Photo by sakarin14 via Adobe Stock

Arctic Canada is filling with puddles.

Springtime in the Yukon looks astonishingly similar to June in Ontario. The days are long. Deer bite the heads off flowers deep in the forest. Icy mountains still loom in the distance, but here in the city of Whitehorse, wet mud squishes with every step. People wear shorts and t-shirts. Trucks are parked in nearly every driveway, dried clay caked onto their tires. Spring in Whitehorse is beautiful, if you forget that it comes at the cost of a forever-changed climate.

Annual mean temperatures in northern Canada have increased by 2.3 C from 1948 to 2016, with temperatures rising most rapidly in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. By 2019, a new report from Environment and Climate Change Canada revealed that northern Canada, specifically the Yukon, is warming three times faster than anywhere else because of Arctic amplification.

Arctic amplification is like a magnifying glass reflecting off a mirror: heat from the sun bounces off the bright landscape, which then mixes with warm water vapour in the atmosphere. This heat isn’t being absorbed in the ground because of the ice, so it has nowhere to go: heat rises, but it becomes trapped in the atmosphere. As more ice melts, more vapour is created, which then causes the ice to melt even further. Essentially, Arctic amplification means that the region is caught in an intense greenhouse gas effect leading to biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, and mudslides.

For residents of northern Canada, the effects of the climate crisis are being felt faster and more aggressively than any policy can take effect. They’re threatening Indigenous ways of life that have been in place for thousands of years, making it increasingly difficult to pass down spiritual and cultural customs to young people. They’re also threatening the very ground the North is built on. But the climate crisis isn’t exclusive to the Yukon—if the oldest (and coldest) parts of the Earth are heating up, it signifies a dangerous warning to the rest of the world.

*

Indigenous communities throughout the Yukon and Alaska regions have depended on Chinook salmon as a key food source for millennia, moving along the 3,190 kilometre-long Yukon River to fish. Brooke Woods, a Koyukon Dene woman, is a tribal citizen of Rampart Village and grew up on the Alaska side of the Yukon River. She spent six years as executive chair for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and currently works for the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Alaska, focusing on climate policy and fisheries management. She stresses that the salmon aren’t just food for her community; salmon fishing is also a livelihood with a deep spiritual connection. It’s important to people to use all parts of the fish, and it’s common to find salmon skeletons mounted above Dene doorways. “[Our] communities are along the Yukon River for a reason. We are salmon-dependant people,” she says.

But now, climate change is leading to the continued loss of the salmon: an essential part of the Yukon River’s ecosystem that was once abundant along its stretch. And Indigenous people in the area have largely resorted to buying salmon from other areas or trying to harvest other fish due to the decline. “So many parts of our life have changed because of the salmon declines…impacting us mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and culturally,” Woods says.

Chinook salmon differ from Atlantic salmon on the other side of the country because of one key factor: they die less than a month after spawning. They also take up to eight years to reach maturity and reproduce. Though salmon live most of their life in saltwater, their eggs need freshwater to hatch. Because of this, the adult salmon usually return to their own birthplace to release the next generation of spawn, with females laying between 2,000 to 10,000 eggs. However, climate change is altering these freshwater rivers quickly, and the salmon eggs are soft and highly sensitive to temperature and environment. When the water is too warm, too polluted, too salty, or just too different from what it used to be, the hatchlings can’t survive. Right now, only about one percent of chinook salmon eggs survive to adulthood. In other words, climate change is a factor in degrading the salmon’s habitat beyond survivability.

Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. believe warmer waters make it harder for Chinook salmon in the river to keep a healthy diet and stabilize their metabolism. According to the NOAA, salmon grow faster in warmer water but struggle to find prey—like other small fish or invertebrates—meaning they will lay fewer eggs and have a lower chance of survival. Warmer rivers are also causing salmon to die from heat stress, according to a study from the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also reports that as temperatures rise, it’s harder for water to retain its oxygen levels. Salmon—like all forms of aquatic life—need stable oxygen levels to survive. When the water gets too warm and the oxygen levels deplete too much, salmon suffocate and die.

In April 2024, the U.S. and Canadian federal governments teamed up to create a historic—yet controversial—agreement: ban all Chinook salmon fishing in the Yukon and Alaska for seven years in an effort to grow the population. According to the ban, both First Nation and Tribal subsistence fisheries—the method of harvesting fish specifically involving Indigenous knowledge and traditions—is prohibited “when there are fewer than 71,000 adult Chinook salmon.” Once this number is met, limited commercial, personal, and sport fishing could begin again. The salmon are counted by sonar at several sites in the region, and in 2023, only around 14,000 Chinook were counted at the Eagle sonar site near the Canadian border.

Detailed tracking of the Chinook salmon population began in the 1980s. According to the EPA, in 1984, around 1.2 million Chinook were tracked at the southernmost part of their migration—the Salish Sea region of the Pacific Ocean. With over 3,000 kilometres of migration from the Yukon River, through the Bering Sea, down to the Salish Sea before coming back up the Yukon River again, Chinook salmon have some of the largest migration patterns in the world. But fewer and fewer Chinook are surviving this migration for long enough to make it to their spawning grounds.

The 2024 Yukon River Chinook salmon run—the annual migration of salmon along the river to spawn—was the third-lowest in history, with fewer than 65,000 salmon making the voyage to the Pilot Station—the closest sonar site to the mouth of the river. Of those fish, an estimated 24,112 passed through the Eagle Sonar site near the Yukon border. The worst year on record was 2022, when an astonishing total of 12,025 Chinook salmon were counted for the season through the Eagle sonar site. This number is 80 percent lower than the historical average; some previous years have seen up to 500,000.

At the heart of the salmon run is Whitehorse. Whitehorse holds the world’s longest wooden fish ladder, a structure crucial for letting salmon pass through to their spawning grounds. It looks like a winding staircase filled with flowing water: salmon instinctively migrate and seek out changing currents. The water attracts the salmon, who swim upstream, jumping from step to step. Just like a staircase, these ladders have steps that allow the fish to “climb” upwards: this is especially helpful if parts of the river are blocked by dams or other predators waiting for their next meal. Conservation groups monitor the Whitehorse fish ladder yearly and use sonars to track how many fish pass through.

Jordan Blay has lived in the Yukon since 1985, and grew up fishing in Annie Lake 50 kilometres outside Whitehorse. He notes salmon, halibut and several types of trout among the fish he could catch around the Yukon and Alaska. “The record was 18 castes, 18 fish,” he says. However, in recent years, he says there are considerably fewer fish in large bodies of water, like the Yukon River.

Blay describes the spring of 2022 as “abysmal” for salmon. “If I remember right, it was something like six fish went through the ladder,” he says. Hardly any fish were seen on some days. Blay’s estimation isn’t far off: fish ladder supervisor Amy Jacobsen told the CBC that only 13 salmon passed through by August 10, 2023. More fish passed through after this, but August is the height of their travels.

When numbers are low, Fisheries and Oceans Canada prohibits sport fishing. Depending on the numbers and body of water, a prohibition can affect both personal fishing and Indigenous subsistence fishing. However, even if not explicitly stated by Canadian or Alaskan governments, First Nations leaders often voluntarily ask their citizens to refrain from fishing when the populations are in decline.

Historically, Indigenous-operated fisheries have had more robust fish populations than modern commercial fisheries due to longstanding practices of environmental reciprocity and continued traditions surrounding the Earth’s seasonal cycles. Woods explains that the salmon decline is a relatively new phenomenon. “We do have 10,000 years of relationship with salmon, and we have always maintained our cultural values when it comes to harvesting king [Chinook] salmon,” she says. “That has been successful, that has kept salmon runs alive and well.”

Woods says the low salmon population could have disastrous effects on future generations, noting that cultural traditions and education are passed down from older family members, and how she learned from her mother and grandmother when fishing. “Growing up, we had multi-generational family members coming together to harvest, process and share salmon,” she says. She’s concerned younger community members won’t be able to learn in the same way she did, which will pose serious challenges to their health and culture.

*

Apart from warming the Yukon River, climate change means the physical landscape of the Yukon is shifting. Deep below the surface of the Earth in northern Canada is permafrost: permanently frozen soil and sediment held together by ice. The Yukon has some of the oldest pieces of permafrost in the world, with scientists estimating it’s been in place for three million years. In Whitehorse, permafrost accounts for up to 50 percent of the ground’s surface, according to Yukon University. Because of climate change, the permafrost is now melting.

