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LETTERS: Health P.E.I. in crisis; the decolonization of 'Greenavut'

Treat doctors as partners

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Health P.E.I. is facing a crisis of its own making, and Islanders are paying the price.

With three more physicians giving notice this past week, another 4,500 Islanders are now without a family doctor. For a province already struggling to meet basic health-care needs, this is not just unfortunate — it is unacceptable.

Most troubling is that this exodus is not a mystery. Doctors have been telling us for years why they are leaving: burnout, unmanageable patient loads, lack of administrative support, and a leadership structure making decisions that shapes their daily work.

If the provincial government truly wants to stop the bleeding, the solution is not another task force, another restructuring, or another round of public relations messaging. A simple solution might be: listen to the doctors. Invite them to the table. Ask them what they need. Implement their recommendations. Treat them as partners rather than as replaceable cogs in a failing motor.

Doctors are in demand everywhere, and unless they feel respected and supported, they will simply choose to practise elsewhere. P.E.I. is small enough that meaningful change is possible — but only if those in power are willing to acknowledge that the people delivering the health care understand the system far better than those managing it from a distance.

Islanders deserve a health-care system that works. Doctors deserve leadership that respects their expertise. And the government needs to recognize that retention begins with listening. Until that happens, we will continue to lose the very people we need most.

Jean Tingley, Wheatley River, P.E.I.

The decolonization of Greenavut

In a recent Guardian commentary, UPEI political scientist Henry Srebrnik restated the idea that the Inuit-majority territories of Greenland and Nunavut join together in a single sovereign nation. Previous arguments for such a nation dubbed it “Greenavut,” although if it ever comes to be, it would almost certainly be called something else.

To understand how “Greenavut” is even possible, we need some history. Well before 10,000 years ago, ancestors of today’s First Nations spread across all of the Americas south of the Arctic, diversifying into a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages. In contrast, Inuit are New World newcomers. When they arrived in Nunavut and Greenland about 800 years ago, that land had already been occupied for thousands of years by an unrelated group of Asian hunters, and one corner of it, Southwest Greenland, had been settled for more than two centuries by European Vikings.

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Because of this relatively short residency in North America, Inuit culture has not greatly diverged across its realm, and regional dialects of Inuktitut are to some degree mutually comprehensible. This common heritage would be the foundation of any “Greenavut” nation-building project.

As Dr. Srebrnik points out, Greenland, despite broad powers of self-governance, remains in some sense a colony of Denmark. The same could be said of Nunavut vis-à-vis Canada. Independence of these Inuit homelands, either separately or jointly, would finalize the casting off of colonial shackles. But independence also incurs risks. An independent “Greenavut,” responsible for its own defence, would soon be swallowed by Donald Trump’s neo-imperialism. Like it or not, it was Denmark’s colonial legacy that spurred European powers to risk an all-out tariff war to keep American jackboots from crushing Greenlandic self-determination. An independent “Greenavut,” responsible for its own finances, would experience a jarring slide in standard of living. Heavy subsidies from Copenhagen and Ottawa help maintain the economies of both territories.

Notwithstanding these challenges, independence for Inuit homelands is plausible and legitimate, if Inuit want it. Regardless of whether they do, Denmark and Canada can and should redouble efforts to support Inuit in their priorities, while always providing realistic offramps to independence. If this is labelled 21st-century colonialism, then so be it.

David Cairns, Stratford, P.E.I.

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