Not enough cops in Iqaluit, RCMP boss says

GABRIEL ZÁRATE NEWS: Nunavut March 14, 2010 - 3:12 pm

Though Iqaluit’s RCMP detachment will be almost fully staffed for the next few years, there still aren’t enough cops in town to meet the rising demand for police services, Steve McVarnock, the chief superintendent of Nunavut’s V division, said last week. McVarnock said a standard analysis of the city’s population growth and the detachment’s workload showed the detachment needs more RCMP members. Last January, McVarnock received the RCMP’s estimate for Iqaluit’s police needs, based on crime statistics 2007-08 crime statistics.

The report found Iqaluit needs more RCMP members. McVarnock would not disclose the estimated staffing recommendation, saying it’s an internal RCMP document. In 2008, Iqaluit police received 10,733 calls for service. In 2009, they received 13,624 calls, a recent RCMP presentation to the city council reported. Those 2009 numbers haven’t been included in the RCMP’s recent estimate, so McVarnock says the numbers in the staffing estimate aren’t high enough. And 2010 has been busy so far too. McVarnock said there had been a lot of drug and alcohol seizures, a product of the RCMP’s nationwide freeze on leave during the Vancouver Olympics. Even so, McVarnock said the Iqaluit detachment’s size won’t increase in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Ironically, McVarnock said V Division has a waiting list of RCMP members who want to serve in Nunavut. He said some 300 RCMP members have expressed interest in Nunavut. As a result, all of V Division’s positions will be filled next year, except for those that require a promotion, because of administrative delays.

High drama in the Arctic: to install or not to install a traffic light

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News ServiceOctober 1, 2009

Photograph by: Handout, City of Iqaluit

Baffin Island traffic jams — a once unimaginable phenomenon — are sparking serious debate in Iqaluit, the fast-growing capital of Nunavut. A key outpost on Canada's northern frontier, Iqaluit is already the flashpoint for a host of big-ticket issues, ranging from Arctic sovereignty and climate change to aboriginal rights and intergovernmental relations.But the city's 7,000 residents are currently wrestling with that most parochial of political issues, one familiar to communities everywhere across southern Canada: whether to combat downtown traffic backups by installing a stoplight — the first ever in Nunavut — at Iqaluit's busiest intersection.

If municipal councillors approve the controversial, $400,000 proposal to replace the English-Inuktitut stop signs at the "Four Corners" — the principal cross-street in the territorial hub — the only set of traffic lights in a jurisdiction twice the size of Ontario could be operational by early next year. "We have a 15-minute rush hour, and unfortunately for some, it's too much now," Iqaluit mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik told Canwest News Service, lamenting how traffic congestion — at morning, lunchtime and 5 p.m. — has become an unwelcome sign of prosperous times. "What used to take two minutes to get from point A to point B, because of congestion in that area, is now taking five-plus."

Michele Bertol, Iqaluit's director of planning and lands, said a preliminary study by an Ontario-based consultant concluded that a stoplight was the best solution. "The traffic count reveals that when they plug in the formula for how you calculate whether traffic lights are warranted, the numbers demonstrate that yes — we meet the test," says Bertol. "They said they also looked at another option — a roundabout — but the footprint of the roundabout doesn't fit within our existing road right-of-way. The urban fabric in that area is too tight."

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Don Quixote Note: Iqualuit will be debating during upcoming budget deliberations whether the City will have to hire a TDM Manager. And everywhere our former Inspector McVarnock goes another roundabout rears its head.