Nunavut to review decentralization

Nunavut's elected MLAs will review the territory's decentralization program, which promised to spread jobs and wealth outside the capital when the territorial government was formed 10 years ago.

The programhas been a cornerstone of Nunavut'spublic life buthas come under criticism from a recent report on the government's policies and operations.

Officials with Premier Eva Aariak's office did not give many details about the decentralization review, which isstill under discussion.

However, the issue is expected to come up whenthe legislative assembly resumes sitting on Nov. 24.

Under decentralization, territorial government jobs and departments are distributed to communities outside the capital city. As a result, some departments are headquartered in small communities remote from Iqaluit.

The Nunavut Implementation Committee laid the groundwork for decentralization in 1995, four years before Nunavut became a separate territory.

"Pretty much every government in Canada and most of the world has a whole series of field offices that deliver service and programs to people, but the decentralization went way beyond that," said Graham White, a University of Toronto political scientist who hasstudied Nunavut's decentralization policy.

As of 2003, five years after Nunavutwas created, 460 territorial government jobs were based in 10 communities.

But the government-commissioned report card, released in October, concluded that the policy has not lived up to its promise of spreading prosperity.Instead, the report noted an overstretched bureaucracy with many vacancies. As of March, one-fifth of publicservice jobs were empty.

The government's financial management practices have also been widely questioned, and critics have pointed to decentralization as a contributing factor to that and to the civil servant shortage.

"While it's certainly important to think through and check out how decentralization is working, it's a bit unfair to lay problems and dissension on the back of decentralization when, as the report card showed, there are problems throughout the [government]," White said.

Meanwhile, in communities like Arviat, where departments have been located, municipal leaders say decentralization has been critical to the local economy.

"We're used to having quite a few of those positions being empty, but we really rely on the rest of them and the ones that are filled," said Mayor Bob Leonard, whose community on the Hudson Bay shore about 150 kilometres north of the Manitoba boundary is home to the Education Department and the Nunavut Housing Corp.

The report card's authors called for a decentralization review as one of92 recommendations.