Services failures admitted

Page 1

A preliminary report revealed that the government's failure to deliver services effectively in isolated communities contributed to the fatal drinking party in Peerless

Lake March 10 that claimed the lives of six Natives.

Milt Pahl, minister of Native Affairs, received the preliminary report on April 4, and said the province will be seeking solutions although he doesn't see the problem of ineffective support in isolated communities being totally eliminated.

"The government isn't guilty of spending too little money on support services for isolated communities. There are too few people to station permanently in these isolated communities, so you have what I characterize as fly in, fly out.

"We're spending a lot of money on people flying in and flying out and perhaps not staying long enough to make everybody in the community aware of the service," Pahl said.

"People here were just recipients of programs where people would fly in, do their thing and leave rather than teaching us how to deliver the program and have us do it from then on," said John Piche, member of the Peeless Lake Community Association.

"Hopefully now that they recognize there has definitely been a problem that has never been addressed, they'll start to deal with it.

"We are working on a five year plan to provide social, recreational and economic development including a land base and sewer and running water. We want to build up those things that would create jobs in the community for the community.

"In the past, too much emphasis on economic programs that were too small and took too long to set up, provided too few short term jobs for too few people. We want to change that," Piche said.