Discussions focus on help for La Loche

Six Saskatchewan cabinet ministers are visiting the remote northern community of La Loche, where staff and students at the high school said they feel they’ve been abandoned since a deadly shooting a year ago.

Education Minister Don Morgan, who is also deputy premier, said the group is meeting with town and school officials in La Loche to find out if supports are working and what more can be done.

On Jan. 22, 2016, a 17-year-old youth shot brothers Dayne and Drayden Fontaine in a La Loche home, then went to the community’s high school and fatally shot staff members Adam Wood and Marie Janvier and injured several others.

Last month, school principal Greg Hatch said there was some help for about a month after the shooting, but after that, the school was left on its own to make it through the year.

On Wednesday, Morgan said there are more school counsellors, improvements have been made to adult education and skills training, and there’s a new affordable housing project for the community.

However, he wants to “dig deeper” and talk with the principal and teachers to get a sense directly from them about what is needed, he said.

“So the question that I would have for them is: is this working? Is this type of thing that you need? Are these things leading to employment opportunities, and is there other things that you think we should do that would not indicate that we’re not doing our part? What else do they need?” Morgan said in an interview from La Loche.

The town council wants the province to provide resources, “but they very much want to chart and plan their own path forward,” he said. “They don’t want this to be a Regina-driven solution or a ministry-driven solution or from the school division.”

Hatch also said last month that staff and students were traumatized and still haven’t dealt with the effects.

Students are struggling in school and staff are struggling with their work, he said.

A message left for Hatch on Wednesday was not immediately returned.

The shooter pleaded guilty last October to two counts of firstdegree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder. He is to be sentenced in the spring. Because he was 17 at the time of the shooting, his name cannot be published under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.