'A culture of lawlessness': Yellowknife candidates sound off about issues downtown

On Sept. 3, Mark Poodlat was badly beaten outside of Yellowknife's sobering centre. The 36-year-old was medevaced to a hospital in Edmonton, where he died two days later.

On Facebook, Poodlat was remembered as funny, generous and kind. His death turned up the volume on calls to do something about public intoxication and violence in the capital city's downtown.

These issues have come up again and again, at debates and on doorsteps, and especially in Yellowknife Centre, which encompasses downtown and the city's day shelter and sobering centre.

To Thom Jarvis, a Yellowknife Centre candidate and resident of the downtown core, "rampant" open-air drinking and fighting are putting the public at risk.

"I've seen some vicious fights some vicious beatings. It's been more than a few times actually [that] I myself have been imperilled," he said. "My wife won't go to the store or anything by herself in the evening. She just won't even do it."

Jarvis said problems have gotten worse in the last four or five years, and a "culture of lawlessness" has been permitted downtown.

One solution would be to build an addictions treatment centre in Yellowknife, he said. Control over it should be given to "our Indigenous partners, because they have a much greater understanding of the cause. Quite often they may even know or be related to people" who would use the facility, he said.

"In the proper cultural setting we're going to get much, much better results."

Police 'gaslight' the public, says candidate

Arlene Hache is another Yellowknife Centre candidate. For more than two decades Hache has worked with people who are homeless and people living with addictions. She experienced homelessness herself as a young woman, new to Yellowknife.

Hache also believes public intoxication and violence downtown have risen in recent years.

Part of the problem, in her view, is that police have withdrawn somewhat from downtown.

The RCMP "paints the whole challenge downtown as an addiction problem and a social problem, and while that is true, there is a difference between addictions and violence," she said. "The RCMP is responsible to step in to deal with violence, and they, I think, gaslight the public into believing that they don't have a role downtown."

Yellowknife RCMP declined to do an interview for this story. Spokesperson Julie Plourde said in an email that the force "must carry out their duties in a non-partisan manner, [and] as such, we cannot be seen to be interfering in an election campaign."

In a report to city council on Monday however, RCMP said increasing police visibility in the downtown core is among its top priorities.

Drinking, violence 'spilling onto the streets'

For Yellowknife Centre candidate Niels Konge, having the sobering centre a place where people can rest and sober up and the day shelter in the same building isn't helping the situation. Drinking and violence are "spilling onto the streets," he said.

Konge wants the territorial government to take another look at the arrangement.

The territorial government put $2.6 million into the combined facility this fiscal year.

At the Yellowknife Centre debate last week, candidates were asked how they would address issues downtown, and how they would get their colleagues from outside the city on board.

During the debate Julie Green, the riding's incumbent, said her fellow MLAs are supportive of the day shelter and sobering centre. "They know their cousins are there, it's not an issue, so there is support there," she said.

In an interview on Wednesday, Green clarified that MLAs "told me that they had family on the street."

Also on Wednesday, Green said the government plans to build another shelter downtown in the next three to five years. That building may offer a separate place for sober people to go. She also said there needs to be a concerted effort to increase housing options for people who are homeless.

According to the most recent count, in April of 2018, 338 people in Yellowknife were homeless. The city has a 10-year plan to end homelessness, but it requires significant territorial and federal investment in new affordable housing.

Lyda Fuller, the executive director of the YWCA NWT, said ending homelessness in Yellowknife is possible with a "housing first" strategy. This means giving people a place to live first, and addressing issues that led to their homelessness second.

TheYWCA and the Yellowknife Women's Society both run housing first programs, said Fuller, but the number of people they can house is restricted by their funding.

It looks like it's worse, but it is all concentrated in one place, and so I wonder if that is a perception or reality.- Julie Green, incumbent in Yellowknife Centre

"If the funding were increased, then that could increase the number of people who could benefit, and I don't see any reason why pretty much everybody who's homeless couldn'tbe accommodated."

Green said the notion that problems in Yellowknife's downtown have gotten worse is partly because the day shelter and sobering centre are in the same spot on 50th Street. "It looks like it's worse, but it is all concentrated in one place, and so I wonder if that is a perception or reality," she said.

People will go where the services are, said Green, but if the services aren't downtown, the people who need them won't walk the distance to get them.

'People can change'

Outside of downtown, down a gravel path leading into the bush behind Yellowknife's Fieldhouse, is a healing camp run by the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation. It's a place where people can go for a meal, tea, or to sit by the fire and talk. Drinking isn't allowed. Show up intoxicated and you'll be turned away.

The healing camp has become a kind of treatment centre for people in Yellowknife. They come with all kinds of baggage addictions, anger, histories of trauma, abuse and abandonment and the camp provides a space to reflect and an opportunity to turn things around.

Donald Prince, the foundation's executive director and CEO, said part of the reason he's had success is because the camp doesn't allow alcohol or people who have been drinking.

He said if he can get people to come out daily, for a couple weeks, they are able to find some clarity and start making different choices.

"When you're a little kid, three or four years old, you don't decide ... at 40 years old I'm going to be homeless on the street and I'm going to drink cheap wine and Lysol or whatever. Life, people, circumstances decide that for you," he said.

"But on that note, people can change."