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Councillors seek to fix Social Issues Committee
Terms of reference being revised to get more GNWT involvement Simon Whitehouse Northern News Services Published Saturday, February 25, 2012
The issue was raised during Monday's Municipal Services Committee meeting when chairperson Amanda Mallon sought to revise the social committee's terms of reference. Councillors generally supported allowing the social committee to meet bi-monthly and to place territorial government representatives in a more advisory role; the recommendations will have to be approved by city council. "It has been a struggle to find issues that we can really make a difference on," said Mallon. "The terms of reference were set up so that (the Social Issues Committee) would meet every three months and we were set up for 10 people. Mallon added that limiting meetings to four times a year has made it hard to maintain the committee's momentum. It last met on Jan. 26, but the minutes from the Nov. 17 meeting, during which it was decided to revise the terms of reference, indicate the absences of Sylvia Haener, deputy minister of the Department of Justice, and Dana Heide, deputy minister of the Department of Health and Social Services. Also absent were Jan Stirling, of the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Board, and Alice Abel, of the Yellowknife Dene First Nation. Last March, Coun. David Wind and Coun. Mallon had expressed disappointment that territorial representatives were failing to attend the meetings. Deputy ministers from the departments of Health and Social Services and Justice at the time sent a letter indicating they would no longer be regular members of the committee because of "potential conflicts of interest." Mallon said the GNWT bureaucrats sought to play a lesser role by occasionally providing information. The committee was born as part of the city's Championing Well-Being in Yellowknife plan. The document, which outlined how to tackle social problems in the capital, was drafted by Lutra Associates for the previous city council in June 2009. The committee then began meeting quarterly in April 2010. As an advisory body focused on social problems in the city, the committee has had difficulty bridging the gap between it and the territorial government. "Clearly the territorial government always takes a stand that because they are territorial, they have to focus on the territory," said Coun. Shelagh Montgomery. "Sometimes focusing on Yellowknife is seen to be detracting from that." Montgomery said if territorial representatives were to take on a more advisory role, the committee could work at lobbying the GNWT for change to benefit the citizens of Yellowknife. Coun. Lydia Bardak, who frequently attends the meetings as an observer, said the conflict of interest is clear. "It brings up a bit of an issue where sometimes some of the public-at-large or some of the non-governmental organizations take on the role of advocates and that puts the government in an awkward position because they sit at the committee meeting where advocacy is being discussed," she said. "Then those signing the paycheques are asking what they are doing at that table." The issue becomes a difficult one for the city, Bardak said, because municipal property often bears the brunt of the pressure from social problems. She pointed out that those suffering from addictions and homelessness will frequent the library or public transit, for example. "So it becomes a municipal issue because the population we are concerned about frequents our facilities," she said. The issue comes as Tim Doyle, Chamber of Commerce executive director, announced his candidacy for mayor late last week. A big part of his campaign, if not the central driver, is focused on downtown social issues. Doyle has said in the past that there is a lot of business owners who are "tired" of dealing with passed out people, alcoholism, and theft around their businesses.
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