Lethbridge Native transportation program scrapped

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The government has scrapped Lethbridge's Native transportation program leaving Natives stranded on the streets to commit crime, says that city's police chief.

Terry Wauters said without money and "no means back to their residence on the reserve, they are put back in an environment where they will repeat the offence."

The program established 14 years ago by Lethbridge City Police and the Alberta Solicitor General's department provided Natives released from the Lethbridge Correctional Centre with transportation to the Blood and Peigan reserves near Lethbridge.

Wauters said the purpose of the program was to place Native offenders with their families where the chance of repeating the offence was minimal.

The government informed Wauters in a letter early February that the program grant of $35,000 a year would not be renewed.

John Szumlas, executive assistant to Solicitor General Dick Fowler, said the program was "an opportunity for a free bus ride. It's not a service we can afford to offer in any other community in the province."

Szumlas said he's puzzled why the program was started in the first place.

Lethbridge was the only city in Alberta with such a program for Natives.

George Little Moustache, a Peigan Nation councillor, said "there will always be repeat offenders, we can't get away from that."

He said people on the reserve, as far as he can determine, aren't upset by the cut.

Native women and children awaiting the release of their partners will also suffer on the street without the transportation program said Wauters.

Wauters said he had a specific policy to accommodate women and children on the van headed back to the reserves because "it's traumatizing for mothers and children to be on the street with no way back home."

Lethbridge city council is discussing the possibility of funding the program.