The institutional impediments to state - sponsored community development in Canada's north : the case of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation

• Main Author: McMillan, Ross J.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 1990
• Subjects: Community development > NORTHWEST TERRITORIES > CASE STUDIES; Federal aid to community development > NORTHWEST TERRITORIES > CASE STUDIES; Northwest Territories
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29983

This study identifies and describes three institutional impediments to state-sponsored community development in Canada's North. Community development is defined as both the process and product of purposive social action aimed at community empowerment. The central premise of the study is that community development initiatives offer promise for overcoming the pernicious effects of colonialism in the North. Dominant modes of northern economic and political development are described and are shown to have resulted in few lasting benefits for northern communities and to have contributed to a pervasive alienation and sense of powerlessness. Recent theory on community development and the state is used to demonstrate that state agencies can be expected to adopt community development objectives in response to conflict or community demands — not out of the benevolence of liberal policy makers. Similarly, the study argues that if community demands for empowerment wane, institutional impediments may undermine state-sponsored community development initiatives. Impediments to state-sponsored community development are illustrated through a case study of community development in the North. The study examines the factors which led to the adoption of a community development mandate by an agency of the territorial government — the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation — and it describes the forces which ultimately undermined its community development efforts. Three institutional impediments to state-sponsored community development in Canada's North are identified and described: government-imposed limitations on the independent actions of territorial agencies; shifting political priorities which stem, in part, from the unique form of electoral politics in the Northwest Territories; and intransigence and personnel changes within the bureaucracy. The principal implication of the findings is that practitioners and theorists alike must recognize that community development is an activity concerned with power and politics. In accordance with this recognition, community interests must not expect the state to adopt meaningful community development objectives unless it is in response to effective community demands, and must anticipate that institutional impediments may appear and undermine such efforts if these demands subside. These realizations must inform strategies for community empowerment before the promise of community development can be met in Canada's North. Applied Science, Faculty of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of Graduate