Northern Public Affairs Special Issue 2013

Northern Public AffairsVolume 1 Special Issue 2013

PATHWAYS TO PROSPERITY

The Northern Governance & Economy

Conference

Building our future togetherDAVE RAMSAY

Co-managing the future?HAYDEN KING

The Northern economy:Lessons from industryDON BUBAR

Economic development: Striking the right balanceSTEPHEN KAKFWI

The economy, governance, & social sufferingSTEPHANIE IRLBACHER-FOX

Dechinta Bush University Student Plenary: A reportCOLE SMITH & DARCY LEIGH

Resource wealth:Opportunities & challengesDIANA GIBSON

Pathways to homelessnessJULIA CHRISTENSEN

northernpublicaffairs.ca

Northwest Territories Premier BOB MCLEOD on devolution & economic prosperity

An interview with TOMMY PALLISER on Inukjuak’s innovative Unaaq Men’s Association

FRANCES ABELE on challenges in understanding the new Northern economy

“The decision to sign the Agreement in Principle is ours, and ours alone.”

— Tłı̨chǫ Grand Chief Eddie Erasmus, after announcing that the Tłı̨chǫ Government would be a signatory to the

Devovultion Agreement in Principle, Feburary 28, 2013.

Northern Public AffairsSpecial Issue 2013

FEATURES

LETTER FROM THE EDITORSPathways to prosperity

MESSAGE FROM THE CO-CHAIRSStephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Willard Hagen,

& Stephen Kakfwi

OVERHEARDStatement by NWT MLA Daryl Dolynny

NORTHERN VOICESDevolution & economic prosperity

Premier Bob McLeod

Building our future togetherMinister Dave Ramsay

Beyond health careDr. Anna Reid

Economic developmentStephen Kakfwi

ARTICLES

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GOVERNANCECo-managing the future?

Hayden King

EDUCATIONDechinta Bush University Student Plenary

Cole Smith & Darcy Leigh

ECONOMYThe Northern economy:

Lessons from industryDon Bubar

ECONOMYChallenges in understanding

the Northern EconomyFrances Abele

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ECONOMYResource wealth:

Opportunities & challengesDiana Gibson

SOCIETYThe economy, governance, & social suffering

Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox

THE ESSAYPathways to homelessness

Julia Christensen

IN CONVERSATIONRaising-up hunters & protectors once again:

The Unaaq Men’s AssocationStephanie Irblacher-Fox & Tommy Palliser

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Nunavut Research Institute (Nunavut Arctic College)

Yukon Research Centre (Yukon College)

Aurora Research Institute (Aurora College)

Carleton Centre for Community Innovation (Carleton University)

Northern Public AffairsVolume 1 Special Issue 2013

Guest EditorsStephanie Irlbacher-Fox

Hayden King

Founding EditorsJoshua GladstoneSheena Kennedy

Jerald Sabin

Advisory BoardFrances Abele (Cantley, Québec)

Joanne Barnaby (Hay River, Northwest Territories)Kenn Harper (Iqaluit, Nunavut)

Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories)Mary Ellen Thomas (Iqaluit, Nunavut)Valoree Walker (Whitehorse, Yukon)

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory (Iqaluit, Nunavut)

Copy EditorsKyle Kirkup

Layout DesignJerald Sabin

Northern Public Affairs is made possible by the generous support of the Northern research community.

Supporters

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via email to [email protected], or by mail to Northern Public Affairs P.O. Box 517, Stn. B, Ottawa, ON CANADA K1P 5P6. Letters may be edited for length andclarity, and may be published in any medium. All letters become property of Northern Public Affairs and will not be returned.

VOLUME 1, SPECIAL ISSUE, March 11, 2013. NORTHERN PUBLIC AFFAIRS (ISSN pending) is published three times a year by NorthernPublic Affairs. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Visit www.northernpublicaffairs.ca/index.

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FEATURES

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Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, circa 1980.

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hat a conference! It was the type of gath-ering where conversations at breaks were

about polar bear hunting or the utility of Facebook in advancing discussion about social policy. In fact, those were also some topics on the formal agenda of the conference! So the conference was unique, to say the least. Unique not only in content, but also struc-ture — bringing together community members, po-litical and business leaders, and academics — rare connections made in a format that in retrospect is absolutely critical to a “big picture” understanding that the Pathways to Prosperity: Northern Gover-nance and Economy Conference attempted to de-velop.

This special issue of Northern Public Affairs rep-resents our efforts to distill and crystallize the conver-sations emerging from this unique and educational conference. Broadly disseminating the conference results through NPA seemed an obvious partnership: the magazine provides a much — needed forum for analysis, discussion and debate on issues that occur in, or affect, the North. The content of this spe-cial issue focuses on elements of the “big picture” insights about many large-scale processes currently unfolding, such as the transformation of governance institutions and the even more rapid transformation

of the economy. However it was the personal — the human — dimension, that caught our attention and that we’ve also included here.

For all of the North’s dependence on a re-source extraction economy and the potential ben-efits it may bring, the lived experience in the NWT seems to be this: those benefits are not felt in a sus-tained, positive way in the small communities out-side of Yellowknife. We heard about the atrocious housing conditions, people without the cash to feed their children, schools that are dilapidated and un-derstaffed, parents demoralized and desperate: for jobs, for a house, for a break. The NWT’s resource dependence has created a boom and bust economy. And it is likely that people will suffer. Even in this period of boom and excitement surrounding large-scale resource extraction projects, there is the very real possibility that little will change with respect to the desperate circumstances we see in small commu-nities. Yet, there are alternative possibilities.

Flowing from these personal stories was a cor-responding theme of resilience and community ac-tion: community members talking about their situ-ation and what they are willing to do about it. We heard about the aforementioned Facebook pages established to highlight housing (and related) chal-

5Northern Public Affairs, Special Issue 2013

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Pathways to prosperityStephanie Irlbacher-Fox & Hayden King, Guest Editors

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A scene from the Sahtu, Northwest Territories, 2012.

lenges. We heard about community efforts to create telecommunications infrastructure. We heard about Dene, Gwich’in and Kasho Got’ine efforts to build economic and cultural independence, and about a land-based university focused on decolonizing ed-ucation and reinforcing connections to the land. People are doing what they can. These are ordinary people faced with extraordinary hardships and ob-stacles. Their responses are as creative as they are inspiring. But they could use help.

Political leaders and other officials might put safeguards in place — tested, common sense, do-able safeguards. These might include a permanent stabilization fund; innovation funding programs that have only one criteria - communities addressing their needs in their own ways; revisiting royalty rates; and fixing our system of governance. All of the above, and more, were solutions identified at our Confer-ence and could go some ways to helping those alien-ated from the benefits of the current boom.

We’ve included some of these novel ideas in this special issue of Northern Public Affairs. General-ly this Issue details problems, innovations, solutions, and many, many options for policy makers — and

voters — to think about and maybe even act upon. While the Issue makes ample room for articles about managing the Northern economy, jurisdiction over resources, land claim settlements, and so on, it also focuses on the often overlooked but critically import-ant human dimension. The implication of this, as one of the articles in this issue notes, is that it might be time to re-evaulate what we consider “prosperity” in the North.◉

Dr. Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox is a Research Associate with the Institute of Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife and also holds appointments as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Political Science. She is a Research Associate with the Canadian Circumpolar Institute at the University of Alberta; and a Research Associate at the Ste-fansson Arctic Institute, Iceland.

Hayden King is Anishinaabe and Assisant Professor of Political Science at Ryerson University.

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NORTHERN GOVERNANCE & ECONOMY CONFERENCE

Message from the Co-chairsStephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Willard Hagen & Stephen Kakfwi

he Northern Governance and Economy Con-ference was held in part to bring together the

diverse players essential to the health and future of our economy, here in the Northwest Territories. Academics, community activists, government offi-cials, students, and Indigenous representatives were brought together to talk about the relationship be-tween governance and social and economic wellness.

Over three days the participants covered top-ics as diverse as the environmental and social im-pacts of fracking to the implications of devolution and regulatory reform for the future of the NWT economy. Discussions were punctuated with keynote

speeches that touched on issues such as economic development, social determinants of health, educa-tion and Indigenous youth, and policy implications of resource-based economies.

Seeing all of this through the eyes of Indigenous peoples living in the small, often fly-in communities of the Northwest Territories forced participants to think about these issues in different ways. Frances Wolki from Paulatuk, who started a Facebook page advocating for safe and affordable housing in her community, bring forward some of the challenges community people are now facing. The housing sit-uation is getting desperate, food is often too expen-

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sive to buy in communities where unemployment and poverty is rampant, and the impacts of resource extraction projects threaten to drive up living costs even more while also interrupting wildlife migra-tions and consequently the ability for people to go out on the land to feed their families. As Co-chair Willard Hagen mentioned in his opening remarks, wage earners provide the much needed resources to purchase hunting supplies. One working person can support four other families. Of course, considering

this reveals a paradox. In some cases wages to sup-port hunting may come from the very resource ex-traction projects that irrevocably change migration routes (often long after projects have been shut down and companies have moved on).

During his talk, co-chair Stephen Kakfwi called for a return to policies of compassion, where com-munication and relationships are the foundation of decision making and where major decisions shaping governance and the economy are ones where all governments in the Northwest Territories, Indig-enous and public, are working toward shared pri-orities in a cooperative and respectful way. In part, he said this requires standing up for the people and their interests. The reality is that this may not always align with business. However at the same time, it is important to recognize that in many cases industry is working on improving the relationship. Both Ab-original and non-Aboriginal businesses are engaging in innovative and respectful approaches to meeting the stated interests of communities regarding eco-nomic development and control over its direction. Equity stakes in projects, impact benefit agreements, and training programs are all efforts that conference participants had opportunities to discuss using re-cent examples in the NWT.

Finally, co-chair Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox noted that innovation is key to a prosperous future in the North and must also be coupled with what she iden-

tified as the need to target the sources of the social suffering prevalent in communities across the North-west Territories. She suggested that policies predi-cated on colonization — state control and decision making being privileged over the rights and author-ity of Indigenous peoples — will continue to pro-duce suffering, no matter the efforts to combat so-cial ills through other means. These sentiments were echoed by the President of the Canadian Medical Association, Yellowknife physician Anna Reid, who

spoke about the criti-cal link between social determinants of health and economic prosper-ity: they are indivisible.

For conference par-ticipants, the discussion and various panel pre-sentations over the three days in Yellowknife provided an overview of current research on critical issues affecting the North. Moreover,

the insights and experiences of community mem-bers hopefully forced those in attendance to re-think both the approaches to policy-making in the North as well as the potential impacts of social and eco-nomic initiatives over the long term.

The conference has started a conversation. It has led to a heightened awareness that we hope will shape policy choices for the long-term benefit of the people of the Northwest Territories.◉

Dr. Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox is a Research Associate with the Institute of Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife and also holds appointments as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Political Science; Research Associate with the Canadian Circumpolar Institute at the University of Alberta; and Research Associate at the Stefansson Arctic Institute, Iceland.

Willard Hagen is of Gwich’in ancestry and was born in Tsiigehtchic and raised in the Travaillant River area. He completed his formal education in Wildlife Management in Inuvik. Mr. Hagen established Aklak Air in the late 1970s and has been a bush pilot and owner/operator for 30 years.

Stephen Kakfwi served as the ninth Premier of the North-west Territories (2000-2003), and as Dene Nation Presi-dent (1983-1987).

8 Northern Public Affairs, Special Issue 2013

The conference has started a conversation. It has led to a heightened awareness that we hope shape policy choices for the long-term benefit of the people of the Northwest Territories.

On October 19, 2012 Mr. Daryl Donlynny (Range Lake) spoke about the Northern Governance and Economy Confer-

ence during his Member’s Statement.

hank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week in Yel-lowknife I had the pleasure of attend-

ing the Northern Governance and Econom-ic Prosperity Conference that brought together Indigenous Northern government, business leaders, policymakers, social activists and econ-omists under the theme Pathways to Prosperity.

The premise of the conference was to reflect on Northern political institutions that could change to better adapt to various governance authorities while balancing the social and economic challeng-es. This was a tall task, but I must praise the work of the conference co-chairs, Mr. Willard Hagen, Dr. Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox and our former Pre-mier Mr. Stephen Kakfwi for an outstanding job.

Both our Premier and Minister Ramsay had keynote addresses to the conference delegates. One key line that resonated well by Premier McLeod was: “We want a territory where strong Northern gov-

ernments work together in the best interests of all people of the Northwest Territories, while exercising their own authorities and respecting each other’s ju-risdiction.” I commend the Premier for his consistent and strong message on behalf of the 17th Assembly.

I was also taken back by the size and the scope of the conference topics such as social suffering, man-aging and creating capacity, fracking, resource man-agement and economic wellness. It was clear that the overarching theme of finding pathways to prosper was indeed befitting, given the economic setbacks faced by many in the Northwest Territories. One par-ticular session I attended was called “Can territorial government foster economic wellness?” Particularly interesting was the premise that one could measure our economy by virtue of its wellness or social well-ness. In essence, these governments that strive for strong social wellness behaviour had a much better capacity for achieving a stronger economic future; a simple message but a very meaningful outcome.

Finding ways to balance amidst poverty, po-litical development and economic opportuni-ty is no small feat. Yet, I believe this conference captured quite nicely all the major roadblocks at work while keeping a lens on prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, again, my congratulations for all the hard work behind the scenes in preparing for such a large-scale and successful conference. The delegates have all returned home and I know that many of them are using their newly minted tools for a better Northwest Territories. Thank you.◉

OVERHEARD

Statement by NWT MLA Daryl Dolynny

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hank you, I would like to welcome you to this conference on Northern governance and

the economy on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories. I am pleased to see so many people here with an interest in the long term eco-nomic and social well-being of the people of the Northwest Territories.

We live in 33 communities spread over several regions. We share the territory with seven regional Aboriginal governments. We all have our own man-dates, priorities and interests unique to each of our groups. Sometimes our individual priorities align with each other and sometimes it is more difficult to find consensus on specific issues.

No matter where we live or what group we represent, we all want to see a prosperous, self-suf-ficient territory that provides opportunities for all Northwest Territories residents in their communi-ties and regions. We want a territory where people are healthy and educated and free from poverty and addictions. We want a territory where Northerners make the decisions about the things that affect us. We want a territory where our environment is pro-tected and a strong economy provides the financial resources we need to fund programs and services, look after our land and care for our residents. And we want a territory where strong Northern govern-ments work together in the best interests of all the people of the Northwest Territories, while exercis-ing their own authorities and respecting each other’s jurisdiction.

And we can have these things. The Northwest Territories has the potential to be a prosperous, self-sufficient territory that is a net contributor to the Canadian economy. The Conference Board of Canada recently reported that Canada’s Northern territories will lead the country in economic growth over the next two years.

The Northwest Territories’ economy is forecast to grow by more than seven percent in 2012 and 2013 — well above the Canadian average of two percent.

With development of the Mackenzie Gas Pipe-line, the Conference Board predicts that our GDP will rise to $9.6 billion by 2020.

We have a wealth of mineral potential. Spend-

ing on mineral exploration was up by 30 percent last year and is expected to grow again. There are sev-en projects currently in the works, including Avalon Rare Metals’ Thor Lake project, which is the larg-est rare earth deposit outside China. Together, these seven projects could attract more than $2 billion in new investment and add over 2000 new jobs in the Northwest Territories.

We export $2 billion in diamonds annually and have seen increased production at Diavik and Snap Lake. With Gahcho Kue on the horizon and global demand for diamonds in China and India strong, we can expect this sector to remain an important part of the Northwest Territories economy.

And of course, there is our oil and gas sector. Approximately 16.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.2 billion barrels of oil have already been dis-covered in our territory. This is only a small part of our estimated potential of 81 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and nearly 7 billion barrels of oil.

In addition, there are substantial offshore re-serves of oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. Less than a year ago, the federal government issued 11 exploration licenses in the Sahtu representing $534.2 million in work bids for this world class play. And since 2008 industry committed to spend $2.1 billion to develop offshore leases in the Beaufort Sea.

Our government also continues to support the development of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a proj-ect of national significance that could contribute $68 million to the Northwest Territories economy, $86 billion to the Canadian economy and create over 200,000 person years of employment.

The proposed Mackenzie Valley Highway will realize the long-held goal of connecting Canada from sea to sea to sea. It would open up our com-munities and help promote the development of a diversified and sustainable economy along its route. We think this project will benefit the people of the Northwest Territories and have already committed money to begin work on the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk portion of the highway, in partnership with the Gov-ernment of Canada.

Yet while we are a territory of tremendous op-portunity, it is our unique Northern irony that we also face tremendous challenges. In spite of this

NORTHERN VOICES

Devolution & economic prosperityPremier Bob McLeod

Northern Public Affairs, Special Issue 2013

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The Honourable Bob McLeod

potential wealth, the people of the Northwest Ter-ritories still struggle with unemployment, poverty, housing and infrastructure challenges and high cost of living.

These are challenges that we need to address if we want to realize our potential and set ourselves on the pathways to prosperity that this conference

is examining.Economic development and social development

go hand-in-hand. A prosperous territory is a territo-ry that has the resources to fund the programs that will help our people realize their own aspirations and to live in dignity. Working to create a strong, di-versified and sustainable economy that provides op-

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portunities and benefits to all our residents in their communities and regions is a key goal for the Gov-ernment of the Northwest Territories.

Development of our natural resources has the potential to improve the lives of our residents and make the Northwest Territories a “have” jurisdic-tion, but it must be managed properly. We need to make sure that our people are the primary benefi-ciaries of development in the Northwest Territories and we need to make sure we are able to control and mitigate potentially negative impacts.

Our experience shows us that this is possible. In recent years, the Government of the Northwest Territories has worked hard to ensure that resource development in our territory creates benefits for our people. We have negotiated socioeconomic agree-ments with the diamond mines that have helped en-sure that our residents enjoy a share of the benefits of development. We have supported the negotiation of impact benefit agreements with local Aboriginal communities.