“One of the biggest ways we see issues with permafrost in our human environment is probably through infrastructure and the highways,” says Alison Perrin, a senior research professional at Yukon University’s Research Centre. Perrin has been researching climate change and climate change policy in the North for the last 10 years. “It’s kind of like the supporting foundation of the North.”

In the same way a foundation provides stability for a house, permafrost creates stability on the ground in northern Canada. The crumbling permafrost threatens the livelihood of the communities—like the Kluane First Nation—that have existed in these remote areas for thousands of years before Canada was colonized.

Shirley Smith is an Indigenous Elder from the Kwanlin Dün First Nation. Their traditional land is located in what’s alsoknown as Whitehorse. One of her biggest worries is how the next generation will be able to learn about cultural traditions and living off the land sustainably. Warmer winters with increased precipitation meant that one winter, she had six feet of snow alongside her house, making it difficult to get to cultural and sacred sites.

Climate change presents a real threat to Indigenous communities’ abilities to pass their cultures and spiritual practices on to next generations. Smith says that the best place to teach younger generations about climate change is on the land, recalling that some of her traditional knowledge about hunting and fishing sustainably was passed down by her father on trips. But these lessons aren’t being taught as much anymore, she says. Still, any time at all learning from older people is deeply valuable for younger ones. “Even if they just go for two days, three days, teach them or show them how to live off the land,” she says.

Alongside threatening Indigenous ways of life and knowing, warming ice can also mean physical danger. Communities in northern Canada are remote and far between, leaving people with few options when it comes to emergency evacuations. Perrin uses Nunavut as an example of one place in the North where people’s ability to survive in the winter depends on stability below them in the forms of ice and permafrost. Communities in the North are mobile, moving to different locations to fish, trap, hunt. It’s about survival, tradition, spirituality, culture and lineage all at once. But this mobility isn’t possible when the ice cracks: suddenly, a longstanding tradition of walking across a frozen river doesn’t guarantee safety. And yet, “their lives depend on going out on the ice,” she says.

Only 30 kilometres outside of Whitehorse, reports have been made about tears in the Earth from the permafrost melting, causing trees to collapse as the dirt breaks open. These physical changes can mean less stability on the Alaska Highway, a 2,400-kilometre road that runs through B.C., the Yukon and Alaska. The highway is an essential method of transportation connecting remote First Nations communities and importing goods to northern areas. If parts of it become unusable, it could seriously threaten these communities’ health and wellbeing.

Further, melting permafrost can cause other issues: methane, carbon dioxide or potentially toxic microbes are often found within the sediment, furthering the overall problem of climate change, Perrin explains. “As permafrost thaws, it contributes to greenhouse gas effect,” she says.

Part of Perrin’s research investigates how climate change affects the Yukon over long periods. One report she coauthored, titled “Yukon climate change indicators and key findings,” published in 2022 by Yukon University’s Research Centre, looks at how the volume of Arctic sea ice has decreased since 1979. With a melting rate of about 300 cubic kilometres per year, the report estimates that most ice that was there in total has melted within the past decade.

Permafrost thaw, warmer temperatures and wildfires can cause extreme events like the landslides in Whitehorse, something that would have been unheard of until just a few years ago. For residents, the North is quickly becoming unrecognizable. Willow Brewster, a paramedic who’s lived in Whitehorse since she was a toddler in the 1990s, says she remembers long, frigid days too cold to hold a snowball. Now, she says, there’s sometimes slush in December and landslides by spring. In July 2024, a landslide caused by massive amounts of rain—another symptom of climate change—caused an 82-kilometre highway closure. While no one was hurt, it left people unable to travel between Carcross, Yukon and Fraser, B.C. Landslides are one result of climate-change related permafrost melting, according to a 2023 Simon Fraser University and Yukon Geological Survey report.

“I was driving through puddles in December because all of the snow was melting because it was plus five [degrees],” Brewster says. “It’s [an] eerie kind of feeling where it just feels kind of wrong.”

Brewster also sees injuries becoming more frequent. Her grandmother, who has lived in the Yukon for several decades, fell in the ice in 2016. In 2022, two people fell into icy water when crossing a seemingly frozen river near Pilot Station, Alaska, resulting in one death. Brewster describes freezing temperatures as “sporadic,” and says you can’t always expect the ice to be consistently frozen anymore. Routine ice trips are increasingly deadly in February, when the ice should be sturdiest.

In December 2023, the Yukon government’s official response to climate change noted 42 new actions to fight it, specifically noting green energy, wildfire protections, and smart electric heating systems. There is no mention of salmon specifically, but there is an action saying the government will “work with First Nations and communities to address a gap in lake-monitoring to capture changes in water in order to support fish habitat protection and community safety.” While permafrost is not mentioned either, there is a promise to undertake “flood risk hazard assessments for Yukon campgrounds and other key public infrastructure in territorial parks.”

When it comes to climate change, even a two-degree temperature increase can have significant overall effects. It can be the difference between freezing and melting; an animal living or dying. Canada is currently a part of the Paris Agreement—the international treaty created by the United Nations wherein countries pledge to limit their emissions to avoid a two-degree increase. Yet the Yukon’s average temperature is three degrees warmer than it’s ever been.

Both our shared physical environment and entire ways of being that have been in place since time immemorial are under threat. Bans on salmon fishing and government incentives on green tech will not solve this in and of themselves. Instead, there needs to be a priority on centring the skills passed down through generations from Indigenous knowledge-keepers, living in balance with the land, and a focus on sustainability as a continuous way of life. There is irrefutable evidence that global warming changes every part of the world: from the tiniest oxygen molecules in the water to the vast permafrost in the Earth. And what’s happening in the Yukon is foreshadowing for everywhere else: the climate can’t change so drastically while everything else stays the same.

*

Indigenous communities have long been crucial to climate protection. According to the United Nations, Indigenous people have prioritized the environment for generations, meaning their contributions to the scientific community cannot be ignored. A pivot to two-eyed seeing is deeply necessary.

There are over a dozen First Nations in the Yukon, each with its own distinct cultural practices and communities. One initiative, called the Yukon First Nations Climate Action Fellowship, is trying to combine cultural traditions across the different nations with the fight against climate change by teaching young adults about biodiversity and living in harmony with the land. Dustin McKenzie-Hubbard, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, loves being one of the 13 fellows because it inspires him to make the world better for his daughter.

McKenzie-Hubbard says the fellowship has focused on turning away from a colonialist and consumerist mindset and that a strong sense of community is essential in dealing with these problems. Addressing climate change means centring Indigenous people’s calls for climate protection and understanding. “Everything you do affects someone else and everything,” he says. “We have to be mindful of what our impacts will do for ourselves in the next seven generations.”

Woods stresses the importance of incorporating Indigenous knowledge into conservation efforts, something she says is “disregarded in so many management spaces.”

“We do have 10,000 years of stewardship that is not incorporated into the current Western science and governance structure,” she says, describing how important it is for knowledge to be passed down from Elders to the younger generations, especially when it comes to the salmon. “I want to be able to fish the same way my grandmother taught my mom, and the way that I’ll teach my children.”

“Help”: An inmate at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre sends a message to the outside world on July 17, 2012. Photo by Mike Thomas/Yukon News.

In the winter of 2011 in the small town of Watson Lake, a popular tourist destination near the B.C. border known as the gateway to the Yukon, an arrest warrant was issued for a 27-year-old Tahltan man. He had previous brushes with the law, mainly assault charges. This time, the man was wanted on eight criminal charges, including forcible confinement and assault with a weapon, related to the attack of a 50-year-old woman by knifepoint. It was alleged that he had punched her in the side of the head, dragged her by her hair up several stairs, and forced her inside an apartment. There, he continued to hit her, holding a pocket knife to her throat and threatening that he would kill her and her family.

On December 29, the man turned himself into the RCMP. He entered custody at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre (WCC), the only jail in the territory, located in the capital city about five hours from Watson Lake, the following day.

The name Michael Nehass rings a bell to few across Canada. But in the Yukon, he is a household name. News articles over the years have detailed his numerous charges for violent offences, bizarre outbursts in court ranting about conspiracy theories, and his mistreatment in the justice system. His mugshot often appears in local media: a striking and intimidating figure with a smirk and dark eyes, a distinguishing scar over his left eyebrow and two teardrop tattoos inked near the outer corner of his left eye. Today, the 33-year-old has visibly aged: He’s lanky with shaggy hair, his years in criminal institutions clearly having taken their toll.

