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Qimaavik shelter gets partial reprieve

“Guess what, we’re not closing!”

JANE GEORGE

After they discovered that the GN will not reduce their annual grant if they raise money from third parties, the Agvvik Society now believes the Qimaavik women’s shelter will live. The Agvvik Society now hopes to get financial help from the YWCA and the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence without being penalized by the GN. (FILE PHOTO)

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Health and Social Services said ‘you don’t need to close your doors. Go assure your staff and clients that you are going to stay open,’“ the shelter’s director, Napatchie McRae said.

“I came back to the shelter and said, ‘guess what, we’re not closing!’“

All that came out of a meeting this past Monday between officials with the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Health and Social Services and members of the Baffin Regional Agvvik Society, which runs Qimaavik.

“We’re committed to maintaining a women’s shelter in Iqaluit and that was confirmed again to the society,” Ron Browne, the deputy minister of Health and Social Services, told Nunatsiaq News after the meeting.

“With the difficulty they’ve had in maintaining a board of directors they had to consider whether they could operate the shelter,” Browne said.

At this week’s meeting, McRae and Julia Demcheson, the vice-president of the Agvvik Society, told Browne that four new directors have joined their board as a demonstration of public support.

But the GN didn’t find any new money for the cash-strapped shelter, which needs about $200,000 more each year to operate.

Instead, Browne told the Agvvik Society it could seek and use money from other funding agencies and private groups without any reduction of their $50,000 monthly cheque from the GN.

“They said we wouldn’t be penalized,” McRae said. “That was the first time I found this out.”

While this was good news, it wasn’t exactly new news, because Qimaavik could have been looking for outside financial support all along without any penalty to their GN funding: it’s “always been the case,” Browne said.

“Unfortunately, it’s an example of a breakdown of communications, so it’s been important to get that straightened out,” he said.

“We confirmed that the funding of $600,000 that we do give to the shelter will not be reduced by any amount that they will be able to raise from other sources.”

Browne told McRae and Demcheson that the YWCA and the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence are interested in helping the society and its shelter, offering Qimaavik their experience and expertise in running and funding shelters.

Browne promised his department would stay in contact with the shelter each month “but it’s mainly in their court” to develop plans with the two non-government organizations.

Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo, however, isn’t impressed by the GN response to Qimaavik’s woes.

“It doesn’t do anything for them. Now they can hope to get something,” Tootoo said.

“Do they know that they’re going to get money from someone else? What kind of solution is that? There’s no guarantee that they’re going to get it, so if they don’t get it and they still end up losing money what are they going to go? What does that do for them? “

Tootoo said the shelter shouldn’t have to wait until the tabling of the 2007-08 territorial budget early next year to get more money.

“It’s not fair to give them only three-quarters of what they need,” Tootoo said. “I think they should be adequately funded by the GN.”

Tootoo also suggests the GN should help the shelter go through the same “finding savings” process that the GN is now carrying out, to see whether they are running efficiently.

On Oct. 2, following its first meeting with Browne, Qimaavik announced it would close down March 31, 2007, because it didn’t have enough money to keep going.

The Agvvik Society, which runs the 21-bed shelter, said at the time that the shelter would stop accepting clients on Jan. 31, 2007.

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