Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to speak about the successful men's counseling program called A New Day. It is aimed at providing healing and offering a way forward for men who use violence in their intimate relationships.
By all accounts, from people involved with delivering the program and those receiving counselling themselves, A New Day is a success. Even with disagreement about the program's completion rate, men who participated partially reported great benefits.
A New Day has now been extended twice but will shut down in about five weeks. Although the Department of Justice issued an RFP for bids to continue operations, so far there have been zero bidders. That is because the department, in its wisdom, decided that it needed to change the terms of the counselling. In this RFP, the department changed the type of counselling offered and the way it was scheduled.
Critics of the RFP, including a former director of the Centre for Northern Families and of the Coalition Against Family Violence, said the change was "incompatible" with the program's success and that all the good work will go down the drain. But the department didn't listen to these experts, so now the program will end in a few weeks, and no one wants to sign up to continue it.
When we debated A New Day in this Assembly last fall, the question seemed to be: is it worth the cost? Only 12 men completed the whole program. Can this be worth what we spent? These questions miss the point. Family violence is an epidemic in Northern Canada. How do we measure that cost? How do we measure the cost of women being barred from safety and from free participation in public life, or the cost of children witnessing or experiencing violence at home? What does abuse and violence against women and children cost our healthcare system, and in missed work, missed school, crisis response and treatment for trauma, and, of course, men's wellness?
Mr. Speaker, A New Day took some time to find its legs, but it had become successful, making progress on one of the most difficult social problems our residents face. But the department thought it knew better than our frontline agencies. Now none of those agencies is willing to step forward to carry this important mission forward. Mr. Speaker, we need to get back to basics and work closely with those who know how to successfully deliver this program - and it needs to be sooner not later! Thank you, Mr. Speaker.