Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (May 10/99) - Inuusiqsiurvik was only supposed to be closed for a few months while staff and board members reorganized the way treatment was delivered.

But, due to a severe funding shortage, the doors to the territorial drug and alcohol addictions treatment centre in Apex will remain shut -- at least until several extra thousand dollars materialize.

According to Jarvis Hoult, the chief executive officer of the Baffin hospital and the regional health and social services board, before the centre can begin to function using the new treatment model and inclusive philosophies of healing, an additional $356,000 must be raised.

As Hoult explained, the budget of the Baffin board alone is not enough to run the territorial centre.

"For us as a board to open the treatment centre, we need approximately $1.1 million. We only have $744,000 allocated to us. We can't open it by ourselves and run it at full capacity without additional funding," said Hoult during a board meeting held in Iqaluit last week. He also stated that an additional $250,000 would be required to re-open the doors.

In that Inuusiqsiurvik is set up to be a territory-wide treatment centre, the logical spot to begin looking for the needed money is to the Keewatin and Kitikmeot health boards. But because the former method of addictions treatment exercised at the facility was widely known to be culturally- irrelevant to Inuit, the boards have since made other arrangements to spend their combined budget of $250,000 for addictions treatment in centres outside of Nunavut.

To add fuel to the funding fire, it's actually cheaper to send residents outside of Nunavut for treatment. As Hoult told board members from around the region, residential treatment at a centre outside of Nunavut costs about $130 a day as compared to the per diem rate of $265.92 in Nunavut.

Even though a new model, known as reality therapy and choice theory, has been developed and is reputed to be very successful with First Nations and Inuit cultures, Hoult said his colleagues in the other regions were reluctant to hand over their money.

He also presented board members with several other options for the treatment centre, some of which included lobbying the government for additional funding or running the 18-bed facility at half-capacity.

However, until he receives further information from Health Minister Ed Picco (who has declined to comment on the matter until later this month) or until the other boards come on side, the facility will remain on the backburner and residents of the Baffin will continue to be sent to Hay River for acute residential addictions treatment.

On a brighter note, the Upassurakkut Drug and Alcohol Centre in Iqaluit, along with several of the similar programs around the region, have been completely re-tooled using the reality therapy and choice theory model of treatment and several Inuit counsellors have been hired on to offer culturally-relevant addictions treatment.

"We will do all we can to meet cultural needs," said Hoult.