Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Earlier this month, I gave a Member's statement about the men's A New Day program. It's a healing and wellness program for men who use violence in their intimate relationships. I am under the understanding that the existing contract for this program is up next month, and I am wondering if the Minister of Justice can please let us know what the plans are for this program. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister of Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With all the talk about outhouses and A New Day program, it feels like I am back in the 18th Assembly. As the Member noted, the contract for A New Day program was a four-year contract that ends at the end of March. The Department of Justice will not be renewing that contract. The contractor has been informed of this. The plan is to transform the program into more of a community-driven model and making that money available on an application basis. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Does the Minister have any information as to when this money will be made available or when the terms of reference will be available, as well?
A call for expressions of interest will be released in April. Any proposal will be looked at by a men's healing fund committee based on the application guidelines that we are developing. That work is under way.
In 2016, there was a men's A New Day evaluation report done. I am wondering if there will be an evaluation report done on the work that has been done by the John Howard Society since then and if either of those reports will be used in order to form the terms of reference for the financing going forward.
This is still quite early in the process. Of course, we want to use the results of reviews to inform how we want to go forward. I think that it has been maybe six or seven years now that this program has been running in different forms. Still, a lot has been learned. I think we can see that there have been some issues with the program over the past few years. We have seen the length of it is a problem. It's probably not the best program to be run in the North. We will try and avoid those pitfalls. That being said, we want this to be community-driven and really empower local communities to come up with some local solutions and assist where we can.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I am wondering if the Minister will commit to consulting with the Standing Committee on Social Development for the terms for that expression of interest, so that local, community-driven MLAs can have some input into that. Thank you.
I can send those off and request feedback from the standing committee, but the plan right now is really to have it community-driven and not have it necessarily dictated. That being said, there has to be some sort of structure around it, so we can definitely collaborate in that sense. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