Michael Nehass.

Yukon’s most infamous criminal case highlights the most pressing issues in Canada’s justice system. Yukon Minister of Justice Tracy-Anne McPhee has acknowledged that many of those incarcerated in the territory, like Nehass, struggle with mental health issues. Human rights advocates and the Office of the Correctional Investigator have also criticized the use of solitary confinement or segregation for inmates with mental health issues; the Yukon has yet to have an independent review of its segregation practices. Research has shown a high rate of offenders in the territory, too, have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD); preliminary findings from a study released last November showed that 17.5 percent of 80 participating adult offenders were confirmed to have prenatal alcohol exposure. Meanwhile, prisons across Canada have been dubbed by some as the “new residential schools” due to the increasing overrepresentation of Indigenous people. In the Yukon, Indigenous people accounted for 70 percent of adults in custody but only 20 percent of the population in the territory. These issues have been deemed as crises by the federal government. Yet, institutions have continued to work against Nehass, resulting in a six-year battle for justice.

As Nehass languished in prison, activists have begun asking questions: Why has the Yukon justice system failed some of its inmates so badly? More than half a decade since Nehass’s imprisonment, the questions remain unanswered.

***

Michael Nehass was born January 14, 1984, in Teslin, Yukon, a small village home to the Teslin Inland Tlingit, a self-governing First Nation. Nehass lost his mother at the age of three when she died in a car crash. Over the years he had multiple caregivers and placements. He also lived on the streets of Whitehorse as a teen. His father, Russell, says he is also an intergenerational survivor of the residential school system.

Growing up, Nehass endured physical, mental, and sexual abuse, and witnessed drug and alcohol misuse. He began drinking as a preteen and using drugs in his early teens. Psychologists say Nehass was self-medicating as a way to mentally escape his abusive environment. Prominent forensic psychiatrist Dr. Shabreham Lohrasbe notes that by the age of 15, Nehass was diagnosed with multiple mental disorders—not unusual for adults who later develop major psychiatric disorders. During his younger years, Nehass was diagnosed with FASD, a group of conditions that can include physical, mental, behavioural, and learning effects in individuals whose mothers drank alcohol while pregnant; Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, an anxiety disorder that can develop after being exposed to a traumatic event; and attachment disorder, sometimes seen in children with a history of abandonment, neglect, or abuse who are impaired in their ability to develop healthy emotional attachments. Nehass also made several suicide attempts; his first was at age 12.

Since 14, Nehass has spent most of his life in and out of various correctional institutions. He has accrued a lengthy criminal record including multiple convictions for breaking and entering, assaults, assaults with a weapon, and uttering threats. This included a 33-month sentence at a B.C. prison in 2003 for aggravated assault. While high on cocaine and heroin, he and another man tortured a cocaine dealer, Frederick “Mad Dog” Martin, in Whitehorse over unpaid drug debts. They slashed his face, cut off one of his fingers with a meat cleaver, stubbed out a cigarette on his shoulder, and beat him with a hammer and a baseball bat. At his sentencing, Yukon Judge John Fulkner noted, “Mr. Nehass is a seriously disturbed youth in desperate need of treatment.”

As Nehass got older, he continued to act out. In October 2009, Nehass assaulted a peace officer and was sentenced the following June to three years at the WCC. Nehass and his three cellmates became drunk on smuggled alcohol. When a female guard checked on them, Nehass reached out and briefly touched her. Later they flooded their cell and Nehass and his cellmate attacked two responding prison guards. Nehass shoved one of the officers, at one point jumping on him and choking him. He punched another guard in the face, breaking his nose and causing a bone to poke through the skin, which required surgery.

It was clear that the WCC had difficulty managing Nehass. According to the Whitehorse Star, he broke the telephone off the wall of the segregation unit using a plastic chair and smashed several glass panes in June 2013. While correctional officers and jail staff were deciding how to respond, Nehass broke into a utility room. When officers threw a flash-bang grenade into the room to stun Nehass, he climbed into the ceiling saying he was scared. In July, he also spat in the face of another correctional officer when he was refused access to personal photos. Nehass was charged with uttering threats, causing about $30,000 in damages to the jail, assaulting a correctional officer, and attempting to escape the facility.

***

Much of Nehass’s behaviour has been linked to significant concerns with his mental health. During court appearances he would often have outbursts ranting about mind control, conspiracies involving the Yukon government, the Illuminati, and the Bilderberg group, and claims that he endured forced sterilization at the WCC. As of 2016, after five years in custody, he had fired four lawyers and claimed that they, along with judges and the Yukon government, were involved in a conspiracy where they were being controlled by microchips.

But the stipulations of his incarceration only exacerbated Nehass’s mental health challenges. Many of the 2,000-plus days he spent in remand at the WCC were in the facility’s segregation unit for disciplinary reasons or because jail staff were unable to manage him in general population. Nehass’s Toronto-based defence lawyer Anik Morrow says he spent 22 to 23 hours a day inside a nine-by-11-foot cell. When let out of his cell to shower, he was handcuffed and kept in belly chains.

Nehass was held in one of seven identical cells in the Whitehorse segregation unit. They’re similar to those in the general population, but the toilet and sink are stainless steel, not porcelain, and there are no ligature points. Outside of the cells, there is a shower and main area with a plastic bin filled with paperback books. In the corner, there is a small cement “airing court”—the only place inmates like Nehass can get fresh air through a window exposed to the elements.

In most jurisdictions, including the Yukon, prisoners can end up in segregation for administrative or disciplinary reasons. Howard Sapers, Canada’s former correctional investigator and the current independent advisor on corrections reform for Ontario, says many problems occur in administrative cases because systems often rely on segregation to manage medical issues, including mental health, when there is not proper infrastructure. “I have found all too often that people who do have intellectual disabilities or behavioural disorders or mental illness end up in segregation,” Sapers says. “It’s not a healthy, therapeutic, or even safe environment, particularly for people suffering from mental illness.” In jails across Canada, he adds, this is where 50 percent of suicides take place.

Nehass spent 22 to 23 hours a day inside a nine-by-11-foot cell. When let out of his cell to shower, he was handcuffed and kept in belly chains

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, more commonly known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, also prohibits indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement, defined as more than 15 consecutive days. The rules also dictate that solitary confinement should only be used in exceptional cases as a last resort. It further prohibits the practice for prisoners with mental or physical disabilities when confinement would exacerbate these conditions.

The WCC asserts that it doesn’t use solitary confinement like other jurisdictions, instead preferring the terms “segregation” and “separate confinement.” (Experts define solitary confinement as any period when prisoners are kept in cells alone for up to 22 hours with little social interaction.) According to statistics from the Yukon Department of Justice, 70 people were separately confined at the WCC in 120 incidents in 2016 alone. This accounted for 1.6 percent of bed days, or 526 out of 32,155.

But in 2014, there was an inmate who spent over 81 days straight in segregation.

All the while, Nehass was not receiving adequate mental health services, despite a wealth of psychiatric reports and clearly disordered behaviour at the jail and in court. A transfer to a mental health facility was considered as early as December 2013, but it was never acted on.

***

In January 2014, Nehass was forced to appear before a judge naked. Three guards in riot gear held him naked and shackled to the floor of his cell in the segregation unit for a court appearance via video. During the case management conference, Justice Leigh Gower waited 15 minutes before having Nehass removed. The judge later issued an apology for not acting faster.

After his appearance, Justice Gower ordered a psychiatric assessment to determine Nehass’s fitness to stand trial on the June and August 2013 charges of assault and damage to the WCC. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Lohrasbe prepared two assessments. Lohrasbe found that the most likely primary diagnosis for Nehass was Bipolar I Disorder. He said that Nehass’s psychosis “manifest[s] through paranoid and grandiose delusions” and that he could not meaningfully participate in the legal process. In May 2014, Judge Michael Cozens ultimately ruled that Nehass was unfit, finding “his delusional thinking and his tendency to be drawn back into this thinking would be a threat to his rational participation in the criminal proceedings.”

