The Department of Justice says plans are moving forward for A New Day despite the fact no one has come forward with a bid to run it.
The request for proposals to take over the NWT's only healing program for male perpetrators of domestic violence originally had a deadline of April 10. After no one applied, the deadline was extended to April 18.
As of May 18 the RFP has closed, and no one has come forward to take on the program. The current program ends on June 30, leaving the department with an increasingly persistent metronome counting down to replace it.
鈥淭he department is currently exploring their next steps for the delivery of the program,鈥� stated Marie- 脠ve Duperr茅, official languages and communications adviser on behalf of the justice department in an e-mail to Yellowknifer.
Those 鈥渘ext steps鈥� include discussions with local non-profits and private-sector service providers, although the department declined to comment on who might be involved or if any more tweaks to the request for proposals might be in the pipeline.
The current program has been delivered through the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre, and offers free individual and group therapy sessions for men who have used violence in their relationships. A new request for proposals, which has gone through two iterations, has been subject to criticism from the public and MLAs. Under the most recent request for proposals, the program would go from group and private counselling sessions to public only, and would go from full-time to a predetermined hourly rate. As Yellowknifer has previously reported, many people working in the community felt the department hadn't listened, either at proponent meetings or to recommendations that came out of an evaluation of the program in November.
The Centre for 快盈v3 Families and the Salvation Army both declined to bid on the program, citing concerns with the changes.
Lyda Fuller, executive director of the YWCA, also confirmed the YWCA had no intention of bidding on the program, and have no plans to develop a program to replace it.
Arlene Hache, former executive director of the Centre for 快盈v3 Families, brought up the issue at a public meeting on open government on May 17. She was involved in the development of A New Day from the beginning.
鈥淣ow all a sudden all that work is down the toilet,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd the Department of Justice, all by itself with no rationale, has totally stripped and changed that program. Once again they basically just said this is what we're doing, suck it up ... we're doing it this way, too bad so sad.鈥�
Hache said she wants the legislative assembly to provide a rationale for what she calls the 鈥渟trange and bizarre鈥� decisions around A New Day, calling the current stance 鈥渟chizophrenic.鈥�
鈥淭he MLAs and the government would say addressing family violence is a number one priority in the Northwest Territories but they actively take steps to prove that it actually isn't,鈥� she said.
Duperr茅 stated that despite the lack of bids, there are no plans to cancel the program.
The Northwest Territories has the second highest rate of police-reported family violence in the country, beaten only by Nunavut. In 2015, the NWT had Canada's largest increase in the rate of reported family-related physical and sexual assault, going up five per cent. According the the Status of Women Canada, indigenous women are nearly three times more likely to be violently victimized than non-indigenous women.