Development of our resources can be one of the pathways to prosperity for our territory. And that means that development must be sustainable. It must be consistent with Northern priorities and val-ues. And development must be managed by North-erners for Northerners.

Getting management right means getting gov-ernance right.

We need political and regulatory institutions that give the people of the Northwest Territories a real opportunity to make decisions about the things that affect them. We need to find ways to work to-gether with Aboriginal governments to identify shared priorities and create a consensus on how we move forward in the best interests of our residents. And, most importantly, we need to secure Northern control over the public lands and resources that form the basis of our future wealth and prosperity.

As we consider how to create a prosperous fu-ture for ourselves, I think it is important that we also look to our past.

Understanding how our political institutions have evolved will inform our vision for the future governance of the Northwest Territories. For years, territorial affairs were governed by a Commission-er in Ottawa and an appointed Council of advisors who were federal government employees.

It was not until 1975 that all members of the council were elected by Northwest Territories resi-dents. The Council was officially renamed the Leg-islative Assembly at this time.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the Commis-sioner and Deputy Commissioner began to transfer

more of their responsibilities to elected Members of the Executive Council, until — in 1986 — the Com-missioner turned the Chair over to the then-Govern-ment Leader.

While our government became truly responsi-ble to an elected Assembly in 1986, the powers of that Assembly were still limited to specific areas. Control over education, health care, forestry and highways have been devolved to the Government of the Northwest Territories over the years since 1986. The last major authority to be devolved is by far the most important to us — and has proven to be the most difficult to attain.

Unlike the provinces and Yukon, the people of the Northwest Territories do not control their own public lands and resources, including rights in re-spect of water. Decisions on whether and how to develop public lands and resources in the Northwest Territories are still made by the Government of Canada. Resource royalties from that development flow straight to Ottawa, rather than directly benefit-ing the people of the Northwest Territories.

While the Government of the Northwest Terri-tories has assumed responsibility for all other areas of province-like jurisdiction, responsibility for lands and resources, including water, remains beyond our grasp. We believe the transfer of this responsibility from Canada to our government is overdue.

Unless we have devolution, decisions about how Northern lands and resources are developed will continue to be made in Ottawa. We may have a voice in the decision-making process, but being one of many voices is not the same thing as being the ones who make the decision. Without devolution, we can never be sure that decisions to develop Northern land and resources will be consistent with Northern priorities.

We will not be able to ensure that we, the peo-ple who live here, are the ones who benefit the most from those decisions.

Devolution of lands and resources, including rights in respect of water, to a more local, responsi-ble and accountable territorial government will re-sult in decisions that better reflect the priorities and goals of the people of the North. Devolution will be the key to ensuring that development in the North-west Territories is controlled by Northerners and is in the best interests of all our residents.

For more than ten years now, the Government of the Northwest Territories has been working with the regional Aboriginal governments to negotiate a devolution agreement with Canada.

Four out of seven Aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories have joined our govern-


ment and the Government of Canada in signing the Devolution Agreement-in-Principle first signed in January 2011. We are having active discussions with the remaining three Aboriginal Governments. Negotiations are now nearing their end and we look forward to concluding a final agreement on devolu-tion shortly.

The transfer of responsibility for public lands and resources from Canada to the Government of the Northwest Territories will be a significant de-velopment in the history of Northern governance. In some ways, devolution will mark the beginning of a new phase in the continuing story of political evolution that has characterized the history of our territory.

After devolution, the Government of the North-west Territories will be one of several governments in our territory with an interest in how Northern lands and resources are managed, protected and de-veloped. Regional Aboriginal governments will have their own interests and priorities, as well as jurisdic-tion over their own lands.

As part of our devolution negotiations, we have committed to formalizing an intergovernmental relationship that will allow the Government of the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal Governments to work together on land and water management. This will let us work co-operatively together in a way that respects our individual jurisdiction, but also recognizes that we have many common interests as Northern governments, while making sure we serve the best interests of all our residents.

While we understand and respect that some Ab-original governments do not feel that they can sign the AIP and participate in the devolution process now, this does not mean we cannot work together in other areas.

Co-operation has long been a tradition in the North. In a harsh environment with few people, you need to be able to pull together and rely on your neighbours for survival. Working together has al-ways been the way Northerners have done things and it continues to be the way that the Government of the Northwest Territories does business.

We lead the country in ongoing and formal en-gagement with regional Aboriginal governments. We are the only jurisdiction in Canada to have gov-ernment-to-government relations with our Aborigi-nal governments and it is reflected in all our activi-ties and operations.

These activities all reflect our ongoing com-mitment to collaborative decision making and en-gagement with our Aboriginal governments. This commitment was underscored this past June with

the release of our Aboriginal Engagement Strategy, Respect, Recognition, Responsibility, which sets out eight principles of engagement that our government is committed to:

There are also principles with respect to sharing information and knowledge, helping to build capac-ity, enhancing our government’s participation at an-nual general assemblies and other important events, and establishing regular formal meetings with each Aboriginal government in the Northwest Territories.

In our eighth and final principle, we continue our commitment to working with Aboriginal gov-ernments to ensure responsible stewardship over Northwest Territories lands, water and air.

We are determined to create conditions for suc-cess that work to the benefit of all Northwest Ter-ritories residents. We are actively negotiating and settling land claims, and creating certainty of rights and process for Aboriginal people.

I am not going to stand here today and say that we have all the answers. The evolution of gover-nance in the Northwest Territories is very much a work in progress. We will continue to look for new and innovative approaches that will help us build a strong and prosperous future for our residents based on strong working relationships with Aboriginal gov-ernments, community governments, non-govern-mental organizations, business, and industry.

I hope your discussions are productive and I look forward to hearing more about them at the conclusion of your conference.◉

Premier Bob McLeod is the twelth Premier of the Northwest Terri-tories. He has served as MLA for Yellowknife South since 2007.


• We recognize and affirm the Aboriginal and Trea-ty rights of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples in the first principle.

• We recognize the inherent right of self-government as an existing Aboriginal right under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

• We commit to building mutually respectful govern-ment-to-government relationships.

• We recognize all existing Aboriginal Right Agree-ments and commit to using them as the basis for en-gagement with Aboriginal governments.

• We respect the diverse governance structures of Northwest Territories Aboriginal governments and we will be open in engaging with the different gov-ernments and communities that exist within each region.

• We commit to building responsible and accountable government-to-government relationships that are re-sponsive and flexible.

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ood afternoon to all of you here today and thank you for the invitation to speak on this

last day of the conference. We have a world of opportunity within our

grasp — now, more than ever, is the time to pave the way to that opportunity, or the “Pathway to Prosper-ity” as this event is so aptly themed.

This week, we have had an opportunity to hear from many people — respected Aboriginal leaders, community role models and people from various lev-els of government. We have also had the opportuni-ty to learn from an academic perspective, and the case studies they have shared with this group are a valuable way for us to learn from each other and im-portant to consider when working together to move our economy forward.

How appropriate it is to have a conference about governance and the economy in the North. Here — more than anywhere else — they must be considered together. Especially so in light of our overwhelming resource potential and ongoing land claim and self-government processes. Here, where the authority to make decisions about the way pub-lic lands and resource revenues are managed is still beyond our grasp.

When considering governance and the econo-my, a host of questions comes to mind:

These are tough questions that will require tough decisions — decisions that we need to make in order to fully realize our true economic potential.

Sound governance will be the key. But govern-ment and the GNWT is only one element of this

evolution. We need only to look around this room to see all of the different players that must contribute to the sound governance of our Territory. By defi-nition, good governance is participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, ef-fective and efficient, equitable and inclusive, and fol-lows the rule of law.

That is why it’s so important that all of you are here today — representing such a broad range of interests and providing feedback and input on where we are going and how we can get there.

We have heard that the first lesson in sound gov-ernance is to know your objective — what do we want to achieve and how can we achieve it? As the GNWT Minister of Industry, Tourism and Invest-ment, I can tell you that the same is true of the econ-omy.

So what is the vision or the goal that guides our investment, our capacity building and our agen-da for economic development? Knowing that will guide and focus our decision making — and in turn — provide a context in which to evaluate these de-cisions.

The overarching vision of the 17th Legislative Assembly is to have strong individuals, families and communities sharing the benefits and responsibil-ities of a unified, environmentally sustainable and prosperous territory.

In terms of the economy, we have set the goal: to establish a diversified economy that provides all communities and regions with opportunities and choices.

We have set about to do this — in part — by working with our partners to ensure responsible stewardship through our land and resource manage-ment regime, by making sound strategic infrastruc-ture investments and by supporting the growth of businesses and industries that will work to diversify our economy.

That is why we are leading the development of an Economic Development Strategy. A sustainable economic development strategy will give us the op-portunity to keep pace with the incredible growth potential that our territory has, to ensure we are po-sitioned to guide and manage this investment and growth, and to use it to build capacity in our com-

NORTHERN VOICES

Building our future togetherMinister Dave Ramsay


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• What resources do we develop, and how do we en-sure they are developed sustainably?

• How do we continue to have a healthy economy after diamonds?

• What dollar value do we give our traditional lands and harvesting, and how does it compare to the pay cheque that comes with a wage economy?

• How do we consider everyone’s input to reach a con-sensus that will be mutually beneficial? And is there a middle ground that can be found?

• How do we find the best ways to work together to de-volve decision making from the federal government?

• What long-term objectives do we have for our econ-omy, our people and our future?

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The Honourable Dave Ramsay.

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munities and self-sufficiency among our people. This strategy is an investment in our economy as

much as it is an investment in diversification. Yes, we have a wealth of resource potential, but we also need to expand our tourism sector, explore additional op-portunities for small businesses and consider how traditional activities such as hunting and trapping contribute to our economy.

Care will be taken to ensure the strategy is re-sponsive to changing economic circumstances in the territory, creates an increased awareness of business opportunities in all regions of the NWT, and recog-nizes the need to maintain sustainable development best practices.

It will also take into account that some commu-nities in the NWT live and prefer a traditional life-style. For these communities, the focus of the strate-gy will be on self-sufficiency, such as finding ways to reduce imports — mainly fuel, increase local food production and to maintain and improve local hous-ing and other community services.

Also, we recognize that while we have a wealth of resources, our economy is often dependent on market forces beyond our control and vulnerable to boom and bust cycles. With this in mind, we are also working to expand the nature and scope of our resource development with a Mineral Development Strategy.

Mineral exploration and development has driv-en our economy and presented us with unprecedent-ed opportunities for investment, employment and business development. This has been especially true for our Northern Aboriginal communities.

In fact, the mineral development sector employs hundreds of NWT residents and results in more than half a billion dollars in annual purchases from NWT businesses.

A mineral development strategy will guide deci-sion-making for mineral development in the future. It will provide a framework to ensure our mineral resources continue to be developed in a way that benefits NWT residents, ensures development is sus-tainable, and upholds our commitment to protect the environment.

We must find the right balance between our need for development and our protection of the en-vironment in which we live.

Our approach so far has been to maximize the benefits of our resource development by building business capacity in our communities, corporations and businesses, and investing in the education and skill development of our youth who will eventually guide its growth. We have had success in these areas, but we need a long-term plan.

A long term plan for mineral development will demonstrate certainty and stability during this time of devolution negotiations and transition and serve to increase industry confidence and exploration ex-penditures in our region. We only need to look at the activity going on in the Sahtu region to get an idea of what happens when development occurs. Employment is at an all-time high and businesses are seeing their highest profits in years as a result of industry exploration and local spending.

This initiative complements our work on a com-prehensive Economic Development Strategy. And, like the work we are completing on that project, the development of this strategy will be a collaborative effort.

For both strategies, we will work closely with our partners and incorporate input from Aboriginal governments, communities, industry, small business-es, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and North-ern Development Canada, the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, the Canadian Northern Eco-nomic Development Agency, the Northern Aborig-inal Business Association, the NWT Chamber of Commerce, the NWT Association of Communities, and NWT residents to ensure their long-term suc-cess. This extensive engagement process will ensure that all voices are heard and that these strategies can work as a guide for all regions across the territory.

Many of you here today will be actively involved in the development of these strategies to ensure they are balanced and responsive to the needs of the peo-ple we serve.

We also know that infrastructure is essential for economic development — infrastructure to support economic growth, infrastructure to prepare for nat-ural resource development, and infrastructure to connect our communities and increase access to es-sential goods and services. The Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to improving the lives of NWT residents through strategic infrastruc-ture investments. I would like to provide you with some details on a few strategic infrastructure proj-ects underway aimed at achieving this territory’s full potential.

As I said at the opening of the new Colville Lake airport earlier this week, economic opportunities ac-company infrastructure development. Investing in infrastructure stimulates job creation and makes our economy more competitive in the long term.

As we speak here today, the finishing touches are being put on the Deh Cho Bridge. This will be the largest piece of transportation infrastructure in the NWT. The historic opening will herald a new era of all-season access connecting the economic potential


on both sides of the river. Another key piece of infrastructure is the pro-

posed Mackenzie highway. Premier McLeod men-tioned this during his address at the beginning of this conference, but its importance cannot be over-stated. Once constructed, the Mackenzie Valley Highway will run all the way from Alberta to Tuk-toyaktuk, and will be the first all-weather road to the Arctic Ocean. The Mackenzie Valley all-weather high-way project will enable our territo-ry to grow stronger and become more self-sustaining.

The highway will strengthen con-nections between our communities, significantly reduce the cost of doing business in the Mackenzie Valley, and increase the opportunities for resource development in our Territory. It will facilitate other strategic infrastruc-ture projects, such as the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline and the installation of a fibre optic cable, which will share a common corridor with the highway’s proposed alignment. Residents along the highway route will experience better access to essential ser-vices, increased mobility, a lower cost of living and increased economic development opportunities.

In a similar vein, Investments in the Inuvik-Tuk-toyaktuk highway will help to support sustainable de-velopment in the region, including oil and gas, and mining projects. The Inuvik-Tuk highway points to a future in which our residents can expect to reap the benefits of increased development in currently remote regions, supported by reliable, year-round road access.

No wonder it is characterized by the federal gov-ernment as a “project of national significance” and important to the country’s position on security, sov-ereignty, and economic development.

In addition to these infrastructure investments, we are also investing in energy improvements that will provide lower-cost and environmentally friendly power to our residents and our businesses - lowering the cost of living for our residents and making in-vestment in the Northwest Territories more feasible and more attractive.

This is the thinking behind what we as a gov-ernment are doing to strengthen and diversify our economy — and to promote sustainable economic growth in our communities and across the territory.

We all have respective responsibilities to help

build the economic capacity of our Territory and its people. If we acknowledge that improving the quality of decision making is essential for econom-ic development, then developing governance of this scope and significance will be a true test of our col-lective abilities to continue to provide the leadership our territory needs.

None of us can do it alone. Instead we need to

apply this common economic objective and uncover our respective roles in governance. This includes the federal government, Aboriginal governments, the Government of the Northwest Territories, industry and nongovernmental organizations.

The North needs development. Our social real-ity dictates that we need to provide an economy on which to establish a vibrant and sustainable North. And, obviously, this development must be governed by the people of the NWT. As much as we recognize zero development is not an option, zero Northern control is not an option either.

Premier Bob McLeod’s words on devolution really ring true. Only when issues affecting North-west Territories residents are decided and dealt with in the territory, can the people of the NWT have a greater say in the decisions required to move devel-opment forward. As I noted at the Sahtu exploration readiness session a few weeks ago — and using the words of my colleague, Mr. Norman Yakeleya — the best way to guide our future is to be at the table.

I hope this conference has given us an under-standing, an opportunity, and the motivation to fur-ther develop a governance structure where we all have respective yet complementary roles to play.

Working together, I’m confident that we will un-lock the immense potential of our territory and clear the path to prosperity.

Thank you.◉

Minister Dave Ramsay is Northwest Territories Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and Minister of Transportation. He has served as MLA for Kam Lake since 2003.


The North needs development. Our social reality dictates that we need to provide an economy on which to establish a vibrant and sus-

tainable North. And, obviously, this development must be governed by the people of the NWT. As much as we recognize zero development

is not an option, zero Northern control is not an option either.

n August, the Canadian Medical Association held our annual General Council meeting in

Yellowknife. It was quite historic for us as it was the first time in the 145-year history of the CMA that we held our annual meeting in the Northwest Terri-tories. Close to 800 delegates, guests and members of the media made the trek up here. It was an as-tounding success, in large part thanks to the fantastic hospitality of the community and entire territory.

Mounting an event like this was not without its challenges, but I think it was really useful for physi-cians from down south to actually understand the kinds of challenges Northerners face on a daily ba-sis. The challenges posed by distance, harsh climate, lack of educational opportunities, income disparity — these are barriers not just to one-time business conferences like our General Council, but to long-term prosperity and also to health. Yet there can be no pathway to prosperity without a healthy popula-tion.

For several years, the CMA has been on a drive to transform our health care system. Recently we have expanded this focus on transforming the sys-tem to also encompass the social determinants of health. Today I would like to talk about some of the barriers to good health, the social determinants of health, and what we can do to address them.

While recognition of the social determinants of health is nothing new, there appears to be a growing appreciation of the impact on health outcomes of

broader societal factors, such as housing, food secu-rity, employment, education, income, clean air and water.

In fact, most of these determinants have a far greater impact on health outcome than the health care system itself, which ranks way down the list. Following a passionate discussion at General Coun-cil on the role that physicians can play in helping address all of these factors which make people sick in the first place, the CMA is planning action in a number of areas.

These include incorporating formal teaching in medical schools on health equity; providing leader-ship training for students and young physicians and teaching them how to become advocates for their patients; and developing tool kits for practising phy-sicians on how they can advocate for patients in their practice and how they can start to advocate at the community level.

We are also urging the federal government to view all of its cabinet policy decisions through the lens of their impact on health — what we would call a Health Impact Assessment framework. This is an approach that is already being used in several other countries.

Sadly, Yellowknife is as good a place as anywhere in Canada to see the impact of health inequities on our health outcomes. Every day in the emergency department I see patients in desperate circumstanc-es, lacking housing, affordable nutritious foods, and

NORTHERN VOICES

Beyond health care:Healthy communities begin with listening

Dr. Anna Reid

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Dr. Anna Reid, Canadian Medical Association President, 2012.

