Cindy MacDougall
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 26/99) - Northern Addiction Services (NAS) has laid off almost all of its employees, including all of its drug and alcohol counsellors, as it plays a waiting game for federal funding.

Darrell Beaulieu, president of the NAS board of directors, said the centre's funding crisis has forced the board to lay off over a dozen employees.

"We're still working on funding from (federal) corrections," he said. "We have no GNWT funding anymore. Apparently we're no longer an accredited organization."

NAS has proposed an aboriginal offender treatment program for federal inmates.

Beaulieu said funding for that project would rejuvenate the Dettah treatment centre.

However, Correctional Service Canada official Gina Wilson said it may be a long time before any decision on funding is made. "We do have a proposal in front of us," Wilson, director of aboriginal programming for correctional services, said. "But I don't think we're even close to giving them an answer."

She said correctional services has no budget for funding treatment centre programs.

"This funding proposal is a very new thing for us," Wilson said.

"We've never funded a treatment centre (outside a correctional institution) before."

Wilson said a decision on the proposal would come well after the new year. Money problems at addiction services started in June, when its contribution agreement with the territorial government's Department of Health ended. The centre's debt is tagged at $948,562, and it is in arrears for three months on its mortgage to the NWT Housing Corporation. Plans for a youth treatment facility or a residential school healing program have fallen through in recent months, leaving nothing but the offender treatment plan.

Beaulieu said the Dettah centre is being rented out to workshop and retreat groups to try to make ends meet.

Cathy Praamsma, assistant deputy minister of the territorial Department of Health and Social Services, said the department stopped funding NAS because the centre chose to change its focus from community treatment to treatment of offenders.

"We did have a contribution agreement that expired in June," she said. "We actually received correspondence from them (NAS) saying they wanted to change their focus to federal corrections."

She said if the focus returned to treating NWT residents, the department would consider a funding proposal.

The Health Department used to give NAS over $1 million dollars a year in funding for addictions treatment programs.

Half of that funding was paid by the various health boards based on the number of residents from the boards' areas at the centre.

Beaulieu said NAS is still offering addictions counselling to the public, and will rehire staff on an as-needed basis.

The Salvation Army in Yellowknife is also offering a withdrawal management service for the people in the first stages of kicking an addiction.

The army stepped in when NAS pulled out of detox in June, and its program is funded by the Department of Health and Social Services.

Beaulieu said the board is negotiating its mortgage problems with the housing corporation.