It looks innocuous, doesn’t it? and it sounds kinda … classy … Centre for the North. Even the body that’s pulling it together has a neutral sound to it: Conference Board of Canada.

But being a money coach in my past life, I’m always interested in following the money (and those of you who have watched the Best.Series.Ever, The Wire, will have had that emblazoned on your brain too). And when I followed the money on this, here’s what I found at the end of the document:

Funding of the Centre
This Centre will be funded by a variety of organizations from the private and public sectors. We are asking each investor to commit for a five-year period.

There are three levels of investment:

Champion investor ($100,000 annually)

Champion investors will be deeply involved with Conference Board staff in the drawing up of the Centre’s research plan and meeting agendas. These investors will be part of the Centre’s Steering Committee and will play a leadership role in Centre meetings.

Lead investor ($50,000 annually)
Lead investors will help the Conference Board and Champion investors develop the research plan and review the research in progress. They will also suggest meeting topics and be invited to participate in Centre meetings.

Participant investor ($25,000 annually)
Participant investors will be invited to attend Centre meetings and will have access to the detailed research findings. They will also provide input on the choice of research and meeting topics.

So. People willing to cough up between $25K = $100K every year get to

• set the agenda
• choose which questions get asked and which don’t
• and have access to the research findings.

Anyone else find it hard to believe that the Conference Board of Canada will live up to their stated commitment of being:

• “The foremost independent, not-for-profit, applied research organization in Canada.”
• “Objective and non-partisan. We do not lobby for specific interests.”

I call bullshit. But I’m guessing the final document and research findings will be presented with little mention of who actually drove the whole project.

I dunno. I guess I thought we voted in MLAs every few years to, you know, set the agenda and direction for the north. Clearly I am mistaken.

Something I thought I would address here on this site is bathrooms. Apparently, bathrooms or lack there of, are a problem for Yellowknife. It seems that the (homeless) people are using the streets as their very own lavatory and the news sources are doing everything in their power to make sure people know. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with this except they seem to have chosen not to do any investigative journalism.

If they had of done some simple research they would have found out there actually is a public bathroom available for the homeless and any other person who needs to use one. Most people know where these homeless people sleep at night, the Salvation Army. Well guess what, the Salvation Army also offers the use of their public bathrooms all day. Therefore there shouldn’t be anyone complaining about why there are no bathrooms in this town, what they should be asking is why the City, Radio Station and Newspaper seemed to over look this valuable bit of information.

Some would argue that the Salvation Army doesn’t advertise this, but the fact is they do. Let me explain this to you. I can almost guarantee most of these people who are using our streets as bathrooms also sleep at the Salvation Army and they are well aware that there are bathrooms for them to use. They are also told that there are showers available to them during the day as well. And, yes and! They also have the use of laundry facilities available to them.

Now that you know there are bathrooms for these (homeless) people to use, I would love to get your take on the Day Shelter that is planned for September. My concern, coming from working at a youth center and growing up around The Salvation Army, would be by building the Day Shelter we are just enabling these people. In my experience by providing a place that allows people to come and just hang out in a warm sheltered place does not give them any motivation to actually try and change. That being said, I don’t actually know what will be available at the shelter. However if The Salvation Army already is providing washrooms, showers, laundry facilities and yes even caseworkers during the better part of the day, is another day shelter necessary? Why not provide funding for The Salvation Army to expand their programs to better provide these services. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.