop.
"It's still very hard for people to understand about overhead and buying supplies," she said. "They think the money they get for the prints should come to them, all to them. They don't realize they have to pay for lighting and heating."
Frustrated by conditions
Fisher has been also trying to raise enough money for a print shop for the artists. She's frustrated that the artists have to work in substandard conditions when the state-of-the-art Jessie Oonark Centre sits half empty in the community.
"Town council gives us verbal support," Fisher said. "but we need backed-up money. Baker Lake needs to preserve its artistic culture by having a print shop."
Fisher said they were hoping to buy the old pool building they're currently in and renovate, but council will only offer a $1-a-year lease for 20 years.
"If I'm looking for funding from different foundations, I don't want to ask for money for a building that belongs to the hamlet," Fisher said. "So again, they're homeless print makers."
Back to TopJOHN AMAGOALIK
There was a time when the Liberals regularly won elections by capturing almost all the seats in Quebec. Those days are gone. Now, the Liberals have moved their fortress next door to Ontario. Jean Chrétien and his Liberals won a majority in the House of commons by winning 101 of the 103 seats in Ontario.
Preston Manning and the Reform Party are now the official opposition. That was one of the party's objectives. The other objective being a national party was not achieved. They could not break through the Manitoba/Ontario border. All Reform seats are still from the West. Some Reformers will start thinking about finding a new leader if they are to expand to central and eastern Canada.
The Bloc Québécois was lucky to win 44 seats in Quebec. The separatist party ran a poor campaign but got an unexpected boost from questionable campaign advertising by the Reform camp. The Bloc will no longer be the official opposition and they can be expected to be much more nasty in the House of Commons. Gilles Duceppe will continue to be a weak leader.
Alexa McDonough and the New Democratic Party were not supposed to do this well. People thought they would be lucky to get between 12 and 15 seats and regain offical party status. They got 21 seats and will return to the House with renewed energy. A lot of eyes will be on McDonough for a while to see how she performs.
The most frustrated party leader has to be Jean Charest. He was the most popular of the individual party leaders. But this did not translate into seats. The Tories won 20 per cent of the popular vote and got 20 seats. The Reform Party got just 17 per cent of the popular vote and got 60 seats. The NDP got only 11 per cent of the popular vote and got 21 seats.
Mr. Charest, who called Preston Manning a bigot in the last days of the campaign, must now engage in a life-and-death struggle with the Reform Party in the House of Commons. Jean Chrétien, in his victory speech, made a special effort to praise Mr. Charest. The prime minister knows that Mr. Charest was a powerful force for the federalists in the last Quebec referendum and that he will need him in the next one.
The Little Guy from Shawinigan has done it again. He is the first Liberal prime minister to win back-to-back majorities in 44 years. But Mr. Chrétien is starting to look a little tired. This Little Corner predicts that, in January of 2000, Jean Chrétien will take a walk in a snowstorm and return to tell his wife Aline that he has decided to...
Back to Top
Our man Bailey
It was no contest. Michael Johnson knew, about half way through Sunday's race, that Donovan Bailey was going to embarrass him so he got "hurt" and couldn't continue the race. I guess we'll never know for sure about his injury, but we do know that Michael Johnson is not the world's fastest human.
I am writing this letter in response to your article, "Pond co-op to fight NCC construction deal" (Nunatsiaq News May 23).
It is time for me to stand up and be heard. I am from Pond Inlet, I spent 17 years of my life developing Toonoonik Sahoonik Co-op, and some of my best friends live there.
As a point of order, Nunasi Corp. is also a birthright development corporation. It is owned by each and every beneficiary in Nunavut. I disagree with Bill Umphrey's comment that the Nunavut Construction Corporation agreement does not protect small Inuit firms or guarantee Inuit participation in Nunavut's economic activities. Take the blinders off, Bill, and tell me, How else will Inuit of Nunavut possibly benefit from this infrastructure program?
I went to Pond Inlet and met with the hamlet council, and I disagree with Mr. Merkosak when he says that we did not provide satisfactory answers about who would benefit from the new construction. I am sure that his company and many other Inuit companies will have ample opportunity to participate. No one doubts their ability.
Mr. Merkosak is wrong if he thinks that NCC will "crush" smaller Inuit companies. The mandate of NCC is to build the infastructure for the Nunavut government, period. Nothing more, nothing less.
