Nunavut to table family violence strategy soon, minister says

A draft copy of Nunavut’s Ilagittsiarniq family violence strategy will be tabled soon, Keith Peterson, Nunavut health and social services minister, said March 4.

Speaking in the Nunavut legislature in response to a question from Akulliq MLA John Ningark, Peterson explained that the strategy’s release was delayed because “I’m not the kind of person just to put a strategy out there with a lot of flash and dash style and no substance.”

And Peterson said he isn’t willing to put out a strategy that’s not going to get results.

Premier Eva Aariak had said in July 2011 that the Government of Nunavut was committed to drafting a family violence strategy by the end of 2011 to help lower rates of violence against k/

But Peterson said he wasn’t encouraged by an early draft of the strategy.

“I wanted a strategy that would actually help people,” he said. “The way I see the strategy, we’re going to have to put some major and significant resources into the strategy.”

Peterson noted that the territory has only six crisis shelters and “not enough social workers.”

“If were going to address this issue, we have to have the resources, funding and support behind it,” he said.

But Peterson said he is willing nonetheless to table a copy of the draft strategy.

“I will table that document in this assembly. I just cannot give you a date,” he said March 4.

Nunavut’s rate of intimate partner violence is more than 13 times the overall Canadian rate, a recent Statistics Canada report said.