But in a surprise decision, the independent Yukon Review Board panel, based upon the same evidence, found the opposite. Fitness under the law is complicated and depends on a three-part test of whether the accused understands the nature of proceedings, the possible consequences, and whether they can communicate with counsel. While Nehass was clearly struggling with mental health issues, he is also highly intelligent and could understand and participate in the court process, the board found.

The Review Board sent the matter back to the territorial court and Judge Cozen’s ruling still stood. But in November 2014, Nehass, who was self-represented, pled guilty to the 2013 charges. Four months later, he was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment, which he had already served. “To say that the Whitehorse Correctional Centre had difficulties managing this offender would be a gross understatement,” Judge Donald Luther remarked during the hearing.

Following a two-week trial in May 2015, a 12-member jury found Nehass guilty of all of the 2011 charges save for a charge of uttering threats.

At that point Nehass had already spent more time in jail than any sentence he would have received. Nevertheless, Crown prosecutor Terri Kaur said she intended to seek a longterm or dangerous offender designation for sentencing. Nehass faced an indeterminate sentence of incarceration or a long-term supervision order.

***

With continued concerns about Nehass’s mental health, Justice Scott Brooker ordered a psychiatric assessment in late 2016 to determine his ability to participate in the dangerous offender hearing. Through court order, Nehass was transferred to the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby for assessment and treatment. (There is no forensic psychiatric centre in the Yukon due in large part to limited resources in the territory and the relatively small population. Clinicians do assist inmates at the WCC but for those that require a greater level of care they may be transferred to mental health facilities in the provinces.)

At the facility, Nehass was assessed by two doctors, Dr. Chantal Wong and Dr. Derek Pallandi, who submitted reports about his mental health. “It is likely that Mr. Nehass has been either on the cusp or frankly unfit for a lengthy period of time prior to the present evaluation,” Dr. Pallandi found. Pallandi also diagnosed Nehass with Schizoaffective Disorder.

This left Justice Brooker in a difficult position. There is nothing in the Criminal Code that allows for an offender to be found unfit after they have already been convicted. So, at the fitness hearing, Brooker relied on common law from the 1800s to declare that Nehass was unfit. In R. v. Dyson (1831), the English court stated, among other things, that if after trial a man “becomes of non-sane memory, he shall not receive judgment.” The Ontario Court of Appeal also stated in 1910 that “no person can be rightly tried, sentenced, or executed while insane.” Brooker said to proceed with the dangerous offender hearing “would be fundamentally unfair and would offend the dignity of the judicial process.” It was the first time in Canadian history that a person was found unfit after standing trial. Under the Criminal Code, when a person has been found unfit they are usually required to undergo treatment until they are well enough to face trial. Doctors testified that Nehass could become fit after 60 days of treatment, including the use of antipsychotic medication. Brooker, however, declared a mistrial in the case.

Despite the lengthy case and its many problems, the Crown opted to retry the charges, setting the case back at square one. Defence lawyer Anik Morrow, who is based out of Toronto, said she intended to file a stay of proceedings in the case due to delays and charter rights infringements. Nehass, meanwhile, remained at Ontario Shores receiving treatment, including medication. Justice Brooker noted that his health appeared to have improved. During court appearances Nehass was visibly healthier, engaging with his lawyer and the judge though remaining mostly silent.

With further court proceedings looming, Nehass was freed from the Yukon justice system on September 8, 2017, when Crown prosecutor Eric Marcoux filed a stay of proceedings at a hearing for the defence’s judicial stay application. Marcoux told the court the Crown stay was based on a review of the public interest and safety, finding that Nehass no longer posed a risk. But Morrow seemed less than pleased with the last-minute decision after preparing for the judicial stay application for months. She didn’t mince words when she called the stay a “manoeuvre” by the Crown that effectively put a gag order on the issues of the case.

“Mr. Nehass is cut free from what we would call the umbilical cord of the justice system, but he is unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk in Ontario,” she said. Through a variation of the court order that sent Nehass to Ontario, he was transferred to a civil mental health facility in Kamloops, B.C., to continue treatment outside of the criminal system.

***

Over the years it seemed as though Nehass would waste away at the WCC indefinitely. No one has taken responsibility for the man who grappled with deteriorating mental health and slipped through the cracks of the system. The Crown, courts, review board, jail staff, and government all had a role to play in the case.

Last September, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale issued a memorandum in the case—a rare document to come from a judge—to “highlight the events that took place and to bring them to the attention of the public.” He called the case a “sad state of affairs for the Yukon.”

But some recent changes have improved WCC policy when it comes to segregation. A limit of 15 consecutive days has been set to align with best practices. And the amount of time inmates are allowed out of their cells has increased to two hours, up from one hour, daily. The territory is also one of the few jurisdictions in Canada that has an independent adjudication process when it comes to segregation. Plus, there is oversight from the Investigations and Standards Office.

A door leading to segregation at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre. This photo was captured during a media tour when the new facility opened in 2012. Photo by Mike Thomas/Yukon News.

Yukon Minister of Justice Tracy-Anne McPhee has also acknowledged the potential harms of segregation in the legislature. “I think the research is clear that separate confinement should be used in the rarest of cases,” she says. On the other hand, she says she has “no concerns whatsoever” with how it is used at the WCC. “I have full confidence that the segregation unit cells are safe places and that they were used on a minimum basis,” the minister says. McPhee also announced her intention to order an inspection of the WCC under a “never-before-used” section of the Yukon Corrections Act. It will focus on how the facility deals with inmates with mental illness, including a review of the issues in Nehass’s case. Last November, the government appointed David Loukidelis, Queen’s Counsel, to inspect the matters at the WCC.

Not everyone is satisfied that this is adequate—and they say that problems are already clear. The justice system needs to calibrate its response and not criminalize people with mental illness, Howard Sapers says, including earlier assessments, offramps, and not blocking treatment. He notes that segregation is part of a complex correctional environment and is a symptom of other problems in the system.

The Council of Yukon First Nations and Kwanlin Dün First Nation have also spoken out about the need for changes in the Yukon Justice system. They have pointed out the need for better cultural and reintegration programming as well as a formal system for Gladue reports, outlining an Indigenous offender’s personal history with colonial oppression.

But the Yukon Party, which was in power between 2002 and 2016 for much of Nehass’s time spent in jail, has been deafeningly silent on the issue. “The Official Opposition supports a justice system that protects the rights of inmates while ensuring the safety of our community as a whole,” wrote Yukon Party justice critic Brad Cathers in a statement. “We have confidence in the dedicated staff at the Department of Justice, including staff at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.”

***

While Nehass was seemingly free from the criminal justice system, he was arrested on a peace bond application by the Crown in Lower Post, B.C., on October 20, 2017. The Crown is seeking that he is placed on 22 bail conditions despite not facing any criminal charges, based on an informant’s statement that there is fear Nehass will commit a serious personal injury offence.

Nehass was released following a bail hearing on November 3. Anik Morrow, who is currently assisting Nehass pro bono, said she was told the peace bond hearing won’t be for another year due to limited resources in the small northern town.

Many who hold tough-on-crime attitudes don’t understand why people are so interested in and outraged by the case. They feel that Nehass is a violent, dangerous offender who should be locked up and have the key thrown away. But what they don’t understand is that incarceration is not rehabilitative and mistreating offenders doesn’t assist in public safety. While offender’s rights may be limited in terms of movement, they still have human rights protected under the law.

Sapers puts it best in the preface for the Independent Review of Ontario Corrections, released in March 2017. While victims’ rights are important, he writes, it’s also important to concern ourselves with offenders: “After nearly 40 years of working in the system I have come to realize there is often only a thin and blurry line between victim and offender…. Meeting the needs of offenders often amounts to meeting the needs of victims,” he writes. “‘Offender bashing’ conditions of confinement does nothing to assist victims of crime or make our communities safer.”

In 2015, the auditor general of Canada noted in a report on the Whitehorse Correctional Centre (WCC) that evidence found rates of mental health issues and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) were higher among Yukon inmates than among the general population. An estimated 90 percent of offenders struggled with substance abuse. Further, the majority of WCC inmates were First Nations men. More recently, from April 2016 to March 2017, 64 percent of inmates were First Nations, according to the territorial government’s statistics.