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both adequate income and education.Many of these issues are a legacy of colonialism

and the residential school system. Many of them are also tied to mental health and addiction issues, but that is only part of the story. Last year, a group of physicians met with Tom Beaulieu, the NWT Min-ister of Health and Social Services, to discuss health issues in the North. What Minister Beaulieu spoke almost exclusively about was jobs and housing and what immense challenges they are in Northern com-munities.

There is no point talking about a health care delivery system if we do not address these other is-sues. Just consider a few facts about the housing sit-uation here in the NWT. The NWT has the highest percentage of households in Canada with houses in need of major repairs — double the national aver-age. A worker at minimum wage in the Northwest Territories makes about $1,200 per month after tax-es, while a one bedroom apartment in this city costs $1,300 per month. More than five percent of wom-en in the Northwest Territories are homeless, and in smaller NWT communities up to half of households have an income of less than $30,000 a year.

What does all of this have to do with health? In a word, it has everything to do with health and cer-tainly physicians see the correlation each day. The evidence goes well beyond the anecdotal. In a poll conducted for the CMA this summer, only four in 10 Canadians earning less than $30,000 per year de-scribed their health as very good or excellent com-pared to seven in 10 of those earning $60,000 or more. This was a 30-point gap; whereas only three years ago the gap between the two income groups was 17 percentage points.

Further, nearly half of respondents with house-hold incomes of $30,000 or less reported spending less time, energy and money sustaining their health as the economy slowed compared with 20 percent of those from households with incomes of $60,000 or more.

As we all know, Aboriginal health outcomes are by a long shot the worst in the country. There are huge costs attached to these disparities, most of all human suffering and wasted potential, but there are also costs to our social safety net and our health care system.

A report last year from the National Council of Welfare citing research from the Public Health Agency of Canada, said that about 20 percent of health care spending in Canada can be attributed to socio-economic disparities. It noted that a homeless person in Calgary, for example, can run up $42,000 in annual costs at emergency shelters. Should that

person end up in a psychiatric hospital or prison, the cost goes up to about $120,000. In contrast, if we gave that homeless person access to supportive hous-ing and social services it would cost between $13, 000 - $18,000 a year — what a savings and what a change in that person’s quality of life.

We know that one of the great equalizers in life is early childhood education and development and from this I mean from birth to age five, before we hit the school system. Unfortunately, Canada lags far behind in this important area of investing in human capital, which is so vital to developing a capable and productive workforce.

You might be wondering why, as the president of an association representing 77,000 doctors, I am talking about poverty, housing, education and ear-ly childhood development. I say, how could I not? If we care about our patients, how could physicians not be concerned about the factors that are causing people to be ill in the first place? How, as leaders in our communities and members of a privileged profession, could we not speak out for a better and healthier society? Turning a blind eye is not why I became a doctor.

The medical profession has been accused of being patronizing towards patients, often rightly so. I am hopful things will start to change. More and more of us regard our relationship to patients as more of a partnership. However, we still have a long way to go. We need to learn how to listen to our patients even if they articulate in ways that we do not clearly understand. To paraphrase Sir William Osler, who was one of the greatest physicians in the history of medicine, “Listen to the patient and he will give you the diagnosis.”

From Osler’s teachings, I understand that be-yond the details of physical complaints, we need to listen to the patient’s whole story. When a patient arrives at our door we need to find out whether that person is poor, is educated, has a home with healthy food to eat. We need to concentrate on wellness and preventative health and not just disease.

As a team-based effort, this conference bringing together Aboriginal leaders, business people, public servants, and health and education experts, reflects the fact that problems are best solved in a collabora-tive manner and this holds just as true in health and health care as it does in economic matters.

Health care transformation will only come about with the active participation of all levels of society — it is not just a government issue. Each and every one of us has a role to play.◉

Dr. Anna Reid is Canadian Medial Association President. She is the first CMA President from the Northwest Territories.

oday I will talk about my own view and ap-proach to being a citizen in the North. Per-

haps I can give some suggestions as to the tools and type of culture I think we need to deal effectively with our economy, whether it is an economy driven by oil and gas or mining. Also to turn our minds to the impacts that our relationship with Ottawa and lack of relationship with industries will have on our people.

First of all, I think I have to say it is my wish that we do not become another little Alberta. There, it is extremely difficult to see where the interests of oil and gas companies, and the interests of the govern-ment, begin and end. The interests of our people here in the North and the interests of the oil, gas and mining companies are not the same. We have to stop pretending that they are. You could end up looking at a situation where in 30 years places like Fort Good Hope, where I am from, will still have high unem-ployment, be heavily socially impacted and all the oil and gas will have been siphoned out.

One constant in a resource based economy is that the oil and gas people will come and try to take the oil and gas to make as much profit as possible—that is what they do and they do it quite well. We as citizens have a different role. Our job as citizens is to tell our governments, our representatives, and our leaders that if they allow resource industry compa-nies to take the oil, gas and other resources: at the very least, make sure that the people get something out of it. There is always a fear that we will receive nothing.

I remember being a chief negotiator for Fort Good Hope for a brief year dealing with the impact of the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. I was pushing for some resources to go to the Aboriginal governments along the pipeline right of way. I main-tained that if we are Aboriginal governments then surely it is not stretching it to say that if lowly mu-nicipalities have the right to levy a property tax, then surely, Aboriginal governments have that power. I argued for recognition that such power is concur-rent with that of the government of the Northwest Territories, that Aboriginal governments should levy a property tax if we want to. Well, the knives came out and hysteria started along the lines of “Steve is

going to single-handedly kill The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline!”. They thought I was asking too much. The pressure became unbearable and Fort Good Hope asked that I stay home.

That was the end of my contribution. I do not have any regrets about it, I am glad that I stood up and pointed out that we are not getting anything out of the Mackenzie Gas Project and we should get more. My view was that if we are not going to benefit, then, perhaps, it should not happen. Look at the diamond mines for example. I had to deal with those as a government Minister back in the 1990s. My approach then was the same as my approach now: I always ask what the solution is, what do we have, what are our strengths. One strength we have in the NWT as governments is the relationships we have amongst one another. Those relationships were very strong starting in the 1970s and into the 1980s and 1990s; however, I am not sure that it is continu-ing to evolve. Despite that, I view our relationships as the strongest tool I think we need to cultivate as a Northern people, to maintain a distinct evolving culture for us as Northern people. Being different from everywhere else in Canada we have that ca-pacity to draw on the diversity, differences and huge spaces between our people, whether you are Inuvial-uit, Inuit, Gwich’in, Metis, someone from Fort Good Hope, Trout Lake or Lutselk’e. Drawing on all of those creates strength. One of the things that mark our history are the times when our people overcame the differences we had. We overcame our differences as Dene and Metis people with the Inuit and it was our leaders who led the Canadian First Nations to change the Constitution of Canada. It is because of people like John Amagoalik and Georges Erasmus and many other leaders were able to understand how to bridge differences and network.

When it came to dealing with the diamond mines, the Premier at the time, Don Morin, and many of our leaders said if we are not going to get anything out of it, let us leave it in the ground. The diamond companies said if we asked for too much they may not open the mine. Strong and tough lead-ers stood up despite that threat —maybe there was a few people who said that the diamond mines are good for us and just go with it without asking for

22

NORTHERN VOICES

Economic development:Striking the right balance

Stephen Kakfwi


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too much, but I do not remember those people at all. I tend to forget them. They get run over and forgotten. It is the people who stood up that I re-member. Because our leaders were strong and unit-ed, worked with the Tlicho, Deh Cho, Metis, MLA’s, Ministers, the Premier—everyone was on-side and we got the diamond mines to agree to something that we should use as a benchmark. That included a certain amount of the contracts for activities such as construction, operation and maintenance of the diamond mine, catering — a share of these should go to Northern and Aboriginal businesses. We insist-ed that a percentage of people hired to work at the diamond mine should be Northern and Aboriginal people. There was a lot of hysteria, screaming and yelling, but at the end they agreed to do it because we stood together and stood our ground.

You are going to have fracking going on in the North and oil and gas offshore. We need leaders who have the ability to say what is good for the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit must also be good for the Sahtu, Tlicho, Deh Cho and Metis. We need leaders who want to ensure everyone is taken care of—the un-employed, the homeless, single families. We have a culture, maybe it is not as strong as it used to be, but we had a culture where we embraced everyone and

took care of them. With the recent discussions with devolution, I

was asked by the government of NWT to help them but I said I would not tell them that it is a good deal because I am not sure that it really is. What I did tell them is that the Gwich’in, Sahtu, Deh Cho and [Tli-cho] should all do it together. They should work on it together and move toward it together, not be divid-ed. Unfortunately, it did not work out that way. The Sahtu signed the devolution agreement in principle, and it is a matter of time before other organizations start to move toward that as well. That for me is un-fortunate because if we do not maintain that value and cultural norm where we do not move until we have taken care of everybody and accounted for ev-eryone’s interests, then we will do it to the homeless, the poor, the weak and the disabled. Maybe we will be flexible, but I do not know. My view, and I have always said to my children, is that I hope if you get into the world of politics and leadership you take a gentler and more compassionate route than I did. Politics in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was brutal at times, but in reflection I think I grew up at a time when we were raised and cultivated by the old lead-ers to know what was happening in Aklavik, Trout Lake, Fort Smith, Fort Providence and Wekwee-

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ti. We had to think about how things would affect people throughout the Northwest Territories, not just in Yellowknife or our home community. Being a leader is not about saying that you represent Fort Good Hope and that is all you care about. We need to cultivate a corporate, governmental and Aborig-inal leadership that works on taking care of every-one. Before you make decisions you check with your neighbours and the other regions. You do not have to agree; however, you should take it into account. I

think that is going to be key because we are going to be facing the oil, gas and mining companies and we are facing the Federal government every day. They have proposed the devolution deal and for those of you who have read it, you also know they outlined their terms and conditions. For instance, they have agreed for us to manage the oil and gas, but there has to be a consolidation of power and decision making into one resource management board. Do we have to take it—what is the choice? If we do not take it, they will manage things anyway.

If you go to the oil and gas companies you need strong leaders and leaders who know how to negoti-ate these deals and say if there is oil and gas activity in the Delta, offshore and in Sahtu we want a certain amount of money to go to Northern and Aboriginal contractors in those areas, just as we did with the dia-mond mines. Otherwise, as I said, 20 years from now Colville Lake will still be Colville Lake; Good Hope will still be Good Hope: nothing will have changed except the source of wealth and prosperity will be gone and the people will have nothing to show for it. We need to set targets, goals and expectations by deciding what we want and making that a priority. I think it is realistic and reasonable, but I do not think it has ever been done with oil and gas companies. As far as I am concerned I look south and think it is the oil and gas companies that run Alberta. You never once hear the Alberta government saying we rep-resent Albertans and Albertans’ interests are differ-

ent from the oil and gas industry, from the tar sands and the fracking companies—never. It is almost like there is a blend: what is good for Imperial Oil and all of these oil companies is good for Alberta, and the government toes that line. That is my view of it and I think there will always be a social impact. If there is no development or jobs there will be poverty and lack of hope. Fracking is going to bring hundreds of millions of dollars of development into Sahtu, but I am not sure that it is sustainable environmentally.

We need to know that and make that choice.

Everything we do depends on the sort of leaders we have. I do not know many of the leaders that represent us today and I do not know how well they work together. I know that the last four years I was a Premier, I met an MLA who was elected to the legislature and

was going to vote on laws and money for every com-munity in the Northwest Territories—33 communi-ties. That MLA had never been outside Yellowknife, not even to Detah or Ndilo. Now, how do you like that? I was so astounded that I laughed and, sorry to say, ridiculed that MLA. That is what happens to us, we do not know who we elect nor give them the tools to govern wisely. We need to teach our young people and leaders, tell them that they should travel and get to know people in the communities because that is what makes the difference.

That is my contribution to the discussion we are having this week. I think it is our strong culture of cooperation that will bring us together and that has brought us safely through some tough decisions in the past. We have succeeded when we have done things together, when we have been methodical and compassionate, whether it was the Canadian Constitution, the negotiations with diamond mines and even division of the Northwest Territories. We have done it because we have been clear, had strong leaders that stood up for our interests and knew how to be compassionate enough to take care of every-body.◉

Stephen Kakfwi served as the ninth Premier of the North-west Territories (2000-2003), MLA for Sahtu (1987-2003), and as Dene Nation President (1983-1987).


If there is no development or jobs there will be poverty and lack of hope. Fracking is going to bring hundreds of millions of dollars of development into Sahtu, but I am not sure that it is sustainable environmentally. We need to know that and make that choice.

ARTICLES

cross the North, the concepts of land use planning and co-management are common

features of discourse on land claims, resource de-velopment and economic activity generally. While for many years these collaborative institutional ar-rangements have been the purview of government bureaucrats, industry and land claim negotiators, they have increasingly emerged as salient features of Northern political and economic affairs. Indeed, with recent moves towards devolution in the North-west Territories, community members from Yellow-knife to Inuvik are learning that the future of the land is increasingly being determined by decisions made within surface rights, water or regional land use boards.

Such committees, populated by technocrats such as lawyers and land use planners are necessary features of decision-making over lands and resourc-es. However, planning as it has and continues to be practiced, can actually restrict the involvement of lo-

cal commuities and particularly Indigenous peoples within decision making processes. Indeed, burea-cratic absorbtion and exclusion of culturally-rooted perspectives on relationships with the land challenge genuine participation. Moreover, in documented ex-amples of land use planning in the North, from the first Northern planning commission in Nunavut to co-management boards in Yukon and the most re-cent legislation for Northern Ontario, there is much failure to incorporate local and Indigenous knowl-edge. Each provides a lesson for future planning boards, in the NWT and elsewhere.

◉◉◉

The Emergence of Indigenous Land Use Planners

A practice very much originating in southern Canadian cities and provinces, land use planning

GOVERNANCE

Co-Managing the future? Indigenous peoples and land use planning in the North

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Caribou, 2012.


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has been slowly adopted in the North. It remains an ambiguous concept here — it does not resemble the zoning bylaws of municipalities or the regulato-ry features of provinces that traditionally accompa-ny planning. Instead, it is often complicated by an abundance of federal and territorial legislation—as well as various classifications of land, gradual devo-lution, increasingly influential conservation and in-dustry lobbies, and perhaps above all, land claims settlements.

Amid this complexity, a plethora of institu-tional arrangements have been established: work-ing groups, negotiating tables, wildlife boards, im-pact-benefit or participation agreements, and so on. In some cases there are regional land use plans (at various stages of completion) attempting to guide and inform many of these processes. Most of these organizational efforts are spearheaded by federal, territorial, and provincial governments hoping ini-tiate a system for designating land use and allotting resources. According to AANDC, planning aims to accommodate conservation, development, subsis-tence hunting, and a general notion of sustainabil-ity.1

Indigenous peoples became a part of this emerg-ing practice with the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA) in the early to mid 1970s. With the realization that the Cree and Innu had a signif-icant interest and legal right to lands and resources they had traditionally occupied, the Crown had no choice but to include them in the “management” of those lands and resources. The idea was further elaborated with interpretation of Section 35 through decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, such as Guerin (1984) and Delgamuukw (1997), followed by the Haida (2004), Taku (2004), and Mikesew (2005). More recent cases continue to elaborate on the de-gree of power Indigenous peoples exercise in land use and resource management decision-making pro-cesses.

This has continued to compel the Crown to in-clude Indigenous peoples in these processes. In fact, nearly every comprehensive land claim agreement since 1975, includes a mechanism for collaboration on land use planning or co-management. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) labelled this phenomenon “claims-based co-management.” The RCAP defined these regimes as “collaborative institutional arrangements whereby governments and Aboriginal parties enter into formal agreements specifying their respective rights, powers and obliga-tions with reference to the management and alloca-tion of resources within a particular area.”2

The standard formula unfolds as follows: Indig-

enous peoples surrender most of their territories for financial settlements, usually distributed over a num-ber of years; fee simple title to a fraction of their traditional territories; and some degree of manage-ment authority over both Indigenous-“owned” lands and formerly occupied, now Crown, lands. And yet even after surrendering, in many cases 90 percent of the surface and 99 percent of the subsurface rights for this management authority, a meaningful role for Indigenous peoples in managing lands and resources does not always materialize.

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Bureaucratic and Philisophical Barriers

In Nunavut, a jurisdiction that has attempted comprehensive land use planning (LUP) through a Planning Commission, there are five planning boards. In Yukon, there are eight, in the NWT an-other seven. And whether these are Surface Rights Boards, Development Assessment Boards, or Her-itage Resources Boards, participating Indigenous peoples have to organize and express themselves in ways compatible with the institutional structure of these bodies - the language, concepts, rules, and procedures required by Canada and territorial gov-ernments. There are special training sessions and educational initiatives - all of this “catching-up” a tremendous undertaking - indeed, a common re-frain is how Indigenous peoples lack the necessary capacity to engage. So common is this problem that outside consultants are often brought in to serve as community representatives.

These phenomena demonstrate the lack of power Indigenous peoples exercise in the process from the very outset - they enter into land use plan-ning at a disadvantage while industry, governments, and conservation organizations already speak the same language (the political, social, legal and eco-nomic discourse that requires fluency in budgeting, work plans, tenure arrangements, contracts, inter-governmental relations, and so on). This leaves the burden of change and understanding on Indigenous peoples. Interestingly, in contrast, there is very little time and effort on the part of Canadian appoint-ed officials to learn Inuk or Tlingit ways (though a Northern colleague informs me that the opposite is often true in the NWT— that sometimes territorial bureaucrats here have been “Dene-tized”).

Beyond nominal absorbtion, the regimes have been structured to create a very visible power im-balance. While Indigenous representatives comprise 50 percent of most boards, and may even serve as


Chairs, each of the five planning boards in Nunavut only have the power to make recommendations to the Minister of AANDC for approval or rejection. In Yukon, while comprehensive land use plans are not yet in place, the situation is similar with planning boards answering to the territorial government. And in Northern Ontario, community land use plans are actually subject to Ministerial discretion.

