North losing in funding for gender war

OTTAWA (CP)— Canada’s Far North is getting the short end of the stick on a major federal investment aimed at reducing gender-based violence, advocates say, because the money is being meted out based on the size of a region’s population, rather than need.

“When I go to meetings with shelters in southern Canada, I am hearing about all these shelters being built (or repaired) with the renovation money and I’m thinking, ‘Holy cow! What happened to the North?”’ said Lyda Fuller, executive director of the YWCA Yellowknife.

The Liberal government committed $89.9 million over two years in the 2016 budget for building or renovating shelters and transition houses for people escaping family violence. The investment was also highlighted in the recently launched federal gender-based violence strategy.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC), through which the money flowed, split the money up among the provinces and territories, which were not required to match the funds in order to get things rolling.

But the money was divvied up according to the usual per-capita funding model, which means each share of the pie was determined according to the number of people who live there.

Ontario — home to about 14 million people — got about $28 million over the two-year period.

Meanwhile, each of the three territories, which have a total population of about 120,000, received just under $500,000 over two years.

Lise Martin, executive director of Women’s Shelters Canada, said the money was welcome, but the relatively small sums provided to the territories would make it difficult to build any new shelters there, never mind come up with the extra money to maintain them.

“It’s more than needed, but it’s not going to have a huge impact on capacity in terms of creating new spaces,” she said.

The northern territories have the highest rates of family violence in the country.