By Duncan Cairns-Brenner

City contributes $25,000 to The Lighthouse

Feb 25, 2016 | 4:34 PM

With reluctance, North Battleford City Council has matched community funds raised during The Lighthouse homeless shelter’s Coldest Night of the Year. 

Although the motion to offer The Lighthouse this one time emergency grant passed City Council unanimously, some members of council were angry that the municipality was being forced to step in and fund social services, which they see as a provincial responsibility.

“Our social issues are not to be addressed by the [city], we are not mandated to do so as a municipal body, those are issues of the province and the federal government,” North Battleford mayor Ian Hamilton said. “Everyone is very protective of their territories as far as who is responsible for individuals.”

The $25,000 the city granted to The Lighthouse came out of a municipal operating grant from the province that was about $60,000 more than administrators had budgeted for.

“We are confident that this is not going to impact the resources that we are dedicating to any other area of operations,” Hamilton said. “This is a one time commitment to the operation of the lighthouse just to show our support.”

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“We’d really like to thank all those who participated in Coldest Night of the Year,” Lighthouse manager Caitlin Glencross said. “I think the community spoke very strongly. Same with the city of North Battleford. It was really amazing that they matched the donation up to $25,000. We were really blown away by that to be honest.”

Glencross admitted that she was unaware of the city’s intent to match money raised during the shelter’s annual fund raiser until the decision had passed during Monday’s City Council meeting.

The city’s contribution will definitely take some of the financial pressure off The Lighthouse, Glencross said.

“We haven’t had a proper stream of income in some time now, so this does definitely help and it does show the support we have from the city.”

The Lighthouse has been in a deadlock with the province over funding since December 2015, when the Ministry of Social Services’ approval process for per diem funding for the shelter’s clients changed.

Glencross met with representatives from the Ministry of Social Services Monday.

“We’ve has some positive discussions,” she said. “However, no concrete decisions have been made at this point.”   

North Battleford has a large itinerant First Nations population because of the large number of surrounding reserves. This makes social service allocation complicated, as the federal government is in charge of First Nations funding, while the province is in charge of social service funding for non-First Nations.

“We have a very fluid population and people are accessing these services that the province doesn’t want to take responsibility for, but neither do the federal government agencies and ministries want to take responsibility for,” Hamilton said. “And all of a sudden, it becomes our issue.”

One of the major issues the Lighthouse faces financially is a reticence from the province to pay for First Nations member’s to stay at the shelter while they are receiving federal payments.

According to city councillor Ryan Bater, both the federal and the provincial governments should be working to support The Lighthouse. 

“Funding for issues relating to social services and homelessness are definitely a provincial responsibility,” he said.  “A significant proportion of the people who use the services of The Lighthouse are from neighbouring First Nations communities, and so there is a federal responsibility here too, to make sure these people get the services they need.”

Bater is not optimistic about either the province or the federal government stepping in financially to help The Lighthouse anytime soon.

“Our staff are required to follow provincial policy so that payments are not in excess of our authority or less than.  With any new organization there are always growing pains and processes needed,” Tasha Lupanko, a spokesperson with Social Services, said in an email.  

dcairnsbrenner@jpbg.ca