Now, not only do the bureaucratic land use re-gimes of the present force Indigenous peoples into an alien system of management that limits their decision making power, the process also encourages them to surrender their values and indeed, their cul-tural perspectives on land and resource use in favor of Western or Euro-Canadian notions of develop-ment, conservation and science.

Again, this may seem ironic given the rhetoric of “co-management”, even more so with the sup-posed “integration” of Indigenous philosophy and knowledge into land management practices. But integration is problematic when land use planners assume that this knowledge can be distilled as simply another data set to be incorporated into the already accepted way of doing things: bureaucratic, scientif-ic, reductionist, technical, and compartmentalized. But the reality is that Indigenous knowledge is an independent source of knowledge, which if con-sidered seriously, would fundamentally clash with the current logic of land use planning and resource management decision making.

An example from a meeting of Ruby Range Sheep Steering Committee in Yukon: Indigenous hunters advocated the end of the “full curl rule”, which allowed hunters across the region to take sheep that were old, hence the full curl of the their horns. The concerned Native hunters argued that these full curl sheep were actually the most import-ant to the overall sheep population because they have a role as teachers; “it is from them that the younger rams learn proper mating and rutting be-havior as well as general survival strategies.” The scientists on the committee reviewed the literature and disagreed. The rule remained.3

Or there is the contentious catch and release fishing policy also in Yukon, which contradicts In-digenous beliefs that its disrespectful to give back gifts. We could likewise be talking about polar bears in Inuvialiut lands or Belugas in Southeast Baffin; Indigenous conceptions of animal behavior or an-imals as sentient, intelligent and social, are often dismissed by officials as unscientific. This extends beyond wildlife and science to other aspects of land use planning: dividing the land into zones, extract-ing minerals which give the land its essence, even

the very concept of management can be contrary to Indigenous perspectives.

Marc Stevenson provides an example of how this dismissal also equates to superiority. In a meet-ing of the Beverly Caribou Management Board, where the board was attempting to determine cari-bou herd numbers, Canadian officials advocated the use of aerial surveys. However, the Native represen-tatives were hesitant to use the technique, as pho-tos would invariably fail to catch the entire caribou population and the data would be skewed. To prove the effectiveness or the aerial survey, a government biologist asked the skeptical representative to guess at the number of caribou in a particular aerial pho-tograph. The uneducated speculations were all far off the mark, which, in turn, supposedly reinforced the validity of these methods and counteracted the concerns.4

◉◉◉

Planning Failures, from Nunavut to Ontario

Much of the argument made here is backed by evidence found in land and resource management plans that exist throughout the North. In particular, the lack of actual control or power Indigenous peo-ples can exert in either land use planning or co-man-agement has been seen in older planning regimes of Nunavut as well as more recently in Ontario.

Out of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA), came the Nunavut Planning Commission (NPC) with a mandate to oversee plans for the territory. The NPC acts as the arbiter of development—effec-tively, a gatekeeper. However, since its’ creation over ten years ago, the Commission has seemingly lost its way, approving a number of controversial projects that blatantly deviate from the two land use plans in place. Not surprisingly, residents of Nunavut have a problem with this. Late last year, a Nunatsiaq News editorial quipped, “because of a long series of foolish blunders, most committed within the past 10 years or so, no reasonable person can now claim that the environmental protection system laid out within the land claims agreement is capable of inspiring public confidence.”5

The issue was two significant projects, Areva Uranium’s Kiggavik Project, a plan to extract 3,000 tonnes of concentrated yellowcake uranium annual-ly for 17 years, at multiple open-pit and underground mining sites 80 kilometres west of Baker Lake, and Baffinland Iron Mines’ Mary River Project, which would extract 18,000 tonnes of high-grade iron ore annually for 21 years, 160 kilometres south of Pond


Inlet. Both projects violated the NPC’s Inuit influ-enced land use plans, the former for threatening car-ibou and the latter for proposing shipping corridors, and yet both were ultimately approved.6

Inuit have surrendered 90 percent of their ter-ritory and 99 percent of their subsurface rights for input on these plans. Yet, in the end, they are still alienated from decisions about development that will significantly affect them. It seems clear that land use planning in Nunavut is neither empowering In-uit nor giving them decision-making authority. Cer-tainly, Inuit serve on the NPC, but they have only half of the positions and the senior policy advisor for the organization lives in Yellowknife.7 In addi-tion, if the NPC ever makes a negative conformity determination, the minster has the power to exempt whichever proposals he deems important enough to do so, despite Inuit objections.

The situation in Ontario shares the theme of disempowement but is also much different. In con-trast to territorial planning, the case in Ontario is not claims-based but crisis-based. Throughout the past decade conflict over recent development has seemingly proliferated, notably in Kitchenuhmayko-osib Inninuwug, where band Chief and Council re-sorted to blocking the landing path of float planes

with their small boats. But with the recent discovery of chromite deposits throughout 5,000 square kilo-metres of Northern Ontario rock, which has been called “the most promising mining opportunity in Canada in a century.”8 Ontario has attempted to address the conflict and clear space for planning and development with the Far North Act.

The Act, also known as Bill 191, is designed to bring Ojibwe and Mushkego peoples into the land use planning process. In fact, the stated purpose of the Act is to provide “land use planning in the Far North that directly involves First Nations in the planning.” The rhetoric is impressive, really. In the actual legislation, the term “First Nation” is men-tioned 55 times in 24 terse sections.9

Yet, the trend described above regarding the il-lusion of power is maintained. Ontario drafted the Act without Mushkegowuk input, scheduling con-sultations unilaterally and on short notice so when invited, Mushkegowuk counld not attend. In fact, so contentious is the Far North Act that the Nishnaw-be-Aski Nation (NAN), the political body represent-ing 50-odd First Nations, has condemned it. Former NAN Grand Chief Stan Beardy stated on the eve of the bill’s passage, “We will do everything we can to prevent this legislation from passing, but if Bill 191 is

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passed in spite of our opposition NAN First Nations will not recognize the legislation and will move to exercise full and exclusive jurisdiction over our ter-ritory.”10

NAN is strongly opposed to the encroachment and usurpation of jurisdiction in their territories. Under treaties 5 and 9, First Nations believe they have the right to govern themselves and the lands they have occupied since time immemorial. Yet, the Far North Act presumes to set aside 225,000 kilome-tres for conservation without input from NAN; to di-vide the Far North territory into two zones, against their opposition; and to give control of the land use planning process entirely to the Ontario govern-ment—even community land use plans are subject to ministerial approval. In addition, many projects are excluded from land use planning, including the con-struction of transmission lines, mineral staking and exploration, and already-approved plans. In fact, the minister “would have authority to determine addi-tional activities that may proceed before a commu-nity-based land use plan is in place.”11 Again, that leaves ultimate authority with the government and potentially eschews local people’s desires. As the Bill was being passed in September 2010, Northerners were protesting on the steps of the legislature.

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New Directions in Land Management?

While this overview is far from comprehensive, it indicates challenges and certianly cause for concern. Indeed in the slew of co-management and land use planning regimes across the North, Indigenous peo-ples are expressing their discontent: government-im-posed hunting bans have been repeatedly violated from the NWT to Labrador; blockades in response to exploitative development seem to multiply by the year in British Columbia and Ontario; individual First Nations routinely launch court cases and ap-peals against companies, provinces, and territories, and vice versa. In a 2009 study of Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation, David Natcher found that 83 percent of community members surveyed be-lieve they will have considerably less access to land in the future.12

Yet there does seem to be some hope. A few unique examples can provide direction. The North-ern Tutchone Council has rejected land use plan-ning as it is traditionally practiced and is working on a system where traditional law, called Doo Li is applied to land use in their territory — they are also attempting to make it compatible with territo-

rial systems by developing enforcement regimes and public education.13 The Haida in B.C., after an in-credible battle with the provincial government have done a similar thing with their land use vision called Yah’guudang, which actually gives priority to cedar, salmon and black bears, over people.14 The Ojibwe in NW ON have established the Great Earth Law and have been partially successful at getting corpo-rations to sign on to its land use planning principles; otherwise, they are not welcome in the region.15

So while it would be irresponsible to default on opportunities to make sensible decisions about development and conservation in some systematic fashion, it would likewise be irresponsible to do so at the expense of genuine participation.

What the communities mentioned above have done, and what others can potentially do, is critical-ly reflect on the process as it is being designed and implemented (whether it be in the Peel River area, the supposed forthcoming Nunavut wide plan or the new NWT regulatory regime) and leverage the pow-er required to correct the institutional power imbal-ance and insert the values that we know are essential to our relationships with the land and the diversity of creatures that we share it with.◉

Hayden King is Anishinaabe and Assisant Professor of Political Science at Ryerson University.

Footnotes1. Indian and Northern affairs Canada, Northern Land Use Guidelines: Adminis-tration Framework (Ottawa: Indian and Northern affairs Canada, 2008).2. Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Vol. 2: Restructuring the Relationship (Ottawa: Indian and Northern affairs Canada, 1996), Part 2, Chapter 4, “lands and resources.” 3. Paul Nadasdy, “The Politics of TEK: Power and the ‘Integration’ of Knowledge,” Arctic Anthropology, 36, 1-2 (1999).4. Marc G. Stevenson, “The Possibility of difference: rethinking Co-Man-agement,” Human Organization, 65, 2 (summer 2006), 167—80.5. “Nunavut’s radioactive issue,” Nunatsiaq News, Editorial (December 29, 2008). 6. Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, “development Proposal for the Mary River Project” (Toronto: Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, March 2008), 1.7. NPC, “Our Team,” NPC. Obtained from: www.nunavut.ca/en/ about-commission/our-team. 8. “Don’t let Mines Pre-empt Natives” Toronto Star, Editorial, March 10, 2010. 9. Ontario, Legislative Assembly, “Bill 191,” Far North Act, 2010, Govern-ment of Ontario. Obtained from: www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&BillId=2205 10. Nishnawbe aski Nation, Bill 191, News Release (NAN, July 22, 2009). 11. Ontario, Legislative Assembly, “Bill 191.” 12. David Natcher, Clifford Hickey, Mark Nelson and Susan Davis, “Impli-cations of Tenure Insecurity for aboriginal land use in Canada,” Human Organization, 68, 3 (Fall 2009).13. David Natcher and Susan Davis, “Rethinking devolution: Challenges for Aboriginal resource Management in the Yukon Territory,” Society & Natural Resources, 20, 3 (March 2007), 271—9.14. Louise Takeda and Inge Ropke, “Power and Contestation in Collabora-tive ecosystem-Based Management: The Case of haida Gwaii,” Ecological Economics (2010). 15. Grand Council of Treaty #3, “Laws and Policies,” Grand Coun-cil of Treaty #3. Obtained from: www.gct3.net/ grand-chiefs-office/laws-and-policies/.


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Herring net in winter, 2012.

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32

“We had huge prosperous moments where we were super excited about the riches we had collected—the

cranberries or the Labrador tea,”-Dawn Tremblay

This article is a report from the Dechinta Bush Univer-sity student plenary at the Northern Governance and Econ-omy Conference. Dechinta Bush University is a land-based, university accredited program in Chief Drygeese Territory (Akaitcho), Denendeh. Dechinta combines ‘bush’ and ‘aca-demic’ ways of teaching, learning and researching. Students presented at the conference as part of their final assessments for the 2012 semester and as a way of connecting what they had learned with leaders and communities across the North. In their presentations, the students drew on their diverse experienc-es and perspectives. Prior to the panel, however, they worked together to agree a collective message and to develop their in-dividual presentations collaboratively. In this report, therefore, we establish a conversation between the students, through the panel, while also including quotes from an absent student in recognition of every student’s contribution to the Dechinta community. ‘We’, the authors, are a Dechinta student from the U.S. (Cole Smith) and a Dechinta facilitator from the U.K. (Darcy Leigh).

◉◉◉

articipants in the Northern Governance and Economy Conference spent three days dis-

cussing the question of how to achieve prosperity, sustainability and wealth creation in the North. As business, government, academic and community leaders set out “pathways to prosperity”, they re-peatedly asserted the importance of youth. On the final day, students from Dechinta Bush University’s fall semester intervened in this discussion, asking: What does it mean for the North to be prosperous, to be sustainable and to be wealthy? What sort of a future do Northern young people want to be a part of ? Dawn Tremblay summarized: “I challenge each and every one of you to reflect on your definition of prosperity, governance and economy and how it is the same or different than other people’s in this room and throughout the conference.” Drawing on their experience at Dechinta, the rest of the students

articulated their versions of prosperity, sustainabil-ity and wealth and challenged the assumption that wealth is rooted in the material. Instead, they em-phasized local, land-based Indigenous knowledge; healthy families and communities; and ongoing per-sonal and institutional decolonization. Higher edu-cation and strong leadership are, they argued, key strategies for constructing this pathway to Northern prosperity.

Brooke Hope opened the panel by putting knowledge and learning at the centre of a re-imag-ined vision of prosperity: a prosperous North is one in which people are connected with each other and the land, through land-based Indigenous knowl-edge. Education in the North is therefore more than the provision of and qualification for jobs, Brooke explained. Northern, Indigenous and land-based knowledges are all a part of self-knowledge and self-determination for Northerners, Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous. For Brooke, this happens through learning and continuing her cultural tra-ditions. Dene youth, she argued, must learn about Dene ways, land and history from Dene elders. Kris-ten Tanche added: “As the saying goes, ‘You do not know who you are until you know where you come from.”.

Learning and knowledge must originate in the North and be for Northerners, by Northerners and oriented to the North. Kristen Tanche and Dawn Tremblay, two Northern students who had studied in Southern universities, both reported the absence of learning that is relevant to the North in those set-tings. When it did appear, Dawn Tremblay noted, Southerners taught it. Kristen Tanche described how learning from Northern instructors had made her Dechinta experience meaningful and deep-ened her understanding of where she is from. For all these reasons, Northern, Indigenous and land-based knowledge is central to prosperous and strong Northern land, people and communities.

Dene ways of learning, on the land, are inter-generational, and therefore necessary to creating strong, healthy families. Strong, healthy families are, in turn, integral to Northern prosperity. The stu-dents gave a range of examples of land-based Dene

EDUCATION

Dechinta Bush University Student Plenary: A report

Cole Smith & Darcy Leigh


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Dechinta students present at Northern Governance and Economy Conference, Yellowknife, October 2012.

learning and teaching across generations. Doris Sewi explained, “The way I was raised, my father taught me hunting... He brought me on the land since I was a little girl and ever since. I also learned my mother’s land skills, so I learned both men and women’s skills. I captured my cultural and traditional ways...I teach my children about our culture and language; that is important for them because I want to keep it going and continue with our history.” Doris Taneton told the story of how learning from her father, on the land, has inspired her in her work as a language in-structor and community researcher, working with all generations in her community and guided by Elders. Doris Taneton also emphasised the role of land-based learning at Dechinta in creating these family connections: “When you actually learn hands-on activities such as cutting fish or making dry meat, you can have your children with you. The parents and children can observe and learn. It is a great way for children to learn as well. They listen and parents can be with their children and learn together.” Doris explained that by encouraging parents to bring chil-dren, Dechinta provides necessary space for mothers to become leaders. Land-based learning therefore creates and strengthens connections between people — within families, within communities and between generations. Strong families and communities are

central to the Dechinta students’ vision of prosper-ity.

Land-based knowledge not only connects people with each other, but with the land and the environ-ment, through experience. Conventional academic knowledge disconnects people from the land and knowledge from experience. As Cole Smith, the only Southern student, explains: “.... a lot of my culture was about disconnection and isolation. I come from an educational tradition of a State University where I studied environmental studies in the Building of Natural Resources inside a room without any win-dows. We never went outside.” Land-based learning, “is about is re-establishing relationships and making those connections again. This knowledge that we are connecting with is knowledge that is rooted in what it means to live on the land and be on the land… It means to connect with knowledge that is rooted in the land.” Jeanetta Prodromidis gave an example of how this happens for her: “When we live within the context of society, it is extremely easy to external-ize the costs of our activities. For example, when I flush a standard toilet, I don’t think about where the water and its waste goes after the flush; I only know that they are gone, and that they are no longer my problem. When living off the land, though, no such externalization occurs, and it is necessary to take

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full responsibility for the material waste.” Jeanetta Prodromidis also explained that hunting and using traditional medicines are ways of connecting with the land and living sustainably: “When trying to be sustainable by living off the land, I felt disconnected from these chains: I was entirely aware of both the consequences of my actions as well as the conditions which made my existence possible. To me person-ally, trying to be sustainable by living off the land, I was aware of my interconnectedness with others than ever before.” In all these ways, learning and living on the land are necessary to a prosperous and sustainable Northern future.

Although they argued throughout the panel for a re-centring of Northern, Dene and land-based ways of knowing and being, the students did not reject Southern or academic knowledge outright. Instead, they argued that strong leaders and strong commu-nities know “both ways” - in order to be “strong like two people” (Brooke Hope, using a phrase and con-cept from the Tlicho Dene in Allice Legat’s book, Walking the Land, Feeding the Fire). Kristen Tanche emphasized how having two sets of tools made her strong: “We all agreed that learning both worlds is significant. We all agreed that by combining tradi-tional knowledge and academic knowledge, we were stronger people. Strong people create a strong foun-dation for society.” She explained that “[one]..must not only read and watch, but experience and live what is being taught. This dual system of learning provides students with balance and harmony within their education.” A prosperous North is therefore a North in which people are connected to each other, to family and to community - all through the land - and where they have tools in both worlds: “[this] starts with myself, then family, then community and so on until we are strong like two people” (Brooke Hope).