Overrepresentation of Indigenous people in jails and prisons is a Canada-wide issue, not unique to the Yukon. There are several reasons for this, including poverty, substance abuse, and lack of education and employment opportunities. “We believe it is clear that the social situation of Aboriginal people is a direct result of a history of social, economic and cultural repression, all carried out under a cloak of legality,” stated the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba in 1999. “This is a disturbing picture. But it also makes it clear that the high crime rates that characterize Aboriginal communities are not a natural phenomenon, but a direct result of government policies.” For years, public discussions about how to reduce this overrepresentation have taken place, without much change. In 1996, the federal government added a new provision to the Criminal Code: A sentencing judge must consider “all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders.”

Three years later, in a landmark case called R. v. Gladue, the Supreme Court of Canada stressed the importance of this provision. “It is remedial in nature and is designed to ameliorate the serious problem of overrepresentation of aboriginal people in prisons, and to encourage sentencing judges to have recourse to a restorative approach to sentencing,” the judges wrote. Under Gladue, a judge must consider the intergenerational effects of colonialism and the residential school system.

In courtrooms across the country, this has led to the production of Gladue reports, a document that details an offender’s background and upbringing. But funding from provincial and territorial governments is hit or miss, depending on the jurisdiction.

In the Yukon, which has the country’s third-highest crime rate, no formal Gladue report program exists. Over the years, two people have written the reports on a volunteer basis, but that may soon change. In March, the Yukon News reported that the territorial justice department was working on a pilot project with the Crown’s office, legal aid, and some First Nations that may lead to the territory funding the writing of these reports.

“[The] Justice [department] cannot control the composition of the population that is admitted into our correctional system,” spokeswoman Catherine Young writes in an email. “Working on reducing the percentage of Indigenous inmates is a challenge that must be, and is, being met in many different ways.”

She says reducing recidivism is one of the department’s goals, by offering “culturally relevant programming” at the jail, such as wood carving, language classes, talking circles, and Elder counselling.

For 10 years, one initiative has been trying to reduce recidivism by diverting offenders with mental health issues, addictions, and FASD into a more rehabilitative process called Community Wellness Court. The accused must plead guilty (those who commit serious, violent crimes are not eligible to participate), agree to work with a wellness team, and appear before a judge on an as-required basis to provide progress updates. The process is considered more therapeutic than a jail sentence—if the offender abides by the necessary conditions, he or she avoids time behind bars and, at the end of treatment, is stable and less likely to reoffend.

“[I]n Yukon, we are working in the context of larger social problems,” Young says, citing high rates of substance abuse. “Poverty, lack of educational and job opportunities, homelessness, and other societal issues all contribute to people having conflicts with the law.”

Indeed, these issues point to a need for greater services and supports in communities. Back in 2015, the auditor general’s report noted that programs for mental health, addictions, and FASD were limited throughout the Yukon, but particularly in towns and villages outside of Whitehorse: “These limited resources are a significant challenge to the [Justice] Department in delivering its mandate.”

It’s difficult to rehabilitate offenders when community supports, such as counselling or alcohol and drug treatment, are lacking. When Gladue is taken into account, as it’s supposed to be, Indigenous offenders may receive non-custodial sentences, such as probation. But if therapeutic services don’t exist, the root causes of these pressing social issues cannot be properly addressed.

Now 65, she has been active in making a difference for women in the territory as both co-chair of the Yukon AntiPoverty Coalition (YAPC) and coordinator of the Yukon Status of Women Council (YSWC), two non-governmental organizations in Whitehorse.

Hrenchuk has long been interested in justice. She studied fine art and anthropology in university, trained in the theatre, and worked as a costume designer and puppeteer. It was in this field she learned about the Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form used to discuss and encourage social and political change, and ways to tell stories that were informative and educational, not just entertaining. “My parents had a strong sense of social justice, which they instilled in me,” Hrenchuk says. “I always believed that I had a privileged life and that all women did not have the luxury of the choices I have had. So I did feel it was important to make a difference in whatever field I was working in.” That’s why she started working for the YSWC and YAPC.

She and her husband adopted three young children from Sierra Leone—twin girls and a boy—and Hrenchuk took a few years off to stay home with them. Once they started school, she began working part-time for the YSWC.

One of her first projects was organizing a reproductive health conference. At the time, counselors and nurses in the territory had little training in how to talk to pregnant women about their options. “A lot of people felt really uncomfortable talking about the issue of abortion,” Hrenchuk says. A woman from the Planned Parenthood Association of B.C. flew up to speak at the conference about how to provide support before and after such a procedure. About 60 people attended, including social workers, nurses, doctors, First Nations health workers, and women from rural Yukon communities, to whom subsidies were offered to cover the costs of travelling to Whitehorse for the event.

As her kids grew up, Hrenchuk wanted to work more. She continued to apply for grants, developing her position at the YSWC as she was able to get more funding. Then, about 10 years ago, she joined the YAPC. It seemed like a natural fit.

“The issues that I’ve been working on a lot over the past number of years with [the YSWC] have been issues around women’s poverty and homelessness, and applying a gender lens to that. Because women’s homelessness looks different than men’s homelessness,” she says. For one, many women have children, and if they don’t have an adequate place to live, their kids are taken away. Some women also stay in abusive relationships so they have a place to live, or return to abusive relationships because they can’t afford a place to live.

This is one area of intersection in Hrenchuk’s work. Whitehorse is an expensive city to live in, and for years, the YAPC has been pushing for more affordable housing. In 2011, the coalition released a report called A Home For Everyone: A Housing Action Plan for Whitehorse, which took stock of housing options, and found that supportive homes for vulnerable people were “insufficient or non-existent.”

There have been some positive changes since then: a long-term home for people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder has opened, as well as a transition home for people with mental health issues.

Several years ago, Hrenchuk worked with advocates in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to produce a report on women’s homelessness in the North. They released it on Parliament Hill in 2007. “Nothing had ever been done on it before,” she says. “I’m proud of bringing the issue forward. And also raising the consciousness of people in the south about issues women in the North face.” The issues are the same ones women in southern cities face, only exacerbated in the territories—higher rates of violence against women, sexual assault, domestic violence, and addiction.

An initiative borne out of another pan-territorial study Hrenchuk worked on is A Safe Place, an after-hours program offered Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights at the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre in Whitehorse. It’s low-barrier, meaning women can drop in when they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, provided they aren’t a danger to themselves or others. They can have a hot meal, or curl up on a couch and sleep. In the three years since it began, the number of women who attend has grown. “I think that was a big success,” says Hrenchuk.

Now, she’s researching the sex trade in the Yukon, something she says hasn’t been studied before. “I haven’t finished the interviews or the data gathering or analysis, but at first glance, many, many women are trading sex for a place to live or for money for a place to live,” she says.

The work she does can be discouraging. Hrenchuk gets frustrated by political indifference and bogged-down bureaucracy. But she’s motivated by the women she talks to. “I feel a real strong sense of responsibility that if women are entrusting me with their stories, it is my duty to do something about it, to the best of my ability.”

It’s not a cheap project to run—because of permafrost, growing soil has to be flown to the community. But Vuntut Gwitchin staff say the garden is important for the community, to provide both a place for people to come together and fresh, locally-grown food. Old Crow isn’t accessible by road, so groceries arrive on a plane and they’re expensive. “Because we’re so far north, there’s a sense of pride in what can be grown,” says Lindsay Johnston, the First Nation’s recreation coordinator. “Here’s this good local food. You know where it came from.” The garden is a grassroots effort to increase Old Crow’s food security and affordability.

Johnston says produce availability and prices have improved since a new co-op grocery store opened in town, but she admits costs are still much higher than in southern Canada. A pineapple, for example, costs $9. A two-litre carton of milk costs about $7.99. A bag of cherries costs $12 per pound.

Food’s hefty price tag is a problem in northern communities across the country, from the Yukon to Nunavut to Labrador. As an attempted remedy, the federal government introduced the Nutrition North program in 2011, offering retailers subsidies on staple perishable items such as eggs, milk, meat, and frozen fruits and vegetables. Retailers are then responsible for selling these goods at a discounted price.

But an audit completed by the Attorney General of Canada in the fall of 2014 found that Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) hadn’t properly verified whether retailers were doing this. It’s not the only Northern issue that critics argue the government has bungled. They point to a overall flawed approach to dealing with Canada’s massive North.