The fact is, if there weren't a company that was truly representative of all the Inuit of Nunavut, the Government of Canada would not be supportive of the project. The contracts would go to public tender, and the low bidder would win. There would not be any opportunity to share in ownership. We would lose the opportunity to register Inuit in apprenticeship programs and to keep them employed through to journeyman certification.
This program answers these needs like no other before it. For the first time, training money and programs are built into the deal. As well as certified journeymen, we should end up with qualified property managers, and maintainers.
I spoke to people in Pond Inlet who I have known for more than twenty years. They aren't concerned about which Inuit group owns the buildings. They worry about years of unemployment, they worry that some of their grown sons, married and with children, have never held a job.
It is time to stop fighting. It's not the Inuit way. Let's get on with the job and pull together to make it work.
Give us a chance to do it right. If we fail, then criticize us.
Fred Hunt
CEO, Nunasi Corporation
Yellowknife
Less than three weeks from now, a federal body that's supposed to act as a watchdog on our behalf will meet in Yellowknife for a public hearing.
At that June 24 gathering, they and others will talk about a new and complex telecommunications proposal that could take a lot of money out of our pockets for years to come.
The body we're talking about, of course, is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, know more conveniently as the CRTC.
The proposal they'll be talking about in Yellowknife was handed to them on May 30 by Northwestel.
In it, our phone company is proposing the means by which competing long-distance only telephone companies would offer services in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Yukon.
To be fair, that's not what Northwestel wants to do just yet, even though they've been preparing for competition in the long distance market for several years.
Northwestel along with the CRTC have been forced into the process by a company called Call-Net Enterprises Inc., which made a complaint to the CRTC on October 15, 1996.
Call-Net made two complaints. The first was that the CRTC is unfairly preventing Northwestel customers from gaining access to the benefits of long distance competition. The second was that the CRTC is unfairly preventing Call-Net from doing business in northern Canada.
Both of these, Call-Net asserts, violate the CRTC's own rules.
Call-Net is better known as Sprint Canada. If you watch a lot of cable television, you'll know that Sprint is the company that's flooding the southern airwaves with commercials advertising 10 cent a minute phone calls anywhere in the world.
So far so good. Don't we all want access to those kinds of rates? After all, southerners have enjoyed them for several years now. But there's a price.
That price is higher local phone rates. And in our small, fragile, high-cost market, that price could turn out to be too much too bear.
In Northwestel's May 30 plan, which we've just had a chance to look at, the company proposes that the basic monthly cost of having a telephone should rise to about $30 a month by the year 2000.
That includes a $4 a month local rate increase that Northwestel has aready applied for, and more local rate increases intended to offset the revenue they would lose when they begin to offer cheaper long distance rates.
In return, Northwestel says their long distance rates could be cut in half. By then, long distance only companies like Sprint could be offering long distance rates that are even cheaper at least, to people who are lucky enough to live in large centres like Iqaluit, Yellowknife or Whitehorse.
The CRTC has given Nunavut residents less than three weeks notice if they want to make oral submissions on Northwestel's plan. If you want to speak at the June 24 meeting in Yellowknife, you have to inform the CRTC by June 19.
Two days later, there's another "regional consulation" meeting, in Whitehorse, Yukon.
But CRTC officials aren't even bothering to hold a meeting in Nunavut, northern Canada's third territory the territory that depends upon telecommunications more than any other region of the country.
Yes, they say they'll connect interested Iqaluit residents to the gathering via a videoconferencing link that is, we suppose, if Northwestel's videoconference link actually works this time.
The CRTC needs to do better than to ignore the territory that's most affected by the decision they're now contemplating.
They need to hear that, although many businesses, organizations and individuals are likely to benefit from lower long distance rates, many ordinary people could be hurt by higher local phone rates.
The telephone is not just a tool for businesses and big government bureaucracies. It's an essential service to which all residents ought to have access. That includes access for the ailing elder who needs a phone that so he or she can call the nursing station, or the single mother on social assistance who needs a phone to call the police.
If local phone rates are too high, that access will be effectively denied to those who need it the most.
Companies like Sprint don't care much about those kinds of people. They're clearly interested only in skimming easy profits from large, relatively affluent communities like Yellowknife and Iqaluit.
But if they want to compete in our market, they should nonetheless be allowed. But only if the cheaper long distance rates they offer to the business person in Iqaluit are also available to the hunter's family in Grise Fiord.
And if the price of cheaper long distance means local phone rates that are more than most can pay, the whole idea should be either delayed, scrapped or re-evaluated.JB
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Last updated
June 6, 1997
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