For the Dechinta students, traditional leadership is necessary to achieve this alternative vision of pros-perity. Stacy Sundberg described how her family, her culture, and her experience at Dechinta, and living on the land all combined to inspire her to become a leader. At Dechinta, she explained, the students rotated leadership responsibilities; each person co-ordinated daily learning activities as well as commu-nicating and scheduling with elders, instructors and students. These leadership duties were oriented to the group rather than the individual and, for Sta-cy they also involved learning from her people on her traditional territory. She went on to quote a col-lective statement by the Dechinta students: “Strong leaders are rooted in tradition. They are honest, patient and funny. They know who they are; they

know their traditions and their culture. They draw on those traditions as tools for the present and fu-ture,” (Dechinta students’ collective statement). As Brooke Hope explained, leaders are not limited to business or government: “Being in Dechinta I found myself and being on the land reminded me of the importance of people, culture and the land. Seeing everyone here as a leader, not just as student/teach-er, but we all have knowledge to share.”

The students placed their stories in the context of decolonization. Decolonization, they argued, is necessary for a prosperous and self-determining North. Dawn Tremblay said that as a non-Indige-nous Northern student, this was part of her moti-vation for attending Dechinta. For Dawn, Dechin-ta helped to “crystallize the colonial history,” and further “encouraged establishing meaningful and respectful relationships.” This helps to reconfigure relationships between Indigenous and non-Indige-nous people, on both societal and interpersonal lev-els. This process, she explained, is decolonization. Dawn quoted a statement written collectively by the Dechinta students: “Practicing self-determination and decolonization rocks. Self determination and decolonization cannot be learned from a book or granted by the state. They must be experienced and practiced in all processes of teaching and learning. Every person, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, has the right and responsibility to self-determine and de-colonize in their own way on an individual and collective level.”

Bringing together all these stories, Cole Smith concluded the panel: “What prosperity means to us… is healthy families, healthy communities and healthy land. Prosperity means honest and strong leaders who are grounded in traditional values that have helped communities thrive on this land for centuries. We are talking about a thriving knowl-edge-economy, not a resource-driven economy. We are talking about ways of knowing and the econo-mies of ways of knowing that can produce critical Northern thinkers that can engage policy and en-gage decision-making from a Northern perspective. Prosperity to us is related more to social, environ-mental, and cultural well-being than it is to profits and development. To us, this is what will sustain the North.”◉

Cole Smith was a student with Dechinta Bush University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Darcy Leigh is a doctoral candidate in Politics and International Relations at University of Edinburgh.


he resource industry, particularly the miner-als industry, offers tremendous opportunity to

create wealth in the North. The Northwest Territo-ries represents one of the most mineral-rich juris-dictions anywhere on Earth with its vast diversity in mineral resources, as well as hydrocarbons. Further, the mineral deposits found in this area are among the very best quality found anywhere in the world. The diamond mines are a good example of that, as well as Pine Point’s lead-zinc operations. I think Avalon Rare Metals’ discovery at Thor Lake, with the Nechalacho Rare Earth Element deposit, will be another example of a truly world-class resource pro-viding new opportunities for wealth creation in the NWT. I also believe there is a tremendous opportu-nity for Aboriginal peoples to take full advantage.

I would like to see Aboriginal peoples partici-pate in this industry to a much greater extent than they have in the past. It is absolutely essential for the long-term health and sustainability of the industry that we have participation from the communities around which we are working. In most of Northern Canada, especially here in the NWT, those local communities are Aboriginal communities and we need their active participation in the industry. Not just to provide labour and services, but ultimately becoming proponents of mineral development; that is, having companies that they own and operate as explorers and developers in finding the next mines for the NWT. In order to do that, we need to build more capacity in all of the communities, which starts with education. Also, we need to start to fa-cilitate more of an entrepreneurial culture in those communities. It is a very entrepreneurial industry at the exploration stage and we need more Aboriginal entrepreneurs to emerge in those communities to provide the leadership required to build companies of tomorrow and be proponents of new mineral de-velopment in the North.

Given the inherent mineral wealth that we see in the North, the level of investment is nowhere near what it really should be. It should be about 10 times what it is currently, at least if based purely on the opportunity that is represented by the rich min-eral endowment of the area. The issue is around the regulatory process. The Northwest Territories

needs a stable and predictable regulatory process for environmental reviews and permitting. This does not exist right now. Companies need to know that when they invest capital there is some predictability to what is required and how long it will take before they can get a new project permitted. That is not the case here currently and therefore capital is going elsewhere where there is more predictability. This is a very important priority for the NWT going for-ward. There is an enormous opportunity in this hot commodity market. It is sometimes referred to as the super cycle. The super cycle is still on and there are some dips in the cycle from time to time (we are in one right now) but there is no question that with the growing world population and emerging mid-dle-class in Asia and elsewhere, that there will be an increasing demand for resources and new produc-tion of non-renewable materials going forward.

Moving on to what Avalon is doing, we have this rare earth element project named Nechalacho, 100 km southeast of Yellowknife in an area known as Thor Lake. The rare earth elements (REEs) play a significant role in today’s technology-driven econo-my. The REEs are key enablers of a lot of new tech-nology, especially clean technology. We are talking about elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, europium, and yttrium—elements that many have not heard of since their high school chemistry class, but use every day in their hand-held devices, auto-mobiles and household appliances. These elements are becoming increasingly more important and the Nechalacho deposit is one of the most richly en-dowed in these critical raw materials.

Avalon is planning to develop a secondary pro-cessing facility, also in the NWT, to take the mineral concentrate from Thor Lake and further concen-trate the rare earths. This is a significantly new de-velopment for the North. Traditionally, concentrates are produced and shipped out for processing else-where. For the first time, we are proposing to build a secondary processing facility in the NWT at a site in the Pine Point area on the south side of Great Slave Lake. The reason why we selected that area is because it is a brownfield site. It was the historic site of lead-zinc mining operations by Cominco in the 1960s through to the 1980s. It does have grid hydro


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The Northern economy:Lessons from industry

Don Bubar

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power available to it from the Taltson dam and an existing transportation network to move the materi-al to the rail head at Hay River for shipping south for further refining. Having two sites means we have had to engage with quite a few different communi-ties in the Northwest Territories.

In relation to our project, we have been engaging with the Lutsel K’e Dene First Nation, the Deninu K’ue First Nation, and the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, but they are not the only interested parties in this project. The K’atl’odeeche First Nation near Hay River are interested because of the potential business opportunities originating from that area. There are also the North Slave Métis, NWT Métis Nation, and the Tłichǫ Government whose settled land claim overlaps with the Yellowknives’ Chief Drygeese Territory. One of the challenges a com-pany like ours faces when entering into the North-west Territories to do mineral exploration and de-velopment is understanding who our neighbours are, what their relationships are and how to develop working relationships going forward. It takes some time to sort out the landscape, but we have been quite patient about it.

We started very early and had many meetings with Chiefs, Councillors, Elders and other commu-nity members to introduce them to what we are do-ing. We try to allow for a lot of question and answer periods to help community members understand, and we listen to their concerns and try to act on them. We recognize it takes time to build relation-ships and trust, so we started early to ensure we had more than enough time before making major invest-ment decisions on going into a construction phase.

It is important to engage with communities early and often. The biggest mistake that companies make in exploration and development is not going to the community early enough to explain what is being proposed and the potential opportunities. We make this point frequently to our industry peers. Often it is difficult to get that dialogue going, but we encourage companies to persevere and don’t give up after the first unanswered phone call.

Once you get the relationship going and you are working on the ground, it is very important to just continue dialogue and engagement. You have to en-sure communities are always informed on what is happening on the ground.

Also, we encourage other companies to pro-vide employment opportunities to the extent pos-sible during the exploration stage, work with local contractors and find opportunities for Aboriginal business to participate and provide services, as well as provide access to training. We participated in a

training program with the Mine Training Soci-ety, Aurora College and Foraco to train Aboriginal youth to work on diamond drills as helpers, which is an important part of the exploration process. No other company had ever done that before at the ex-ploration stage, so we were proud to have had that opportunity and it was quite successful. There were a dozen graduates, several of whom are still working in the industry.

NWT regulations require that companies have a first aid responder in a remote campsite like ours. When we first started, we had to bring people from all across Canada to perform this role. It did not make any sense that there were no people in the North that could provide that service. It was simply a matter of providing training so people here could obtain those skills and do it. We organized that train-ing program and ever since we have been able to source first aid responders in the local communities here.

We have employed a lot of labour at times, with up to 50 percent of our camp staff being Aborig-inal at some times. We have been providing con-tracting opportunities as well, including an airstrip at the Nechalacho site two years ago that was built by Det’on Cho Corporation; a $2,000,000 contract.

In exploration you do lots of drilling and need to put the drill core in boxes. They are just simple wooden trays that you put the drill core samples in. Initially we were bringing them in from Winnipeg and reasoned that there ought to be someone up here that could build these boxes. Some folks in Fort Resolution agreed with us and started a new core box business and have been supplying us with our core boxes ever since. We have done some $300,000 worth of business with the Deninu K’ue Develop-ment Corporation.

Recently, we have been working hard to finalize formal agreements, we call them Accommodation Agreements, with our Akaitcho Dene community partners. One of the agreements is complete and two are close to finalization. This summer we final-ized an Accommodation Agreement with the Den-inu K’ue First Nation. The headline in the paper described it as an Impacts Benefits Agreement (IBA), the more common term for these partnership agree-ments, but it has some differences with the tradi-tional IBA-type agreements. The main one is we are offering equity participation in the project to these communities. It is a small minority interest, but we think it is a very significant way for the First Nations to participate. It means they have an actual owner-ship interest in this resource. It is not a simple rev-enue-sharing model offering cash transfers, but it is


an actual ownership interest in the project. What we are asking them to do is become an active partner in the project to both share in the risks and share in the rewards of successful development.

Equity participation provides an opportunity for active involvement in the industry from which the community can learn and leverage into other business opportunities and more actively influence industry best practices in managing environmental impacts. I believe the industry is now moving to-wards this model. The traditional IBA model that involved fixed payments on an annual basis, unrelat-ed to the scale of an operation or future profitability, is yesterday’s model. Tomorrow’s model is an equity participation model and Avalon is the first Company to introduce it here in the North. So it has taken us some time to educate the communities as to what it is about and why it is advantageous in the long term. It is different, so it is taking quite a while to do, but I think we are going to get there in terms of it being accepted as tomorrow’s partnership model between mineral exploration companies and First Nations.

Lastly, going forward in the future, we have made a commitment to corporate social responsibil-ity and being a good partner in the community. We have produced a sustainability report that details our commitments to environment and social responsibil-

ity and how we are going to report on performance against those commitments. This is the type of re-port that is more typically produced by larger corpo-rations and not so much by small or medium-sized enterprises such as Avalon, but we feel it is import-ant to do it at this stage to demonstrate sustainability as a core principle of the company.

We believe the whole industry is going this way with everyone starting to recognize the importance of embracing the principles of environmental and social responsibility. We wanted to show some lead-ership for our peers in the industry by taking this step now. We also think it will serve us well in devel-oping our business down the road as more and more customers around the world who use the rare earth elements will insist that producers of this material operate in a sustainable way and demonstrate it to them before they will commit to business. That is the growing reality and so by getting in front of it we are opening more doors for building our business and developing new markets for our products going forward.◉

Don Bubar is Present of Avalon Rare Earth Metals.

COMING SPRING 2013: FORTY YEARS AFTER CALDER

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Calder that Aboriginal title existed in Canada prior to colonization and outside of colonial law. This groundbreaking event, together with an increasingly active Aboriginal political movement, forced the federal government

into the present phase of treaty-making. Since 1975, twenty-four agreements have been signed with First Nations, Inuit, and Metis nations across Canada, and many of these are in the North. In honour of these significant milestones, Northern Public Affairs will dedicate its next regular

issue of the magazine to a far-reaching discussion of contemporary treaty implementation.

38

n the Northwest Territories, people from many walks of life seem to share a vision of how the

future should unfold. They imagine an economy or-ganized so that natural resource development pro-vides necessary jobs and business opportunities while providing essential revenue to both the government of the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal govern-ments and organizations. Such development should be contained, controlled and paced in such a way that it does not destroy too much of the land. North-ern societies should have time to adjust and prepare for the changes that development brings. Aboriginal land rights must be respected. Northern businesses and workers should realize not only short term gains but long-term benefits from economic development in their territories, and so should Northern society as a whole.

This vision of the best possible Northern econ-omy is the result of nearly forty years’ search for ways to balance non-renewable resource develop-ment with care of the land and protection of the harvesting economy. Northerners have often done their thinking about this from an awkward position, compelled to focus on public discussion of single mega-projects, mines or pipelines, making decisions in a “now or never” near-crisis situation. But there have also been moments of research and reflection, during which decision-makers searched for a mod-el of balanced development that would benefit all of the peoples and communities of the north. Ma-jor milestones have been the 1970s inquiry into the construction of a pipeline in the Mackenzie Valley (the Berger Report), the work of the 1980s Special Committee on the Northern Economy (SCONE) and the Northern Oil and Gas Assessment Pro-gram (NOGAP) research projects, and in the 1990s and 2000s, the West Kitikmeot Slave Study (and updates), and the many hearings and deliberations concerning mines and pipelines that culminated in the far-sighted report of the Joint Review Panel on the Mackenzie Gas Project, Foundation for a Sus-tainable Northern Future (2010).

If these research and discussion opportunities have provided Northerners with the opportunity to come to a consensus on the future they hope to build, there remain many challenges in understand-

ing how to achieve their vision. What specific mea-sures (policies, programs, agreements, practices) will bring Northerners the future that they envision, and allow them to avoid dangers such as yawning dis-parities in social well-being, environmental degrada-tion, and instability?

Northerners’ deliberations on their economic future have been largely centred on their region: Aboriginal rights, protection of the land, as well as the need to perfect suitable regional institutions, to wrest control of economic levers from the federal government, and to achieve balanced mitigation of cumulative impacts. These concerns have resulted in major institutional reforms, including what many people hope will be a viable institutional basis for strong Aboriginal societies thriving in a healthy mul-ticultural territory. Many of the new institutions and practices are still evolving, and surely some will in the end prove to be effective. Necessarily, the focus has been on territorial arrangements, and the rela-tionship between territorial interests and the federal government.

While these matters rightly have occupied cen-tre stage, though, it is evident that near exclusive focus on territorial matters and relations with the federal government is insufficient in a time when the opportunities and economic challenges facing terri-torial residents are global, and massive. Increasing-ly, the economic prospects of the Northwest Terri-tories depend upon international financial markets and international demand for Northern resources. These markets are volatile and they are utterly inde-pendent of what Northerners may choose or desire. This creates a significant challenge for economic de-velopment planning. How much choice do people in the North really have?

There are no simple answers to this question. Ev-erywhere in the world, natural resource dependent economies face three large challenges. The first of these is often referred to as the boom and bust cycle: how should societies respond to the extraordinary volatility in the demand for resources, and the re-lated fluctuations in the availability of development capital? Both booms and busts bring their own de-structive forces: booms make some wealthy but they also encourage waste. For both governments and in-

ECONOMY

Challenges in understanding the emerging Northern economy

Frances Abele


I

dividuals, sudden surplus revenue is easily dissipated, leaving little of lasting value behind. During busts, which often come on suddenly, local businesses and workers suffer a loss of spending capacity, and so do the public coffers. The social impact of booms and busts can be cumulative, though not much is under-stood about how to ensure that what accumulates is beneficial to the variety of ways in which North-ern peoples make their living.

The second challenge, which has received a fair degree of attention in the Northwest Territo-ries, is how to determine what might be called car-rying capacity: how much pollution and disruption of wildlife can or should be tolerated? These deter-minations are becoming more complex, given the increasing strain on the Northern environment due to the changing climate and airborne pollutants re-leased elsewhere. As is well recognized, making the right choices concerning environmental impact is crucial for human well-being, particularly in a terri-tory where harvesting the living gifts of the land are still integral to many people’s livelihoods.

The third challenge concerns the distribution of the wealth generated by resource development: how can these revenues be collected and shared so as to improve the circumstances of everyone, weighing against social inequality rather than enhancing it? Very commonly, in other parts of the world mineral wealth has brought more rather than less inequality. It is not automatic that an economy built upon natu-ral resource development will benefit all members of the society; for this to be the case, positive measures (and a steady hand) are necessary.

People in the Northwest Territories have signif-icant advantages as they confront these challenges. Northern economies have the stabilizing benefits of public sector expenditure levels characteristic of a prosperous country; in contrast to what is the case in many mineral-dependent economies elsewhere in the world, governments in Canada can and do de-ploy public expenditures strategically for social and economic purposes. They have affordable access to credit and they may rely upon the resilience of a relatively large national economy itself buoyed by abundant natural resources in virtually every region of a large country. Northern communities are also stabilized by access to the important base of country food and the other sources of well-being that North-ern lands provide; people who rely partly upon har-

vesting for sustenance are less vulnerable to markets than those who do not. Both of these important stabilizers have the protection of a well-developed regulatory system that relies upon public partici-pation to mediate among various interests. Finally, Northerners have a society in which cooperation and mutual aid are highly regarded, embedded in

social practices well-established long before industri-al transformation of the north began. These are all substantial assets.

Of course, both the public sector and the har-vesting economy are now intricately linked to nat-ural resource development, and growing more de-pendent upon it as that sector grows. As Northern governments and institutions become independent of federal transfers for their expenditures (as a re-sult of land claims agreements and devolution), they will become more dependent upon tax revenue from natural resource development. Harvesting now re-quires a substantial cash subsidy, whether the source be wages or public sector transfers of various kinds; many people now seek employment in part so that they can continue to afford to provide food for their families from the land. The very circumstances that permit Northerners a certain level of independence and choice tie them ever more tightly to global market forces. In this respect, the circumstances of Northerners converge with those of people living in the rest of Canada, whether one considers the dein-dustrialization of Ontario and the compounding impact of the 2007-8 global financial crisis there, or the long petroleum-fuelled boom in Alberta. All have their source in global markets.

Considering the importance of the factors that I have just been reviewing, it seems important that there be wide public discussion of possible ways and means. One would wish for discussion that was in-formed by the integration of community-based re-search — infused with local knowledge and values — with regional, territorial and Canada-wide mac-roeconomic analysis and assessment. There is in fact very little of this going on, and little public discus-sion of how to approach the three challenges that increasingly reliance upon resource development will bring.

