MS. CLEVELAND: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Justice. Earlier this year the Minister and I spoke in the House about the mens’ new day program, a healing program for men, and we spoke about how that program was set to change.
Can the Minister update the House on the new program for men who choose to use violence in their intimate and family relationships? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And of course the new day program ended. It was not renewed by the Department of Justice, and so I'm glad the Member today read one of the Minister of Health's old statements and not one of my old statements from last term about the new day program.
I think that so the program has ended, but the money is still there. And so what the department has done is looked at other ways to utilize that money. We found that the new day program was not working for the Northwest Territories for a number of reasons, and we didn't want to continue down that road. But we have intimate partner violence rates that are ten times the national average, and so something needs to be done.
There was a 2017 study done by the Aurora Research Institute, and what they concluded and what they recommended is that we explore communitybased programming. And so what we have done with that money is we put out a request for proposals, and communities were able to put forward proposals for a portion of that money to run programs out of their own communities.
Initially, the proposal called for, I think you could request up to $40,000 for one year. There was limited uptake on that, and so some changes were made. It was increased to $70,000 a year, and we opened ourselves up to multiyear agreements. So that's where we're at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Minister might remember I already used his words against him in February of this year.
Mr. Speaker, I'm wondering if the Minister can speak to how many or which communities are taking part and what the total budget is now for the program. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funding is still $290,000 a year. The funding has been fully allocated for this year and for next year because of the multiyear agreements.
So far, we have threeyear agreements with the Gwich’in Tribal Council, the Friendship Centre in Behchoko, and Liidlii Kue First Nation, LKFN, and those are each $70,000 a year for three years. And then the Sambaa K'e First Nation we have a $70,000 a year agreement for two years with them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm wondering how the department will evaluate the success of these new programs that are providing support in their communities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And evaluations are something that we really learned to value with this funding because some of the issues that the department ran into early on with the new day program was the inability to really evaluate outcomes and how well it was working. And so all of these contribution agreements here require that there be reporting. There will be some shortterm measures, so just things like the participation rates in the program and the feedback from clients. But we also require some more longterm reporting. And I will follow up with the department to ensure that we do have some measures that are going to be sufficient so that we know whether or not this money's actually being well spent. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the strengths sometimes of really good reports are error evaluations, are the anecdotes that come with them so the real life experiences of people in communities. And so more outcomebased and not just outputbased as far as, you know, number of people that participate in workshop, number of workshops delivered, and so forth. And so I'm wondering if the Minister is willing to commit to sharing these evaluations with the Standing Committee on Social Development as they're available? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I agree with the Member about the types of evaluations we need do. Just because you deliver something doesn't mean it's working. So I will commit to share whatever we can share. I'm not familiar with the particulars of the type of information that will be used in these evaluations, and I don't want to overcommit and share sensitive information that really shouldn't be shared. But I want to make sure that there is oversight of the funds the GNWT are spending. And so there will be some information that will be sufficient for that purpose that I will share with the standing committee when it becomes available. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
