Overdue strategy?

Political spat breaks out over about long-awaited violence-prevention initiative

Judy Manning, minister responsible for the status of women, says a new violence-prevention initiative is coming in the next few months, but Liberal MHA Cathy Bennett says it’s already a couple of years too late.

February is Violence Prevention Month, and a Liberal news release Wednesday morning set off a political spat about the long-awaited renewed violence-prevention initiative.

In the Liberal release, Bennett accused the government of keeping documents related to the violence-prevention initiative secret under the auspices of cabinet confidentiality.

That’s not so, Manning said in a release of her own later in the day. In fact, Manning included links to the document that had been posted publicly online since April of last year.

The Liberals fired back that it took the government two years to make the document public, and initially opted to keep it secret in response to a Liberal ac- cess to information request.

The larger issue is that the government is a couple of years overdue to update the violence-prevention initiative, Bennett said. The original version of the strategy was released in 2006, and funding ran to 2012. The government was then supposed to evaluate and renew the action plan.

“This is a very, very important issue. There are families and individuals who are being affected by violence every single day, every single minute,” Bennett said. “People who work in the world of domestic violence are frustrated.”

Manning said an updated plan for violence prevention is due within the next few months. She wouldn’t offer any details about it. Asked if two years is too long to draw up a plan, Manning said that’s not what matters most. “My greater concern, of course, is that at the end of the day we are in fact putting forward a superior product.”