Take, for instance, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s six-day sojourn across the region, which last year cost taxpayers more than $786,000—at the same time many Northerners struggle daily to pay for food and housing. Harper’s annual tour of the North has been described by some as nothing more than a photo op, a hurried trip of funding announcements, staged photos with beautiful backdrops, and little else. Yet Harper claims to love the North; he’s said before his tour is the highlight of his summer. (This year, he didn’t embark on the journey; instead he’ll be focusing on the October election, according to reports.)

On these tours in the past, Harper has posed for photos wearing a parka, firing a gun, and eating seal meat. He’s called the expansive area “a great treasure house” due to its plentiful minerals and resources. But does his emphasis on resource development and Arctic sovereignty come at the expense of giving proper attention to the North’s social issues, such as health and lack of affordable housing? Reporters have questioned him about this, and about whether he’s left social problems up to the territorial governments—but have received few satisfactory answers. Mental health services remain a grave concern for northern residents, particularly in Nunavut, where the suicide rate is the highest in Canada. The territory of 36,000 experienced 45 suicides in 2013, a record number, and 27 in 2014, including that of an 11-year-old boy. Yet, on his Northern tour last summer, Harper made no mention of mental health, even though he stopped in the suicide capital.

“Our government understands that Canadians who live, work and raise families in this part of the country face unique challenges,” the prime minister said at the tour’s kick-off in Whitehorse. “Let’s call them Canadian challenges because after all Canada is the North and the North is Canada.” The key to transforming these challenges into opportunities, Harper said, is—apparently—scientific knowledge
and discovery, going on to announce a new $17-million Arctic program through the National Research Council.

The cries for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women are also heightened in the North. Rates of violence against women are significantly higher in the territories than in the rest of Canada: four times, nine times and 13 times the national average in the Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut, respectively. Despite this, Harper has rejected calls for such an inquiry. While in Whitehorse last summer, he said the country’s 1,000-plus cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls aren’t a “sociological phenomenon,” but a crime. Opposition leaders and aboriginal organizations quickly, and harshly, criticized Harper for his remarks. Marian Horne, president of the Yukon Aboriginal Women’s Council, told the Whitehorse Star his comments showed the prime minister’s “flagrant disregard” for First Nations people and their well-being.

Yukon First Nations chiefs were also angered over the federal government’s Bill S-6. Approved in the House of Commons in June, it contains amendments to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act. The chiefs have vowed to fight the bill in court, arguing they had no input on four amendments they say violate their land claim agreements and threaten the independence of the assessment board. And in Nunavut, trouble is brewing between the territory’s planning commission and the Harper government. Last year, the commission sued, accusing Ottawa of trying to interfere in a land-use plan for future development in the territory. Created out of the 1993 Nunavut Land Claim Agreement, the commission alleges AANDC refused to provide $1.7 million needed to conduct a final public hearing on the plan, required before it can become law. Then head of the commission, Percy Kabloona, told the Canadian Press at the time that the federal government has shown little support for Inuit management of their own lands.

Meanwhile, back in Old Crow, residents continue to tend to and take pride in their garden. Caitlin Cottrell-Lingenfelter, the Vuntut Gwitchin’s director of health and social programs, says she understands the premise behind Nutrition North, but it just hasn’t worked for people in the country’s remote communities. Bluntly put, she says, it’s failed. The same could be said for much of Harper’s actions, and inactions, in the North.

A Canadian Auto Workers volunteer helps install a new wellhead in Little Salmon Carmacks in 2007. Photo courtesy CAW.

If you were to turn on a tap in the First Nation of Little Salmon Carmacks, Yukon, your cup might run over with gasoline, fecal matter, and worse (yes, there’s worse). It’s been this way for years, at least going as far back as 1991—the first year of comprehensive water testing.

The problems in Little Salmon Carmacks are emblematic of water problems in many First Nation communities across Canada. Drinking water not fit for human consumption has been, and continues to be, endemic in First Nation communities. For northern First Nations problems are made worse by systemic issues rooted deeply in the structure of our government; caught in a jurisdictional no-man’s-land between Indian and Northern Affairs, the territorial governments, and other government departments charged with funding infrastructure and assisting First Nations, their cases get shuffled from one department to another until they are finally dropped.

The Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation is situated next to the non-First Nation municipality of Carmacks, approximately 180 kilometres north of Whitehorse. The self-governing community, home to 400 people, once had two large wells serving the entire community but, as standards were updated, one was declared too dangerous to use and closed. The remaining well serves 96 people; everyone else has to rely on their own, individual wells, each of which provides water to an average of three people.

The village has been on the same boil water advisory since January 2006, though temporary advisories have been issued to certain areas of the town since 2001, and some individual wells have been reporting E. coli and coliform contamination since 1991.

Even though the federal government has spent nearly $1 million on studies, and improvements to well water testing, treatment infrastructure, and operator training, the problems in Little Salmon Carmacks are not clearing up. Government solutions have not dealt with the central causes of contamination, and have proved to be no more than expensive Band-Aids. Disregarding the results of numerous studies it has funded to investigate the root causes of the community’s water problems, the government seems willing to only fund short-term solutions, such as treating the contaminated water with chlorine.

One government funded study notes that “of particular concern are the positive [bacteriological] results for wells which have had their well boxes upgraded and cleaned and wells shock chlorinated.” In particular, it says that from 1991 until the study was conducted in 2004, “positive bacteriological contamination has been reported for 36% of residential wells over the period of record, with 22% reporting contamination within the last year.” Studies have been clear as to why contamination keeps coming back: poorly constructed individual wells are easy to contaminate and hard to maintain. According to a 2008 report, most of the wells in Little Salmon Carmacks are too shallow, too close to septic tanks, and are drilled in sandy, permeable soil. The well heads are also located underground, in pits that let in surface water, which then stagnates and causes bacterial contamination.

Rodent feces, animal remains, and fuel spills also become trapped in the well pits, and when water levels rise, either from rain or spring run-off, the toxic cocktail overflows first into wells and then out of taps. These same wells were built by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada—some of them as recently as the ’90s—who now refuses to maintain them. Neither the federal nor the territorial government will fund repairs or upgrades to wells serving fewer than five people; both levels of government say that this is the responsibility of homeowners. The case continues to circulate INAC internally in a game of bureaucratic hot potato that has left the community in purgatory. Even more frustrating is the fact that the solution, pointed to even by government funded studies, is completely clear: a single pipe system—one big well, with a pipeline servicing most homes in the village—is described as the best and most cost-effective long-term solution to the village’s water problems. But no government department or funding program has accepted the community’s proposals to construct one.

An INAC spokesperson said that the single pipe system is “not considered cost effective to construct and maintain over the long term.” But this directly contradicts an INAC funded study conducted just one year earlier, which concluded that a single pipe system would produce cleaner, safer water—since the water can be treated and monitored from a single, central location—and would incur lower long-term maintenance costs.

Even the ministry’s own statistics are suspect. INAC keeps a database of water quality in First Nation communities, rating water as being at high, medium, or low risk for contamination. After a 2002 study of communities across Canada, Little Salmon Carmacks’s water was rated “high risk.” In 2006, INAC officials downgraded it to “medium risk,” citing new evaluations from 2003 and 2004, which Chief Skookum says never took place. One former INAC employee, who helped develop the database, stated that officials modified the Little Salmon Carmacks rating “without stepping foot” in the community.

In 2007, INAC proudly announced that “in the past 12 months the number of high risk water systems in First Nations communities has been reduced from 193 to 97.” That number has since been reduced to 49. The problem is not simply that the ministry appears to be moving the goalposts for the sake of public relations; a “high-risk” rating automatically obliges the federal government to evaluate water systems and fund repairs. Downgrade the rating, and that financial commitment vanishes, though the problem does not.

In Little Salmon Carmacks, the government’s lack of serious action proved nearly fatal. In a December 2005 community meeting at which government and First Nation representatives were present, the then Yukon Chief Medical Officer of Health—a territorial government official charged with issuing boil water orders—said, “I am confident that the water is not going to cause immediate health problems … I am convinced that the level of anxiety regarding the wells is too high.” Less than four weeks later, Elder Johnny Sam was airlifted to a Vancouver hospital for treatment of a bacterial infection so severe he had to remain there for four and a half months. His doctors linked his illness to his water consumption, and the First Nation issued its own boil water advisory on January 9, 2006.

“Someone just about died,” said Chief Skookum, who issued the 2006 advisory. “The government has got to show more effort in showing that they can step in and help with the cause and communicate— there’s not much of that at all.”

