Attawapiskat, Ottawa close… yet so far apart

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/12/2011 (4718 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Ottawa and Attawapiskat agree on everything except who controls the band’s purse strings — but that’s a major schism that could impede progress on the troubled northern reserve.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan and his parliamentary secretary, Greg Rickford, met Thursday with leadership from the western James Bay community to hash out a way forward.

In a meeting Rickford described as “respectful, cordial and collegial,” they emerged with a three-step stability plan.

Rickford said they agreed emergency supplies need to keep coming in for the near term to resolve the Cree community’s immediate housing crisis. A retrofit of a local healing centre needs to be finished for the medium term. And 22 new houses need to be set up on new lots for the long term.

And Duncan confirmed construction will begin on a new elementary school in Attawapiskat in the spring, after years of lobbying by residents.

Notwithstanding persistent protests and threats of legal action from Chief Theresa Spence, however, Ottawa is insisting the reserve remain under third-party management.

Inuit overcrowded

A new report says overcrowded housing across communities in the North is one of the biggest barriers to Inuit health and well-being.

Released Wednesday, the report If Not Now… When? Addressing the Ongoing Inuit Housing Crisis in Canada was produced by Inuit Tuttarvingat of the National Aboriginal Health Organization.

The report identifies the most critical outcome of the housing crisis that plagues so many Inuit communities across the country: its long-term effect on today’s young Inuit. The overcrowded housing will hinder their future participation in the North, the report says.

The report cites 2006 statistics, which show 31 per cent of Inuit live in crowded housing.

But it also acknowledges a housing crisis is hardly new, noting adequate housing for Inuit communities has been a persistent concern since the creation of permanent communities in the Canadian Arctic 60 years ago.

— The Canadian Press / Nunatsiaq News