In part this silence seems to be a result of the


How much choice do people in the North really have?

absence of permanent convening institutions and the crippling absence of a Northern-based univer-sity or network of think tanks. Northwest Territories news media seem largely to have set aside broader economic questions. There is also a failure of the Canadian research community as a whole to devise means to effectively disseminate the knowledge they do generate, with some important exceptions. Above all, there is simply a startling lack of research inter-est in the largest questions facing Northerners today. As a rough measure, consider the list of licensed research published by Aurora Research Institute. They report licensing over 5,000 research projects between 1974 and the present. Of these, most are natural science studies. Less than one-quarter fall into the domain of social scientific research, includ-ing health research and traditional knowledge. The situation is worse concerning the questions that I have been discussing here. Research that will help us understand the dynamics of the Northern econ-omy — at the community, regional or territorial lev-el — comprises less than 4 percent of all research that was licensed. Certainly some research, partic-ularly macroeconomic research, is conducted with-

out a license, and so may have escaped my notice. But a scan of published articles in Arctic and The Northern Review, Northern publications of record in Canada, does not contradict these findings.

Clearly, if Northerners are to find ways of re-alizing their vision of the best possible economic future for their region, action is needed on a num-ber of fronts. There is an urgent need for more pol-icy-relevant research and especially, public debate about findings. The news media and researchers alike need to do a better job of making use of what research has been conducted, so that the analyses published by such bodies as the Joint Review Panel on the Mackenzie Gas Project and the West Kitik-meot Slave Study Society are widely understood and publicly discussed. And, perhaps most importantly of all, Northerners and Northern scholars must be-gin the work of understanding how to ensure that the integration of the north into the world economy can be done on the best possible terms for Northern residents, and for Canada.◉

Dr. Frances Abele is Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University.

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NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories, 2009.

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NORTHERN GOVERNANCE AND ECONOMY CONFERENCE

Above: Plenary session; Below: Arlene Hache at the registration desk, Yellowknife, October 2012.

Photo credit: Northern Public Affairs.

Editor’s note: This is a transcript of Diana Gibson’s presen-tation at the Northern Governance and Economy Conference

iscovering resources in your province or ter-ritory can be the equivalent of winning the

lottery, but can there be too much of a good thing? This question of the challenges of resource wealth has been explored in a wide body of academic lit-erature under the paradox of plenty or the resource curse.

The most obvious cases are places like Sierra Leone or Liberia and blood or conflict diamonds. Oil in many African countries is also commonly as-sociated with erosion of democracy, corruption and conflict. There is certainly a stark contrast between these examples and developed and more democratic economies such as those of Alberta or the NWT.

However, Alberta and the NWT still pale in comparison to Norway for resource development that benefits current and future generations.

This article will look at Alberta as a case study of the resource curse and the paradox of plenty. It will then turn to look at how Norway has avoided a number of those traps. Finally, it explores where the NWT sits and what can be done to maximize the return to people in the territories and minimize the risks.

◉◉◉

The Paradox of Plenty

According to Terry Karl, who teachers at Stan-ford University, common key challenges associated with resource wealth in the literature on the ‘para-dox of plenty’ include:

• Boom and bust economy • Inequality• Less reliance on taxes • Less democracy • Regulatory captureThis article will explain each of these in turn

and then look at how the three case studies compare by these measures.

Boom and bust economy Resource booms are

not cheap. The cost of living is usually driven up dramatically, population influxes put pressure on ex-isting infrastructure and social services, industry re-quires more infrastructure, housing becomes scarce, housing prices and rents go up, and land prices rise. For people on fixed incomes or in low-wage jobs out-side the resource sector, these changes can actually erode their income and housing affordability, mak-ing them worse off.

The reliance on commodity prices in a resource dependent economy can also mean increased vola-tility, as those prices are prone to large fluctuations.

Inequality The gap between the haves and have-nots often widens with resource wealth. The dynam-ics of the boom-bust economy can mean that the rich become richer and the poor poorer. Resource extraction is still a male dominated business with few women represented in the higher wage jobs or at the executive level. Thus, a resource boom also often widens gender inequality.

Another form of equity impacted is that of in-tergenerational inequity. Governments with resource wealth have great temptation to use the wealth for increased spending or lower taxes, both of which may help their short-term political futures. The next generation is often given short shrift.

Less reliance on taxes Resource wealth comes with a high risk that governments will use that wealth to cut taxes to gain short-term election advantages. This is tied to the risks of volatility and vulnerability to external shocks as it increases the reliance on re-source revenue for ongoing expenditures.

Less democracy Lower taxation reduces gov-ernment reliance on the citizenry and undermines democracy. As per the common refrain: there is no representation without taxation. The effect of both oil and mineral wealth in impeding democracy has been found to be robust. According to Thomas Friedman’s First Law of Petropolitics, the higher the average global crude oil price rises, the more free speech, free press, free and fair elections, an inde-pendent judiciary, the rule of law, and independent political parties are eroded.


ECONOMY

Resource wealth: Opportunities & challenges

Diana Gibson

D

This can be reflected in low voter turnout, long-reining demagogues or political regimes, lack of free speech, and the centralization of deci-sion-making powers.

Regulatory capture As governments cut their taxes, they become increasingly beholden to re-source extraction corporations. This often leads the erosion of balance and accountability in the regula-tion of the industry. Both environmental regulation and monitoring become watered down and biased in favor of industry.

◉◉◉

Alberta: Illustrating the paradox of plenty

Alberta has high average incomes and lower un-employment compared to the rest of Canada. Cer-tainly for those in the resource economy, and many outside of it, life looks good. However, average in-comes mask differences.

A 2007 Leger marketing poll at the height of the boom in Alberta asked Albertans, “Are Alber-tans benefiting from the boom?” The majority said, “Yes.” Then the poll asked, “Are you benefiting from the boom?” The majority said, “No.” And 17 percent said they were worse off. Obviously, the re-source boom is costing many Albertans more than it is giving them.

Boom/Bust Volatility A 2010 report by the C.D. Howe Institute disclosed that Alberta has the most volatile government revenues, with the most predict-able of results: “Volatile revenues can lead to the inefficient provision of government services” and “stop-go” fiscal policies.

Inequality Alberta’s income is very unequally dis-tributed. Alberta has the richest rich and the poorest poor in the nation. Alberta’s top one percent have the highest average incomes in the nation. Half of Alberta’s households have a full 82 percent of total household income.

Though the province has fewer people living in poverty than in other provinces and territories, those living in poverty are in much deeper or more intense poverty. Alberta has the highest percentage of work-ing poor and children using a food bank in Canada. Alberta also has the largest gender gap in wages in the nation.

Intergenerational equity also suffers in Alberta. Alberta’s Heritage Fund has stagnated since it was established. Between 1987 and 2006 the fund lost value. In 2012 it is still faltering while the rainy day fund has evaporated into budget deficits driven by artificially low taxation levels.

Taxes Alberta has cut taxes dramatically, and uses almost all of its resource wealth to fund current ex-

Source: Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers data as extracted by Regan Boychuk and published in “Misplaced Generosity: Extraordinary profits in Alberta’s oil and gas industry.” Parkland Institute, University of Alberta, November 25, 2010

Figure 1


penditures. This makes the economy quite vulnera-ble to external shocks. The province has by far the lowest taxes in Canada and amongst the lowest in North America. This is a self-reinforcing mechanism with the dependence of the province on resource ex-traction.

Corporate tax cuts, have meant that corporate profits more than doubled their share of Alberta’s economy from 1989 to 2012. While corporate profits are up, social spending is down. From 1989 to 2008, Alberta’s spending as a portion of GDP shrank 40 percent while corporate profits more than doubled their share.

Studies have shown that Alberta has also fore-gone over a $100 billion in revenues just by failing to meet its own royalty capture targets. Royalties are not a tax. They are the value of the resource to the public. Like a steel manufacturing plant has to buy steel, it is the price oil and gas companies pay for the resource. Former premier Peter Lougheed had a target of capturing 35 percent of royalties, Ralph Klein modified that to 20 percent then it was elim-inated all together. As Can be seen in Figure 1, the province was capturing just a little above 10 percent in 2010.

Democracy Voter turnout is a key indicator of de-mocracy. In 1993, Alberta’s voter turnout was just over 60 percent but by 2008 it had fallen to an all time low of 40.6 percent. Although it did pick up to 57 percent in the most recent contested provin-cial elections. For contrast in 1935, turnout was 82 percent .

Regulatory capture Alberta spent ten times more on drilling incentives than on the entire envi-ronment ministry. At one point the government was spending more on marketing and advertising its oil and gas sector than on monitoring and regulating it.

The role of whistleblowers in Alberta is anoth-er indicator of regulatory capture and the erosion of democracy. They face much more than being ig-nored- from denying science to defaming scientists. The most glaring example is that of the Energy and Utilities Board hiring spies in 2007 to infiltrate a landowners organization and report back to them and the proponent. There are many other examples.

Scientists Peter Lee and Dr. Kevin Timoney published a scientific report in 2009, that dared sug-gest that “physical and ecological changes that result from oilsands industrial activities” are “detectable.” Data that has since been corroborated and shown to have been conservative by other studies. A Section Head at Alberta Environment accused them of lying and fudging the data. The Attorney General’s Office

subsequently issued a retraction and an apology.Dr. John O’Connor raised flags about unusual

cancers in Fort Chipewyan, downstream of the oil-sands industry. The Alberta government consistently denied the findings, while Alberta government em-ployees quietly “assisted” Health Canada in pursu-ing charges against O’Connor at the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons. The college eventually rejected all of those charges and the Alberta Cancer Board ultimately released a study confirming high-er-than-expected levels of rare cancers.

In summary, Alberta certainly fits the bill for Terry Lynn Karl’s paradox of plenty: a petroleum boom that produces poverty, inequality and a crisis of democracy..

◉◉◉

Norway: the Exception

Oil is on the decline, passed peak but the Nor-wegians have a lot to show for it. Norway has about $600 billion in the petroleum fund, strong econom-ic growth, and low levels of inequality. Norway has used a very different approach to developing its oil and gas. This includes:

• Stable economy• Less inequality• Savings for the current and next generation • Higher taxation• Higher royalties• Higher social spending • More democratic with higher voter turnout

Boom-bust economy The Norwegian economy has a large tax base, a large public sector, and is not dependent on resource revenues for in-year budget expenditures. Thus, it has avoided the boom bust nature of resource dependent economies. Norway entered the last recession later than Alberta and most OECD nations, had the shallowest dip, and came out with the highest consumer confidence in the OECD.

Norway has also avoided Dutch disease by keep-ing the resource money out of the economy. The vast majority of resource revenues are put into a stand alone ‘Pension Fund’ that is invested outside the country in ethical investments. Norway also heavily focused on value added so that they are sell-ing refined products not oil. This would be similar to the NWT selling diamond rings not diamonds.

High Taxes Norway is considered a high tax ju-risdiction and did not use its resource wealth to cut

taxes. It also has one of the highest spending to GDP rations in the OECD.

According to OECD data Norway also recovers a higher percentage of the rent. Norway leaves com-panies with 22 percent of net revenue, while Alber-ta allows companies a take of 53 percent . Since the 1970s, Norway as a matter of policy has collected between 70 percent and 80 percent of the resource wealth generated from their oil industry through

public ownership, corporate taxes twice as high as Canada’s, and a special tax on oil profits. Norway also required that foreign companies train Norwe-gian workers, transfer proprietary technologies to their state-owned oil company Statoil, and in some cases even hand over producing oil platforms free of charge after a predetermined period.

Democracy Higher taxes and a larger public sec-tor have meant a stronger democratic tradition in Norway. Norway ranks as the world’s best-governed nation according to the Democracy Index.

Inequality By many measures, Norway is a place of less inequality. It is routinely ranked number one in the world on the Human Development Index, and is the best country in the world to be a mother.

Regulatory capture Norway is ranked number three in the world on the Environmental Perfor-mance Index (Canada is thirty-seventh, behind Nic-aragua, Albania and Colombia).

◉◉◉

The Northwest Territories

Like Alberta, the NWT has high average in-comes, and a fast growing economy. The Northwest Territories is somewhere between Alberta and Nor-way on the resource curse spectrum.

Boom/bust volatility There are reports ofHous-ing shortages, and a growing infrastructure deficit, which is currently estimated at $3 billion over the next five years. Budget document states that in-

creased costs that challenge the Territory at every turn.

In 2012 I budget documents, the government says “We are investigating the possibility of a Reve-nue Stabilization Fund, similar to that in other prov-inces, to more actively manage sharp increases and decreases in revenues.” This was recommended to the government years ago but has not yet been done. It would mitigate some of the volatility associated

with resource de-pendence.

Inequality The NWT is not nearly as unequal as Al-berta in that the top one percent is not quite as rich. How-ever, the threshold

to get in to the top 1 percent is the third highest in the nation, indicating that the top 1 percent are very wealthy.

At the other end of the income spectrum, not just those on fixed incomes but the working poor are being negatively impacted by the booming economy and high cost of living. This is especially the case in housing affordability and housing quality.

First Nations communities are concentrated at the lower income levels and see the largest levels of inequality. At the Fortune minerals hearings in Beh-chokö, a First Nations member of the Tlicho said, “Diamond mining just puts money into the pockets of people from the South and brings differences for our families and communities between haves and have-nots.”

Intergenerational equity is also an issue in the NWT. The legacy Heritage Fund is dormant, de-spite the fact that there is no need to wait for devolu-tion. It could be implemented immediately with the introduction of a resource tax. This could capture over $100 million in revenues annually.

Devolution is not a silver bullet. Alberta has control of resource revenue and saves almost none. Devolution will also mean that the federal govern-ment will not be giving the same kind of transfer payments to the territory.

Taxation There are revenue options that are not being pursued in the NWT today. A resource tax was one of the key items not yet taken up.

A look at provincial and territorial tax brackets shows that there are six jurisdictions with a tax rate that is higher for the top income tax bracket than the NWT. This leaves plenty of room for higher tax

Without the right social and tax frameworks, it can mean an erosion of an already compromised existence for many. It is critical to ensure that there is a solid framework in place to protect the people against the risks of the resource curse and ensure that if the development goes ahead, it is for the benefit of all, not the few.


rates. This does not include the coming changes: Que-

bec’s personal combined top marginal income tax rates could spike to as high as 55.22 percent as well as the new Ontarian tax bracket on those whose tax-able income exceeds $500,000 and the surtax of 56 percent .

Democracy Voter turnout has been falling in the NWT. Voter turnout in the most recent territorial election was the lowest in the territory since 1999, which is the earliest year Elections NWT has data available. About 57 percent voted in 2007’s election, compared to 69 percent in 2003, and 70 percent in 1999.

Regulatory capture There are big challenges with regulatory capture in a smaller jurisdiction with such high stakes mining. Industry, Tourism and Investment minister Dave Ramsay said: “Any invest-ment in the NWT is a good investment.” This is clearly indicative of a direction that does not include saying no to a project where the environmental and social stakes are too high.

Devolution would only increase these pressures at the national level, the diamond industry is a small-er player in a larger mix of industry interests? At the territorial level, the government is dealing with a much smaller number of companies and the power dynamics are different.

Also, there are already elements of regulatory capture at the federal level. The federal government has been directly interfering by pressuring regula-tory boards to speed up timelines on behalf of the corporations.

The centralization tendencies of the resource curse can be seen in the NWT where regional struc-tures are under pressure. For example, the regional co-management land and water boards that are in the nascent stage are under review with pressures for them to be centralized.

◉◉◉

Conclusions

Alberta is a clear cautionary tale. The NWT is vulnerable and it will be important to ensure that systems are put into place to continue to monitor and manage against the paradox of plenty.

It is clear Minister Ramsay was wrong — any resource development is not necessarily a good thing. Without the right social and tax frameworks, it can mean an erosion of an already compromised existence for many. It is critical to ensure that there is a solid framework in place to protect the people against the risks of the resource curse and ensure that if the development goes ahead, it is for the ben-efit of all, not the few.

At the Fortune minerals hearings in Behchokö, over 40 community members spoke about alterna-tive futures for their community. It is also important to be open to and build these alternative futures for communities and the Northwest Territories Even if the resources extraction goes ahead, it is finite and will run its course.◉

Diana Gibson is President at PolicyLink Research and Con-sulting, Director at The Firelight Group Research Coopera-tive, and former Director of the Parkland Institute.

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the North.

48

Social Suffering in the Northwest Territories

aving income to share from one wage-econ-omy job can support others to go out on the

land and hunt and fish, an activity that is becoming critically important as food prices rise and housing crises grow in many of the small communities in the NWT. While Yellowknife boasts the highest average household income in the country, the Indigenous populations of places like Paulatuk are living in cri-ses anchored in poverty and the hopelessness specific to colonial conditions.

Colonization creates what is known as social suf-fering: a paradigm drawn from the work of anthro-pologists and sociologists seeking to account for ways in which government policies and decision making results in massive traumas on a collective scale with-in targeted populations. Essentially the theory pos-its that in cases where populations have undergone trauma on a collective scale — war, genocide, colo-nization — the logical outcomes include social suf-fering on a collective scale. Colonial traumas range from historical events such as residential school and forced removals and relocations, for example, to on-going law and policies such as the Indian Act, which continues to lead to dispossession of lands and re-sources, systemic racism, and ongoing social conse-quences — where peoples’ cultures, families, com-munities and autonomy were targeted for erasure and destruction.

In the NWT, many think that land claims have helped to address and to some extent mitigate im-pacts of colonization. Others see land claim agree-ments as part of the suite of colonial policies that continue to focus on removing Indigenous peoples from the land and alienating them from decision making over their traditional territories, resources, rights, culture and way of life. In the final analysis it seems that even in regions where there are land claims, there is still significant social suffering in the

forms of poverty, low educational attainment, high incidences of disease, and a variety of other condi-tions that have been called “third world” by a Adri-enne Clarkson, during her term as Governor Gen-eral of Canada.