Chief Skookum isn’t the only one thinking that. A 2005 report by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) cited lack of government responsibility as a systemic problem directly related to the quality and safety of drinking water for First Nation communities. The CESD recommended that a new regulatory body be created to address the crisis. The government has acknowledged the problem but the steps it is taking have not won the support of Indigenous groups.

On May 26, 2010 the government introduced Bill S-11 in the federal Senate. The proposed legislation would set up a regulatory framework with jurisdictional clarity responsible for setting appropriate standards for the treatment and disposal of water. In its current incarnation, however, it applies only to reservations and not to self-governing nations (like Little Salmon Carmacks), although communities could opt in.

Critics argue that without a corresponding financial commitment, many First Nation communities will lack the resources to meet these guidelines, and fear they could be penalized for it. Irving Leblanc, the acting director of housing and infrastructure for the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), says that “by pushing this legislation forward, the government is setting up First Nations for failure.” He adds, “There’s been no consultation done on this bill.” Though the government has made some effort to discuss the bill with First Nations, many feel that their views and opinions were not heard, much less incorporated into the legislation.

In the meantime, private volunteers have proved to be more effective than the ministry that’s actually responsible for ensuring water quality in First Nation communities. In 2007 Little Salmon Carmacks got in touch with the AFN which, in turn, proposed a well revitalization project to the Canadian Autoworkers union. In May of 2008 CAW members arrived for their first of two summers helping the community upgrade and repair its water infrastructure.

The volunteers—skilled tradespeople, most from Ontario—extended the wells a metre above ground and put caps on them so only well water could enter. This altered the structure of the wells more drastically than previous repairs, elevating and sealing off the once festering, below ground well heads and well boxes. The volunteers also installed heater cables to prevent pipes from freezing in the winter and controllers to maximize energy efficiency. The project was initially supposed to take only one summer. However, at the end of their six weeks of work, only half of the intended 57 wells had been repaired. The union decided to extend the project and volunteers returned to the Yukon the following summer to finish what they started.

Mark McGregor, a millwright who works in Brampton, Ontario, and one of the volunteers during the second summer, says seeing the community and their infrastructure made him realize that “people up North are forgotten about.” He compared Little Salmon Carmacks’s situation to that of Walkerton, Ontario’s in 2000, saying the water was so dirty, “we wouldn’t even shower in it,” and that “sometimes it was brown coming out of the taps.”

The volunteers may have been able to improve the state of the village’s water infrastructure, but the deeper systemic problems remain.

Most critically, there is a shortage of qualified people to operate and repair the wells. A government report notes that there is “a severe shortage … of certified water-treatment systems operators in First Nations communities.” Yukon College offers courses that provide water operators with the knowledge they need to pass the Environmental Operators Certification Program, and the federal government does have funding available to cover the course fees of potential operators from Indigenous communities, but the mathematical requirements seem to be a barrier for many individuals.

“You have to be able to drive a truck and do the math,” Jordan Mullett, Little Salmon Carmacks’ only certified water technician, says. “Most people who are truck drivers are older guys, and they don’t really have their math or their algebra.”

Accordingly, Yukon College has set up a crash-course math course. “You can do it by video conference,” Mullett explains, “five half days in a row.” But despite these efforts, INAC representatives estimate that, for First Nation operators in the Yukon, “the pass rate over the past two years … is approximately 50 percent.”

“We’ve sent lots of people,” Mullett says, “but they always fail. We’ve sent everyone that we possibly can, and some people twice, three times, and they still don’t pass. And even though it’s no cost to us, there’s no point in sending someone for their third or fourth time.”

That leaves Mullett as the only certified operator in the village, one man monitoring dozens of wells—a dangerous ratio. And the story is repeated in communities across the North.

Despite mountains of evidence, much of it accumulated by its own branches, departments, and agents, the federal government has not acted strongly enough to improve water treatment in First Nation communities. No matter how many times the relationship between water quality and other quality of life issues (education, depression, general health, etc.) is spelled out, often by their own employees, politicians and senior bureaucrats have not taken the necessary steps to improve the quality of water in First Nation communities.

To aboriginal leaders, however, the link between water and overall quality of life is clear. The United Nations backed them up in July when the General Assembly passed a resolution affirming water and sanitation as human rights.

“This resolution establishes new international standards,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo shortly after the vote (from which Canada abstained). It “compels Canada to work with First Nations to ensure our people enjoy the same quality of water and sanitation as the rest of Canada.” So far Atleo’s call has little attention from the federal government, leaving Little Salmon Carmacks, and many communities like it, to rely not on the ministry, but on the kindness of strangers.

A partial map of Canada's North, c. 1776. Province-like powers are needed to improve living conditions, but only if the negotiations are fair.

Territorial devolution is key to a successful North…

After decades at a frozen impasse, it appears the federal government’s position on devolving province-like responsibilities and powers to the Northwest Territories has finally thawed. In October, a draft agreement-in-principle between the feds and the territorial government was leaked to media, marking the NWT’s first small step toward taking control of its own land development, administration, and natural resources.

The potential benefits are huge. The territorial government estimates that over the last five years, more than $200 million in resource revenues flowed out of the territory to Ottawa. Had this money remained in the territory, it would have provided much needed funding to fight longstanding social and housing problems, which are major root causes of the NWT’s embarrassing crime rate, currently six times the national average. Plus, a devolution deal would likely move north hundreds of jobs that are now located in the south. Even a few jobs would substantially boost the territory’s poorest areas, says MLA Tom Beaulieu, who represents the tiny towns of Fort Resolution and Lutselk’e. “There would be a lot more money circulating,” he told the CBC, “and employment rates would be a lot better.”

…but not without aboriginal inclusion

Not so fast, say aboriginal governments. When news of the deal leaked, their opposition was loud, immediate, and nearly universal. Surprisingly, they’d been omitted from the bilateral negotiations; unsurprisingly, they weren’t happy about it. Many fear the agreement could transfer authority over their traditional lands to the territorial government. Of the seven groups currently party to the deal, only one has stated its support: the Inuvialuit, whose land claim encompasses the oil-rich Beaufort Delta. UPDATE: the agreement in principle was signed on January 26, 2011 by the federal and territorial governments and the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation; the other aboriginal governments did not sign and said they opposed the agreement.

Territorial officials won’t say whether they’ll continue without aboriginal support or with only a majority on board, like the Yukon did in 2003. In the meantime, Premier Floyd Roland has tried to circumvent opposition by telling aboriginal groups there is nothing legally binding within the agreement. Roland maintains the draft agreement, which he calls “a road map for future negotiations,” won’t negatively affect land claim agreements or future settlements; aboriginal leaders have told him to can the platitudes. Despite a recent meeting with chiefs—weirdly, outside the NWT, in Edmonton—Roland has been unable to break the deadlock. With a winter of discontent looming, it looks like the road toward self determination may once again freeze over.

North Mart in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Larger retailers will benefit disproportionately from the new, privatized Nutrition North Canada program.

Changes to the government’s food subsidy program are making some in Northern Canada fear higher prices and fewer small, local stores.

The Food Mail Program was axed last October, to be replaced by a redesigned initiative in April 2011. The program, jointly run by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Canada Post, and Health Canada, provided food and sanitary items to isolated communities in the North at reduced postal rates. By cutting down on the transportation costs, food prices in the North were more affordable.

An INAC spokesperson told us that the program started around the 1960s through Canada Post’s air stage program. In 1991, responsibility over the program was transferred to INAC. Toward its end, the program was supporting 70,000 people in 80 communities each week, delivering over 18 million kilograms of food by mail annually.

The program required meticulous detail. Food arrived in shipping centres in the South, were packaged for sale and insulated to survive northern weather conditions. They were then driven to nine points of entry before being loaded into Canada Post aircraft, along with postal deliveries. Although 90 percent of the food was sent to communities in Nunavut and northern Quebec, the program served communities from Yukon to Labrador.

A 2007 video (which looks much more dated) explains the process in detail. The government subsidy meant that northern food prices were about 40 percent more than in the South—instead of double the price, which they would have been without the subsidy. (A Globe and Mail article reported on one community affected by the changes. Photos from the local grocery store include $30 jars of Cheez Whiz, $13 spaghetti, and $7 heads of cabbage.)