If we look at living conditions of Indigenous peoples around the world, it is evident that there are two common elements. The first is diversity: differ-ent climates, ecosystems, spiritualities, ways of life, languages. The second is that despite these dramatic differences, where Indigenous peoples have expe-rienced colonization, wherever we go in the world we see common manifestations of social suffering. Colonized peoples the world over share a similar pain. This is where the explanatory power of the social suffering paradigm helps us to make sense of common responses in peoples who are oceans apart: wherever there are populations traumatized by col-onization, the outcomes are invariably similar. The suffering apparent in NWT communities is not the fault of the people who live there. It is not about them, who they are, their cultures, languages, skin color, or some innate inability to conform. It is not about any of that. Rather, the result of this suffer-ing is the deliberate and sustained policy choices of successive governments that continue to mar-ginalize and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands, and so their spirituality, culture and way of life resulting in profound psychological and material impacts. Those policy choices create circumstanc-es where the root causes of suffering are reinforced rather than removed.

And when government provides assistance to communities, its policies are directed in ways that do not change the fundamental circumstance that give rise to suffering. Instead the programs and ser-vices offered are meant to deal with the symptoms of those policies. Such programs focus on initiatives relating to education, training, addictions treatment and more. While they are needed and necessary, there is also a glaring absence - government does not go beyond providing band-aids to the wounds that its’ own policies inflict. In this way the state po-sitions itself as a savior while in reality it continues with policies perpetuating suffering. So the expect-able outcome is that suffering will continue. It will

SOCIETY

The economy, governance, & social sufferingStephanie Irlbacher-Fox


H

“One job can feed four families. If one person is working he can support others to buy gas, nets, go out on the land. One job means a lot in the small communities

of the NWT.” — Willard Hagen, Gwich’in aviator and current

Chair of the Mackenzie Valley Impact Review Board


continue despite land claims agreements, despite self-government deals, despite jobs and training of-fered by resource extraction projects.

What the social suffering paradigm tells us is that until government policies and actions resulting in suffering are changed, the trend will continue. These policies currently manifest in alienating Indigenous peoples from their land through removing control over lands and resources and restricting their deci-sion-making power over their present and future.

◉◉◉

The Economy and Social Conditions

The implications of social suffering for the economy in the NWT are far reaching and to some extent require an economic development approach that cannot escape the necessity to have social re-sponsibility at its core. If that approach does neglect social responsibility, it does so at its own peril. Ap-proximately one-third of the NWT Gross Domestic Product is contributed by the resource extraction sector: oil, gas and mining. The resulting economic development has some positive economic impacts: it creates jobs and a tax base, inspires educational attainment and represents a real potential for the material improvement in the lives of many people who live here.

However in the Northwest Territories, about half of the population is Indigenous: Dene, Metis ,and Inuvialuit. Scattered over an area of more than a million kilometers, the vast majority of Indigenous peoples live in small, isolated communities far from each other and far from Yellowknife, the seat of our territorial government. These are the places where evidence of suffering is most stark: dirt roads are lined by small, modest homes, many overcrowded and in need of major repair. In these places the jobs are few and many families eat only because family members can still hunt and fish for subsistence. Yet this is a practice that has been hampered in areas such as the Tlicho Region, where it is widely be-lieved that a ban on caribou hunting — a cultural and nutritional mainstay of the people — is a direct result of migratory routes being sacrificed to the di-amond mines that now claim that land.

This picture is as accurate in the “unsettled” re-gions as in those where land claim settlement agree-ments have been reached. In fact, in some commu-nities it is impossible to tell from the look of things if its residents are beneficiaries of a land claim or not.

One thing that land claim agreements did man-

age to secure was the creation of a resource manage-ment system legislating local involvement in decision making over lands and water use. In many commu-nities in the NWT such involvement is critical be-cause many Indigenous peoples still live on the land. It is also critical because in many of those commu-nities the costs of food and housing are prohibitive for significant portions of the population. Being able to hunt and fish at a level required to sustain the bulk of an extended families’ food consumption is non-negotiable. A mine or extraction project forc-ing caribou away from their usual migration routes could prove devastating on social, cultural and eco-nomic levels, as has been the case for communities in the Akaitcho and Tlicho regions.

So a recent unilateral proposal by Canada to do away with regional land and water boards and concentrate decision making power within one “super-board” (centrally located in Yellowknife) is viewed as gutting the heart of NWT land claims, and at the same time, the relationship between Can-ada and the land claim signatories. This is due in no small part to the reality that Canada is removing de-cision-making power from the people who must bear the brunt of resource extraction’s negative impacts. There is also the psychological impact of having to watch this decision-making authority transferred to yet another Yellowknife-based institution, far from the reality on the ground. Canada argues regula-tory reform is necessary to foster economic invest-ment; that the regulatory process in the NWT is too complex. However seasoned observers, including mining interests, have instead pointed to Canada’s own failure as a serious cause for concern. Decisions on projects languish on the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada’s desk. Moreover, offices at AANDC, which should be peo-pled with officials charged with moving initiatives forward, remain empty under government hiring freezes. Board appointments are delayed until suit-able partisan appointees can be found, who then cause delays in or jeopardize environmental assess-ment hearings through their ideological grandstand-ing. These same observers note that the regulato-ry reform process is not broken in the NWT; it is simply unfinished. The Dehcho and Akaitcho need land claim agreements completed in order for the corresponding regulatory system to be completed. After all, it is those agreements that would create the mechanisms for planning, consultation and deci-sion-making with Indigenous peoples. However in-stead of resourcing those processes and moving for-ward, rumors abound that those very tables are to be cut under an unrelated exercises taking place within

AANDC (the federal government has announced it will be cutting “unproductive” negotiations tables — some feeling that “unproductive” is a euphemism for failure to acquiesce to federal negotiating positions).

◉◉◉

Impacts of the Big Picture

The trend toward centralizing power at the ex-pense of communities and land claim governments that have established political conventions for shar-ing power through land claims is a theme prominent within current devolution negotiations in the NWT. The devolution deal will transfer administrative au-thority over lands and waters to the Government of the Northwest Territories. In those talks, some Indig-enous peoples have been represented, and some not. As the details of the agreement leak out it is becom-ing apparent that devolution will involve the GNWT taking on land claim responsibilities from Canada. It is also apparent that the resources required for un-dertaking that work will also be transferred to the GNWT, specifically in Yellowknife. Authority that may come to the GNWT (or may stay in Ottawa — at this time it is not clear) is the power to approve or reject resource extraction projects. It is expected that in addition to regulatory reform changes that centralize power in Yellowknife based institutions, the environmental assessment decision making un-der the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act will either stay in Ottawa or shift to Yellowknife. It seems that under devolution, Indigenous communities will have decreased power over decision-making, and waning influence over how lands and waters in their territories are used.

Related to this is what is known as the Resource Revenue Sharing (RRS) Agreement attached to the devolution deal. Canada’s main intent seems to be on keeping rather than sharing. Under the RRS terms, the GNWT can keep up to 5 percent of the Gross Expenditure Base, or about $60 million of re-source royalties coming from the NWT. This “keep-ing” approach on the part of Canada ensures that resource extraction activity will work in conjunction with the power imbalance in the territory to produce a solid foundation for inequality and governance in-stability. Combining this process with an outdated, 19th century resource royalty regime that sells NWT resources more cheaply than anywhere else in North America, it is widely expected that a cash-strapped GNWT will be pre-disposed to approving resource extraction projects despite evident negative environ-

mental, social and economic impacts. Simply put, the GNWT will need to maximize desperately need-ed resource revenues available to it under the RRS agreement.

Canada and the GNWT both have a variety of policy instruments at their disposal to both alleviate sources of suffering and to establish an approach to devolution and resource revenue sharing that would promote economic and social wellness. Such instru-ments have been evident at various moments in the past (and in different contexts). Examples include the entrenchment of power sharing as the basis of governance through resource management regimes as per the political conventions developed under the Dene claims; the establishment of a social impact fund, as was the case with the Mackenzie Gas Proj-ect, where all impacted regions would access fund-ing to address specific impacts in accordance with their own needs; building in measures to establish a Permanent Fund as Alberta did with its resource royalties under Premier Lougheed; the imposition of profit taxes on resource extraction companies as Governor Sarah Palin did in Alaska to ensure the people of that state benefited from high oil prices; and Stabilization Funds, employed outside of North America, that make funds available in ways that “smooth out” the boom and bust tendencies of re-source based economies.

The sad truth is that things do not have to be the way they are in the NWT. Approaches to shap-ing the territorial economy must begin with a NWT government prepared to fight for the interests of the people, and to preserve and foster strong relation-ships between the different regions and competing interests. When the going gets tough, it is relation-ships that carry a territory as diverse as the NWT through difficult times. In the current climate, where social suffering is rampant, and devolution and regulatory reform are being shaped largely by the interests of those faraway and narrowly impacted, relationships — between governments, regions and people - are unraveling. The Government of Can-ada would do well to consider that its approach to opening up the North for business is seriously desta-bilizing it well into the future, economically, socially and politically.◉

Dr. Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox is a Research Associate with the Institute of Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife and also holds appointments as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Political Science. She is a Research Associate with the Canadian Circumpolar Institute at the University of Alberta; and a Research


ince the late 1990s, homelessness in Northwest Territories urban centres has been a significant

public concern. The emergence of visible homeless-ness in places like Yellowknife and Inuvik seemed to coincide with a resource development boom, howev-er the nature of homeless peoples’ experiences point to contributing factors that are much more complex. At the Northern Governance and Economy Con-ference in Yellowknife, “Pathways to Prosperity”, housing insecurity and homelessness were repeat-edly cited by presenters and conference attendees alike as significant obstacles to real and meaningful “prosperity” in the territory. Yet these obstacles are unevenly experienced by Northerners. For example, homeless men, women, and children in the territory are disproportionately Indigenous: anecdotal evi-dence suggests that between 90-95 percent of the visibly homeless population is Dene, Métis, or Inuit (Christensen 2011; Falvo 2011). Housing needs are also highest in small, Northern settlements where

populations are predominantly Indigenous, which suggests that homelessness and housing insecurity disproportionately affect Indigenous Northerners in Northern settlement communities. These dispar-ities point to a geography of uneven development (Smith 1994) that threatens to further entrench so-cioeconomic disadvantage, particularly between ur-ban and rural places. This structural disadvantage, though challenging for all Northerners detached from the urban hubs of socioeconomic opportunity, is particularly dire for Northerners who experience additional social vulnerabilities to homelessness, such as people in crisis.

In my research (Christensen 2009, 2011, 2012), I have found that while the homeless population is growing in Northern urban centres like Yellowknife and Inuvik, many of the homeless men and women in both urban locales originate from smaller, rural Northern “settlement” communities. In my presen-tation to the “Pathways to Prosperity” conference, I

THE ESSAY

Pathways to homelessness: Rural-urban migration & housing insecurity in Yellowknife and

Inuvik, Northwest TerritoriesJulia Christensen

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Inuvik, Northwest Territories, 2011.

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examined the specific role of Northern rural-urban dynamics in a different kind of pathway: pathways to homelessness. However, while the current North-ern economic landscape suggests deepening divides between large and small communities, we must also consider the growing socioeconomic disparities within large and small communities as well.

◉◉◉

Northern settlement and housing

A geography of socioeconomic unevenness between Northern rural settlements and Northern urban centres tends to widen through resource ex-tractive industries and urbanization (Abele 2006). Yellowknife and Inuvik both grew in large part through the development of a non-renewable re-source industry, as well as expansion in federal and territorial administrative activity. Meanwhile, most Northern rural settlement communities are instead the result of the Canadian government’s resettle-ment policy of the mid-20th century, which was a deliberate effort to centralize previously nomadic Indigenous populations across Northern Canada (Wenzel 2008). As a result, many Northern settle-ment communities were not formed around a stable economic base, and a critical shortage of formal sec-tor employment opportunities persists (Bone 2003; Collings 2005). Today, the uneven development of the Northern economic landscape is accelerated through major resource development projects, such as diamond mines and oil and gas development, where economic activities, including employment opportunities and private market housing, are con-centrated in urban centres (Abele 2006).

Similar forms of rural-urban disparity are re-flected in the geography of Northern housing. While Yellowknife and Inuvik are two of only five Northwest Territories communities with function-al private housing markets, much of the housing stock in Northern settlements is public or employ-ee housing (GNWT 2010). Dependency on public housing is compromised by the high rates of “core housing need” in the vast majority of settlement communities. Core housing need is a term used by both the federal and territorial governments to refer to housing that does not meet adequacy, suitabili-ty, and affordability norms. In total, 35.5 percent of households experience core housing need in the ru-ral settlement communities, with some communities reporting that as many as 77 percent of households are in core housing need (ibid 2010).

These uneven economic and housing geogra-

phies lay the foundation for growing homelessness in the territory, leading to a series of factors that en-courage or necessitate rural-urban movement, par-ticularly by community members who already face ‘compounded disadvantage’ related to trauma, fam-ily violence, the child welfare system, or intellectual disabilities (Pleace 1998).

◉◉◉

Rural-urban migration and pathways to homelessness in the Northwest Territories

This article is based upon fieldwork that took place from 2007 to 2010 in Yellowknife and Inu-vik, Northwest Territories. I am a non-Indigenous scholar, born and raised in the Northwest Territo-ries, with many years experience as an advocate for homeless people in the territory. My relationships and familiarity with homeless men and women in both communities, as well as support providers, greatly facilitated this research. In total, I conducted 95 interviews with homeless men and women using a biographical interview approach to illustrate “the factors shaping a person’s movements in and out of homelessness” (May 2000, 615). I also conducted 55 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conduct-ed with representatives from the territorial and Ab-original governments, representatives of non-gov-ernmental organizations, and support providers. In this article, I explore two main factors guiding the rural-urban migration of Indigenous Northerners at risk of homelessness, factors that connect to the many themes highlighted over the course of the “Pathways to Prosperity” conference: 1) the concen-tration of economic opportunities in Northern ur-ban centres; and, 2) chronic housing need in small, Northern settlements. In a previously published ar-ticle (Christensen 2012), I provide a more compre-hensive assessment of the push-pull factors shaping rural-urban migration of Northern men and wom-en at risk of homelessness. For the purposes of the conference, however, I wanted to focus in on the key economic and governance elements of Northern homeless geographies.

◉◉◉

Employment and educational opportunities in Northern urban centres

The concentration of employment, education, and training opportunities in Northern urban cen-tres provides a significant draw for all Northerners.



In both Inuvik and Yellowknife, employment pros-pects are a key contributing factor behind the ru-ral-urban migration of research participants (Chris-tensen 2012). The rise in industrial development, particularly in the areas of diamond mining and oil and gas exploration, make Yellowknife and Inuvik hubs for employment in the resource sector and re-lated industries.

Though moving for employment prospects is relatively common among the Northern population in general (Gardner 1994), a shared characteristic among homeless men and women is the particular type of employment they have access to: highly vari-able, often seasonal in nature, and often low paying (Christensen 2009). The resulting job instability ex-acerbates what is already a precarious housing situ-ation for renters in Yellowknife and Inuvik. Employ-ment security is also threatened by another common characteristic among research participants: a crimi-nal record. A support provider in Yellowknife indi-cated that:

Most employers now use a criminal record as a screening tool. It is a huge barrier. You can apply for a pardon, but there is a very long wait (approximately five years) and generally people do not explore that option until they have an actual job offer on the ta-ble and of course by then, it just won’t happen fast enough for you to be able to take that job.

A series of changes in the employment poli-cy landscape in the territory have had a particular impact on those at-risk of homelessness. This not includes the implementation of criminal records checks, but also of certification standards. The in-creased standardization around employment is linked closely to the nature of the territorial econ-omy and the hiring policy changes introduced by industry, such as the diamond mines and oil and gas companies. These large companies require the businesses they hire on contract to share the same standards. This inflexibility contributes to a sense of ‘no more second chances’, particularly since it is in these industries that many homeless people seek work. Furthermore, most minimum wage, entry lev-el positions in the service sector also screen for crim-inal records, preventing employment in those areas as well. The result is often a reliance on odd jobs or, in the case of some, selling carvings or other arts and crafts for a bit of cash.

The uneven landscape of educational oppor-tunities is an additional motivator for movement to Yellowknife and Inuvik. Adult educational and training opportunities, particularly those geared to-wards employment in resource development, tend to be concentrated in urban centres, and many are

financially supported by the industries in question. For homeless research participants, however, plans for education were often interrupted by homesick-ness, loss of housing due to poor grades or atten-dance, or relationship problems with a partner. Fur-thermore, a lack of adequate formal education and training contributes to job insecurity and low wages. Standardization around trades employment pres-ents a significant barrier to men and women who are otherwise skilled but are unable to access the higher wages and more stable employment available if one has the necessary accreditation. As Merle, a man who has been staying at an emergency shelter in In-uvik on and off over the past five years says, “you need your schooling these days, you need your ticket to work in trades”. In the past, Merle said, he had been able to find good work as a carpenter, despite the fact that he had no formal training. This same flexibility no longer exists in Inuvik and Yellowknife, making it difficult to participate in the wage econo-my in any consistent way without formal training.

Both Yellowknife and Inuvik are perceived by homeless research participants as places of econom-ic and social opportunity, a perception that often motivates rural-urban movement. However, once in these larger urban centres, employment insecuri-ty or obstacles in education and training programs, combined with life challenges such as addiction, contributes to many individual pathways to home-lessness through their interaction with the exclusive, and sometimes punitive, housing and employment landscapes (Christensen 2009).

◉◉◉

Core housing need in Northern settlement communities

While employment and education opportunities act as a pulling factor to Northern urban centres, core housing need in small Northern settlements often pushes men and women at risk of homeless-ness from their home communities. In many small, Northern communities, efforts to change or improve housing circumstances require leaving home in search of accommodation in larger centres, where housing options are more diverse. Close to half of all homeless research participants mentioned a lack of housing options in their home community as a reason behind their rural-urban move (Christensen 2012). However, though there is a larger number of public housing units and a more diverse private rent-al housing stock in Yellowknife and Inuvik, housing inaffordability, a lack of public housing for single

adults, and an exclusive, low-vacancy private rental housing market present significant barriers to people at risk of homelessness (Christensen 2009).

Overcrowding or a lack of privacy can exacer-bate already strained relationships with family or friends. The desire to escape a negative situation was frequently described by research participants as a key motivator behind a rural-urban move. Monica, a young homeless woman in Yellowknife indicated that she moved to Yellowknife to leave a violent part-ner. At home, there was no alternative accommoda-tion, nor did she feel safe staying in the community. In the end, the only suitable option was for her was to leave the community in search of housing in Yel-lowknife. Monica’s story touches on the gendered nature of rural-urban migration among those at risk of homelessness. For women, experiences of family violence as well as having children placed in foster care in Yellowknife were common factors behind ru-ral-urban movement.

Meanwhile, in Yellowknife and Inuvik, single adults are particularly hard hit by the limited amount of affordable housing. While public housing is avail-able to some extent for families, it is very limited for single adults, which leaves them instead highly vul-nerable to the fluctuations and whims of a private housing market. Private rental housing markets, on the other hand, are highly exclusive, discriminato-ry and effectively controlled by a small handful of rental companies, which exacerbates housing inaf-fordability and inaccessibility for homeless men and women. Single adults unable to secure rental hous-ing must then turn to the emergency shelter, where many homeless men and women stay consistently for years.

In light of the difficulties faced in larger centres vis-à-vis housing, employment, and social adjust-ment, several of these homeless men and women move back and forth from their home community several times, prompted by the high cost of living in larger centres, as well as additional social and economic barriers, combined with the high social cost of relocation away from home (Gardner 1994). However, the same factors that motivated the initial move away from home generally did not take long to emerge again.

Core housing need, and the related strains on social relationships, was a frequent incentive for ru-ral-urban migration in this study. When no alterna-tive accommodation is available at home, or when there is a strong desire to distance oneself from troubles with family and friends, the push towards regional centres, with a greater diversity in housing options, is strong. However, the cost of housing in

both Yellowknife and Inuvik, the stiff competition for private rental units, and the high demand for public housing units, collectively create a tight hous-ing market that effectively shuts out many Northern residents (Christensen 2009).

◉◉◉

Pathways to homelessness?

While rural-urban migration is common across Canada, it is intensified in the Northwest Territo-ries by a geography where the relative economic disadvantage of rural settlements is exacerbated through the uneven geographies generated through resource-extractive economic development (Abele 2006). The absence of policy geared towards eco-nomic and infrastructural development in Northern rural settlements accentuates this disadvantage by passively encouraging movement to urban centres (Gardner 1994).

Meanwhile, in Yellowknife and Inuvik, inacces-sibility of public housing, high cost of living, hous-ing inaffordability, employment insecurity, as well as the many temptations of urban life, make both locales challenging environments for those at-risk of homelessness (Christensen 2009). A Northern hous-ing strategy, one that includes funding to not only replace or repair old housing units, but also to add to the overall affordable housing stock in small and large communities, is urgently needed in order to ensure all Northerners have a basic need like hous-ing met.

At the same time, there is a tremendous need for supportive housing programs that combine needed social supports, such as counselling or skills devel-opment, with social housing. Though economic and housing disparities guide rural-urban movement, the majority of homeless men and women in both Yellowknife and Inuvik mentioned trauma and sub-stance misuse as additional and significant obsta-cles. Alongside the social factors that underscore experiences of crises and addiction, the geography of treatment options seems to further entrench the relationships between people in crisis, addiction, and homelessness. Though there is some formal mental health support available in small communities, ad-dictions treatment services are very sparsely dis-tributed across the territory. In total, there is only a 28-day residential addiction treatment program in Hay River and a two-week detoxification program offered in conjunction with the Salvation Army in Yellowknife. The need for both an expanded mental health program that addresses trauma, as well as ex-



panded addictions treatment services was repeatedly mentioned in interviews with both support providers and homeless men and women. Neither private nor government housing stocks on their own currently accommodate the needs of homeless men and wom-en, which include supports related not only to trau-ma and addiction, but to domestic violence, lack of employable skills, and so on. All told, the housing spectrum for homeless single adults is tenuous and threadbare. The lack of adequate supportive hous-ing is a particularly glaring gap in this spectrum and one that relates directly to the persistence of North-ern homelessness.

Any effective strategy aimed at alleviating Northern homelessness and building “pathways to prosperity” for all Northerners must be multi-faceted and encompass housing need alongside economic, institutional, social, and health needs as well. Effec-tive policy strategies must also be rooted in a com-prehensive understanding of the territorial geogra-phy of Northern homelessness: visible homelessness in Yellowknife and Inuvik is, in many ways, closely tied to socioeconomic conditions in small, Northern settlements. Therefore, interventions need to be de-veloped that encompass both the rural and urban sides of the Northern homelessness spectrum.◉

Julia Christensen is a Trudeau Scholar, SSHRC Postdoctoral Re-search Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, and a Research Associate with the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

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56

naaq” is the word for harpoon in the In-uktitut dialect of the people of Inukjuak

in Nunavik. A tool, that according to Tommy Pallis-er, the group’s Treasurer “is crucial for men to have. Without it you are stranded. You cannot survive.”

Located on Hudson’s Bay, at the mouth of the Inuuksuak River, the fly-in Inuit community of In-ukjuak (Inuktitut: ᐃᓄᒃᔪᐊᒃ) faces many of the same challenges as communities across the North. The community, with a population of 1,597 today, has a somewhat typical history for an Indigenous peo-ple: it is the site of a former fur-trading post and Anglican mission (in the 1950s it also became a source of Inuit for Canada’s High Arctic Relocation program). In more contemporary times, Inuuksuak faces increasing demand for resource extraction on their lands amid the backdrop of a colonial burden that includes poverty and the consequences of resi-dential school. Inukjuak residents are now struggling with what seem to be the twin problems of cultural retention and economic development. Often seen as incompatible by outside governments and funding agencies that usually emphasize one or the other, a group of men in the community have proven that theory wrong. The activities of the Unaaq Men’s As-sociation demonstrates that instead of being coun-tervailing problems, economic and cultural strength can actually be twin pillars of social and economic wellness. In response to a series of tragic suicides by young men in the community during 2001, the women of Inukjuak put out a challenge to the men who would eventually form the Association. They went on community radio and asked us: “what are you going to do about this, how are you going to help each other?”

Tommy Palliser grew up in Inukjuak and from early on knew that his choices were limited by the economic circumstances in that small community. By early adulthood, he also realized that his choic-es were further limited by not having extensive land skills. Enrolling in a two-year Heritage Training Program focusing on developing those skills on the land changed his life. Strengthening his cultural knowledge and abilities, and experiencing a pro-found personal transformation as a result, opened his eyes to the situation of other young men, who he

says “are schooled to live in the south, but we live in the North.” That realization prompted him to focus on efforts to provide youth with the tools and confi-dence necessary to live in the North and within their own culture.

Tommy recounts the origins of the Unaaq Men’s Association as a response to an event that was symp-tomatic of much larger issues: hopelessness created in part by low attainment in both formal schooling and cultural knowledge. “The school system,” Pal-liser notes, “creates a dependency where that system is supposed to raise children. But the education they get does not fully prepare them to go into employ-ment or business. And most are also not fully able to hunt or survive on the land.” The Men’s Asso-ciations answer to this problem focused on building skills and knowledge intended to both require and create wellness, organized around activities and projects that would also foster individual and collec-tive economic benefit. Since undertaking their task, the efforts and achievements of the Association have been transformative for the community.

“We started out with a budget of about $5,000-10,000 a year, now we have revenues of $600,000 - 800,000 per year. The association has created full time jobs, promotes the traditional economy, em-ploys Elders, and provides the opportunity for young men in the community to become strong in their cultural knowledge so that they can become strong leaders.”

On any given day, men from the community are employed to lead skill-building workshops that are relevant and immediate for the men in their communities as well as their families. Elders teach tool-making: from harpoons (unaaq) to crossbows (qukiuttaujaq), snow knives (panaq) to kayaks, as well as the knowledge and acumen necessary to wield these tools with confidence and precision of tech-nique necessary to propel the learner to achieving their goals. In another, more recent iteration of the tool program, the Association has started to employ men to produce wooden versions of the tools as toys for children.

A small engine repair shop hosts three full-time small engine mechanics, complemented by a recy-cling centre whose manager will oversee the recy-

IN CONVERSATION

Raising-up hunters & protectors once again: The Unaaq Men’s Association

Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox & Tommy Palliser


“U

cling and reclamation of engine parts and building materials that would otherwise rot unused at the local dump. Another vital resource, especially for a community depending extensively on hunting and fishing using skidoos, ATVs, is an outboard motor repair service. While an ultimately unsustainable service when provided under a for-profit model, the Association deploys a combination of economic de-velopment funding and low-profit margin to keep the service afloat. In addition to providing mechanic services, the enterprise also makes shop space and tools available for locals to work on their own equip-ment.

“We started out in a borrowed building. Now we have four buildings to work out of, and the space is available to local people to do their own build-ing and repair work. We have also built shelters for camps and places on the land. The Elders especially appreciate this. At places for example like the soap-stone quarry, it allows them to stay out overnight, to spend more time there together.”

The economic benefit to the community is con-siderable. “Inexpensive skidoo maintenance is so im-portant to people who go out on the land” Palliser adds. The association focuses and builds on the types of activities and services that work with the skills and interests of Inuit and which strengthen cultural and land connections.

Building infrastructure supporting land-based activities at well-used locations near the community is one of the more visible impacts of the Associa-tion’s activities. In 2011 alone, six emergency shel-ter cabins were towed to regularly-used waypoints and camping sites on hunting routes surrounding the community. And the association has held a series of ongoing skill development workshops that build a basic set of skills and knowledge essential for land-

based survival and success. These have included GPS-based navigation training to complement land-based knowledge techniques; land and water based hunting and fishing (seal, goose, fish) excursions with adult and youth; First Aid training for remote and wilderness contexts as well as the work place; a soapstone collecting trip; kayak repair and tool building. The list goes on. The pride and sense of accomplishment the activities generate are felt in the wider community, as youth work closely with adult and Elder role models, and both men and women participate in skills development workshops, bene-fitting from the services provided by the association.

According to Palliser, the other impacts of the men’s association may not be as visible but are likely being felt within the community. “A lot of the young men we work with, after a couple of years there is a change in them. They are more confident in them-selves. They have more skills than when they start-ed, for example they have new opportunities open to them if they are trained in First Aid or as guides and can put that together with the land-based and cultural knowledge they have gained.”

Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox: You seem passion-ate about this organization. What inspired you to become involved and what keeps you focused?

Tommy Palliser: I never desired working in the south. I knew I had the ability to excel in areas like business and looked at what jobs were available. I noticed that the one job in Inukjuak that might be interesting was the Northern Store Manager posi-tion. The managers were always changing. I thought that maybe I could do that. In college I went into the social sciences at first but nothing interested me

Members of the Unaaq Men’s Association, Inukjuak, Nunavik, 2012.

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except business. I grew up without an Inuit father figure but had

an adopted father since I was a child. Although I had uncles and cousins who would spend time with me — and I am grateful to them for teaching me — it was difficult to learn traditional skills, to get the full education of how to live on the land, to have regular experience of that. My family went through some tough times, and I was pretty young when I had to take on the role of provider. In 1994-95 I en-rolled in what was then called the Heritage Training Program. It changed my life and was a dream come true to be connected with my cultural knowledge. The Elders were not easy on us. We would work at it six days a week. We would have to build igloos, and sleep in them. We went hunting for wolf, polar bear, and caribou. We had to live on our own on the land and that often meant struggle. It meant a lot to me to be intact with cultural traditions.

Have you been surprised by the Men’s Asso-ciation’s success?

I am fairly surprised by its success. There are no other men’s associations of this kind in our region, Nunavut or the NWT. I’ve looked for other mod-els for associations that have these kinds of goals and impacts in communities. We are breaking new ground and creating a new kind of entity that focus-es on traditional activities but with a “modern” or-ganizational structure that is actually creating jobs. But it depends directly on our hard work as board members and employees to make it work.

Are there obstacles or disappointments?

There are. In the beginning we had high turn-over rates with employees. It was hard to retain people when we demand so much from them. We are trying to promote a traditional structure of the organization that is consistent with our culture, and the challenge is that we need people who have cer-tain qualifications to do the work. So in the short term it is moving from hiring people who are not from the community in administrative roles toward hiring Inuit who have the skills to do that work. Over the long term the challenge is to keep the commu-nity involved. In the beginning we had challenges getting kids to wake up in the morning or finding proper clothes for them to withstand the -40C tem-peratures. Those are challenges we see over time are changing. Another challenge is to develop new proj-ects and foster fresh ideas. For example we have a new focus on dog team training. That will be inter-

esting for the next few years. We are also looking at ways to start promoting kayaking again. Right now manufactured kayaks are out of reach for most Inu-it, but the kayak is an important tool for fishing. So we are looking into working on a program that will revitalize kayaking in a way that supports people be-ing on the land. Such new developments also help to keep the community involved and supportive.

What are the most significant economic and social impacts of the association?

The small engine repair shop has been in op-eration for one year and that has had a big direct impact in terms of getting hunters and trappers mo-bile with skidoos, ATVs , and other small vehicles. If the community didn’t have the shop, people would have to depend on people working in small shacks or outside, which is pretty tough in the cold conditions of winter. The shop has created three full-time jobs and one part-time job. We also have taken on people who have been given community hours through the court system. These are mostly younger people, and in one case, we retained someone during the sum-mer months as a helper. This was a positive experi-ence to have older men working with and mentoring younger men. So to provide this service is rewarding not only financially but to be appreciated by the peo-ple because you are repairing their vehicles. In our first year we have repaired over 400 vehicles and the community is appreciative of that work.

Why is keeping your culture at the forefront of progress essential?

For obvious reasons, I guess! There has been so much change in such a short time. There is talk about Inuit losing culture and language and people worrying about that. The words used among the el-ders, for example, are in a more sophisticated lan-guage: they use more technical words that are tied directly to being on the land, knowing the land, and are used a lot on the land (how the weather is, driving dog teams, hunting). These kinds of technical words, especially relating to some cultural practices such as dog-teaming are not used so much anymore. We are noticing that because the language is not used in this way, its in danger of being lost. We want to make sure it survives. And the end result would be that no matter what change we see in technology, there will still be a resource in our community to keep the language, as well as the related activities, strong. If we don’t have that knowledge, language and land



connection, then we will just become Inuit living a southern way. Fortunately we are not at that point yet. There are people my age who have dropped out of school in grades 6 or 7 and they are living off the land. Some people would consider them failures for dropping out but the knowledge those individuals have is very valuable and will be more valuable as we face changes on our lands and in the world around us. It really depends on what values you have, and our Men’s Association, and our survival as a people, depends on holding as very important the ability to live off the land as Inuit and know and practice and pass on that cultural and land based knowledge. It is important for us to have these values alive and vital in our community to be able to move forward.

What have you learned about yourself through this process and about your com-munity?

This has taught me that it’s okay to make our mistakes, and we must learn from them. That builds our character and self-esteem as men, and is essen-tial to being a good community member and a good father. Fatherhood requires us to pass on our culture, traditions and values to our children. I have learned a lot from the elders who work with the Men’s Asso-ciation. Just meeting with them and talking between our breaks has had a big influence on me. Seeing them gives me a strong sense of how I would like to be as an Elder myself. They know so much in terms of cultural heritage and living off the land. They also know their knowledge is valued by the whole community. This is in contrast to the schooling sys-tem that uses teachers from the south who teach our youth knowledge that is valued in and useful in the south. When you really look at our situation, valu-ing of Elders has diminished in part because of the formal school systems that have been put in place. We of course want the youth in our community to be able to function in the south, but we are still very much a Northern people and community. To balance that, the values and knowledge of the El-ders should be taught first and foremost. Right now it seems like there are two conflicting values in our communities: there is school five days a week which leaves only one day to go out hunting and fishing (many cannot go on Sundays for religious reasons).

It is really hard to pass on the cultural knowl-edge and values under these kinds of constraints where there is a strict structure, which applies both for work and for school. This is really something

that we have noticed working through our Associa-tion when trying to provide land-based activities and lessons. So we have evening courses from 6:00pm to 9:00 or 10:00pm. We will have after school courses for dog sledding starting in January so we are try-ing to work around the strict schedule. But what I would like to see is to have a four-day work-week or some arrangement that would help us be attached to our culture. There is so much change being pushed on to us (the race for our resources under the Gov-ernment of Quebec’s Plan Nord a good example. In those initiatives there is not much recognition in terms of our need to live off the land. Our elders became experts out on the land because they have spent most of their time on the land. In contrast, our youth are growing up in the community and barely spending any time on the land. That is a big obstacle and creates the gap that we are trying to close. We are slowly becoming leaders in our own capacity to question the way things are and to promote valuing cultural knowledge and how it is developed: by be-ing on the land. To our association this is the way to keep our Inuit values and culture strong in our community.

Where do you see the Association in the next ten years?

We have annual general meetings where we sit together to talk about challenges and issues. We are always aware of the threat to our language and culture. As each year passes governments seem to come up with new plans to extract and use our lands and resources. That is where our men’s association is leading the way in terms of developing our own association. We would like to see similar associations developed throughout the North and build a network extending to other areas and other cultures. It would be really interesting to see the way other Indigenous peoples practice their cultures and share knowledge: the Inuvialuit, the Dene. We believe this will develop more camaraderie with different nations and bring them together. With all the residential schools and what has happened to us as Indigenous peoples in the past, and what continues into the present, so much pain has been sustained among the Elders and within our nations. To unite them again through the men taking responsibility and organizing along the lines of valuing their traditional cultures and roles in their communities, that would build up our nations. That would be something I can see in the next ten years as we keep pushing toward our goals.◉

DELINE

Charlie Neyelle, Spiritual Leader of Deline.


eyelle.

SPONSORS

The Northern Governance and Economy Conference was made possible by the generous support of these sponsors.

IDLE NO MORE

Idle No More demonstration in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, December 21, 2012. Photograph by Amos Scott.

Documents

Northern Public Affairs Special Issue 2013