Last May, the Conservatives announced that three private companies would take on Canada Post’s role after concluding the crown corporation was too expensive.

The program was cut in October and will be replaced with the Nutrition North Canada initiative in April. The new program limits subsidies to “nutritious” perishable foods instead of “convenience” perishable foods (TV dinners, breaded meats) and limits eligibility of non-perishable foods. In the interim, the original Food Mail Program continues although subsidies have been discontinued for a list of items that aren’t covered under the new plan. Discontinued items include “whole pumpkins” and “croissants and garlic bread,” but also discontinued are water and prescription drugs.

An excellent CBC radio segment explored the implications of food costs for the largely Aboriginal populations who live in the isolated communities served by the program. With a genetic susceptability to Type 2 diabetes, a high rate of social assistance use, and a higher birth rate, these northern communities badly need access to nutritional foods. When a jug of fresh orange juice is 10 times the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola, affording a balanced diet is a struggle.

It’s this line of thinking that prompted changes to the subsidy system, but is it really the most effective action? Some advocate investment in summer agriculture programs, noting that areas in the Far North receive near-24 hour sunlight, making them even more fertile than some communities in the South.

But the loudest criticism of the new plan has to do with funding structure.

The old subsidy applied to the grocery item itself, allowing businesses and consumers to pay a fixed price for groceries, while costs such as air shipping were handled by the government. The new subsidy goes straight to retailers, leaving it to them to negotiate their shipping and air costs.

Smaller stores therefore face unfair competition. Larger chains like North Mart will benefit from economies of scale, but smaller stores—in the most remote areas with small populations—will face higher shipping costs—and thus higher prices. Ultimately this risks not only the livelihoods of food vendors, but also the purported goal of the subsidy program: the ability of Northerners to get a balanced diet.

As of today it’s official: every province and territory across Canada is on board with the 350.org climate movement. This Sunday, 350.org events will be held throughout Canada and around the world.

Last year, we saw the beginning of this movement. On Oct. 24th, 2009, several thousand youth took over Parliament Hill in Ottawa to give our leader a strong message: that we want action now.

But the politicians on the Hill haven’t given us that. If anything, the Canadian government has done the opposite, subsidizing $1.5 billion to the fossil fuel industry and cutting investments in renewable energy. Even worse, as we all know too well, the Copenhagen Climate Summit was a complete failure. It took us years, if not a decade, backward in negotiations.

So what do we do now? Is there any point to fighting or should we just give in to this suicidal path we seem to be on? These are the questions that have plagued me since I left the summit last December. It’s fair to tell you that I haven’t written much about this recently because I’ve been in a kind of “eco-coma.” I felt so pessimistic about our future, as I’m sure a lot of us have, that I found it difficult to have even the slightest bit of hope any more.

But maybe that was my mistake. I placed too much hope on some political leaders changing it all. I realize now that we’ve got to get to work ourselves for the change we want. We can’t leave it up to the top-tier powers that are so obviously controlled by the fossil fuel lobby. Throughout history, this has always been the way. It takes strong movements of millions to make change. This year is no exception. Despite our corrupt government, Canadians and people around the world are not backing down. Our movement is only getting stronger.

On Oct. 10th, there will be events happening across the country. In the Yukon Territories, people will weatherize low-income homes. In Nunavut they will take the day to walk instead of drive. While in Prince Edward Island, they will cycle on hybrid electric bikes across the coastal shorelines to promote alternative energies.

In Pakistan, women are learning how to use solar ovens, students in Zimbabwe are installing solar panels on a rural hospital, and sumo wrestlers in Japan are riding their bicycles to practice.

Sure, solving climate change won’t come one bike path at a time. But as Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, wrote, “It’s a key step in continuing to build the movement to safeguard the climate.”

This is probably the most important year yet to preserver in our fight. We’ve seen devastating floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia, and a heat-wave around the world.

But with this movement growing globally, today I am proud to write that I have hope again.

Providing midwifery in a public health system presents challenges, but they're worth it. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user limaoscarjuliet.

In March 2009, Nova Scotia became the seventh province to incorporate midwifery into the public health care system. Instead of paying and arranging for the service privately, residents now have it covered and regulated by the provincial government.

Midwifery should be seen as the progressive (yet traditional) and cost-effective method of childbirth in Canada. But the upfront cost of creating a regulatory body for midwives, especially in smaller provinces with few practitioners, is offputting for governments. Still, this community-based model of birth, with its decreased hospital time (due to homebirths, shorter hospital stays for hospital births, and less frequent obstetrical interventions) and on-call services, creates significant long-term savings for the health care system.

Nova Scotia’s example offers important lessons to New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Yukon, and Nunavut, all of which will soon regulate midwifery. (New Brunswick will institute legislation and begin hiring midwives in just a few months.) Nova Scotia’s transition hasn’t come without kinks: there remains a shortage of midwives, a lack of public funds allocated to midwifery and the entire health care system faces geographical challenges—rural communities still have trouble accessing public services.

On the positive side, the change means that midwifery services will now be free in Nova Scotia, as they are from British Columbia to Quebec. “Just the very fact of covering midwifery in a provincial health plan and making that known will attract women of all different backgrounds,” explains Aimee Carbonneau, a Toronto midwife who has only ever worked in a public system. Ontario was the first province to regulate midwifery, in 1994. “If it is not supported and paid for by the government, you end up seeing a clientele that is mostly white, middle-class and up, with post-secondary education,” she says.

Maren Dietze, past president of the Association of Nova Scotia Midwives and a practicing midwife in Nova Scotia’s South Shore District, says regulation also gives midwives a new level of legitimacy: “Before we couldn’t deliver in hospital and we couldn’t order ultrasounds. Now we are accepted as part of the team.”

Midwife groups in Nova Scotia have struggled with successive governments since the early ’80s for public care, yet it remains available in only three of the province’s nine health districts. The other six District Health Authorities did not respond to the province’s call for model midwifery sites. According to Jan Catano, co-founder of the Midwifery Coalition of Nova Scotia, “The province didn’t want to roll out midwifery to the whole province at once because there were not enough midwives.”

Instead, a two-year budget for seven fulltime midwives was created. They work from sites in Halifax, Antigonish, and Bridgewater, leaving most of the province without access. Even if more midwives become available to Nova Scotia, from new graduates and a strong pool of internationally trained talent, the money isn’t yet budgeted to hire them.

Consequently, some midwives were essentially forced out of business in the transition.

To create universal access, Dietze says, “We would need more funding for midwives and we would need to be promoting midwifery to all the health districts,” so that local District Health Authorities demand the service and funding.

In the meantime, any Nova Scotian mother living outside the model districts in the centre of the province will lack access. And the situation is not unique to Nova Scotia. “I think for most of Canada, geography represents a big challenge,” Carbonneau says. “Many northern and especially Aboriginal northern communities are trying to bring birth back, but it’s quite tricky juggling the low numbers with the allocation of resources.” The Association of Ontario Midwives, for example, estimates its members serve only 60 percent of their demand.

Meanwhile, the three midwifery centres in Nova Scotia are swamped. And demand seems to be skyrocketing in some areas, such as Dietze’s South Shore District.

“A year ago we had five or six births here; now we have 40 on our books and we’ll have 70 or 80 people next year,” she says.

But, despite the increased demand regulation brings, midwifery is still not a financial priority in the province; compared to other health issues such as senior care or, more recently, H1N1.

The irony is that midwifery is less expensive than the medical model of childbirth, which treats pregnancy as an illness requiring costly medical interventions like drugs or surgeries. Further, midwives have a rich

Canadian history of catching babies in the most remote locations, especially when doctors weren’t available. In that traditional system, midwives went where doctors couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Now, as more provinces regulate midwifery, those remote areas are being left behind. Midwifery can’t properly be called “public” until access is universal.

To make that happen, more midwives are needed and that requires more Canadian midwifery graduates and greater integration of internationally trained midwives. Provincial governments need to make a special effort to promote midwifery to rural health districts and back up their words with trained midwives ready to live in and serve rural communities and First Nations reserves. And a culture change is needed in the medical institutions hosting midwives. To do their jobs properly, midwives need the freedom, flexibility, and mobility to provide homebirths and travel significant distances when necessary.

All of these changes require upfront investments, but collectively they will save taxpayer dollars currently being wasted on unnecessary birthing interventions and hospital stays that only hurt women and their families.