Prince Albert police have arrested a man involved in a four-vehicle collision after he admitted to being impaired by multiple drugs.

Monday at 7 a.m., officers attended the 300 Block of 16 Street West, where a truck had struck a parked vehicle, which then caused the parked vehicle to hit two other parked vehicles.

The driver was questioned on scene by police, while Parkland Ambulance attended to treat any injuries.

“The suspect admited to emergency personnel that he was impaired by multiple drugs,” the police said in a news release.

The suspect was arrested by police shortly after 8 a.m. and brought back to cells.

A certified Drug Recognition Expert officer conducted sobriety tests to determine the suspect was impaired. According to the news release, “he attempted to obtain a urine sample to further confirm the suspect was impaired by drugs, which the suspect refused.”

The 47-year-old Prince Albert man is facing one charge of impaired operation of a motor vehicle and one charge of refusal to provice samples. He is due in court today.

 

A woman has been taken to hospital in good and stable condition after a brazen assault in broad daylight.

Police were called to the corner of Central Avenue and 10th Street at about 1:30 p.m. for a call about an assault.

Police and paramedics attended to a woman who was sitting on the ground. The woman was clutching her chest area as she was loaded into an ambulance.

A small pool of blood was seen on the sidewalk after the woman was transported to hospital. The fire department attended for scene cleanup.

Parkland Ambulance communications officer Lyle Karasiuk, who tended to the woman on scene, said she was in stable condition. Police described the injuries as non-life threatening.

The incident is under investigation.

Government also announces new crown corporation responsible for managing emergency dispatching, raises 911 fees

For several years, anyone who called 911 outside of Regina and Saskatoon had their emergency calls fielded in a sort of unexpected place – the basement of Prince Albert’s city hall.

About eight staff members were crammed into a space of about 700 square feet, the size of a small one-bedroom apartment. As use of the service, and the requirement for new technology grew, it became harder and harder to accommodate the 911 dispatch centre in the city hall basement.

They won’t have that problem anymore.

On Thursday the Government of Saskatchewan unveiled their new, state-of-the-art 911 dispatch centre, located in the Natural Resources Canada satellite station about 15 minutes northwest of P.A. The new facility has already been in operation for a few months.

The government also announced the formation of a new Crown corporation to oversee 911 services, which were previously managed by the city.

“Today marks a historic occasion for public safety in Saskatchewan,” said Minister of Government Relations Larry Doke.

“This new Crown will help meet the needs of our growing province and the demands of our current technology to ensure we continue providing excellent emergency communication services for all Saskatchewan residents.”

The government also announced that 911 service fees will be increased by 32 cents per month. Fees for mobile users have remained the same since 2010, while landline fees have not seen an increase since 2003. That money goes directly to the 911 services, and not to the General Revenue Fund.

The new Treasury Board Crown is not like the Crowns overseen by the Crown Investments Corporation, which includes SaskTel and SaskPower. Instead, it is being put in place to help coordinate and manage 911 services, replacing the services previously provided by the city.

The city was managing payroll and human resources for the 911 dispatch centre. It was becoming a strain on city staff.

“There is no new funding for this,” Doke said. “Everything remains the same. We’re not losing any staff here. It’s just being absorbed by government.”

The new facility is spacious and provides room to grow. Each desk can be converted into a standing desk, so operators aren’t sitting in one place for 12 hours at a time. The entire facility is also on its own emergency backup power, and has multiple other backup and fire suppression systems in place. According to emergency management commissioner Duane McKay the centre is set up to operate through just about any emergency, while allowing for investment in new technology. The attached server room houses all the computer systems, with a complicated network of kilometres of cable neatly organized and hidden beneath a false floor to avoid tripping hazards.

“(The 911 centre) has been expanding quite a bit over the past five or six years,” McKay said.

“People are communicating differently than when I was younger. All of those demands have increased the need for technology, and with that technology comes people to support it.

“In addition, the number of dispatch agencies and the need to ensure we meet national standards for dispatching and call taking have increased the staffing levels on the operational side as well.”

The centre handles all 911 calls that come in from outside the province’s two largest centres. It also monitors alarms at 15 Wing Moose Jaw, dispatches over 400 fire and rescue services and provides dispatch for several provincial law enforcement agencies, such as conservation officers. But it didn’t start that way.

“It started in 1997 with 10 or 12 municipalities and has expanded,” said Prince Albert city manager Jim Toye.

“Over 60 staff members working 24/7, 365 days a year. They were in the basement, and we also leased them a few offices at city hall, but it still wasn’t enough. We also needed the room at city hall, so we started conversations with the previous minister, Minister (Donna) Harpauer.”

The space vacated by the 911 centre has already been filled.

At the same time the city was hoping to get out of the 911 dispatching business, the federal government was looking for someone to lease out space at their facility outside of town. Technological advances had led to their team at the satellite station using less space. The move made sense for all the parties involved.

“We worked well with them, but it was a big business, and it’s important the people of Saskatchewan get the service they need when they call 911. I think with this move, they’re going to be able to provide that in an efficient way,” Toye said.

“We needed space, and they needed it for the safety of their staff. Now, they have this beautiful facility and we have more room at city hall, so we shake hands and move forward.”

New data shows suicide rate among First Nations teens more than four times higher than non-First Nations people in the same age group

A discussion paper on suicide prevention authored for the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) has revealed shockingly high rates of youth suicide amongst First Nations people in Saskatchewan and a troubling lack of support systems.

The discussion paper was released from the organization’s suicide prevention strategy, announced earlier this month, that is to be completed and rolled out on May 31, 2018. The strategy stems from a motion passed by chiefs in assembly back on May 18. The organization is asking for input and feedback on the discussion paper by November 15.

The discussion paper contains newly-published data on suicide by First Nations and non-First nations people in Saskatchewan, as well as evidence on suicide prevention and success stories from other jurisdictions.

The authors of the discussion paper used data from the provincial coroner, as well as from health regions to illustrate the severity of the northern suicide crisis.

“The province hasn’t taken action on this, and neither has the federal government. It’s time to take it upon ourselves. We want to deal with this issue in a more meaningful way,” — Heather Bear

According to the discussion paper, since 2005, close to 500 First Nations people have died by suicide. A further 1,025 people from other ethnicities, including Métis, died by suicide over the same time period, as did 189 people of unknown ethnicity. Factoring in the possibility of the people of unknown ethnicity may or may not have been First Nations, First Nations people made up between 29 to 40 per cent of suicides in Saskatchewan over the past decade.

Getting those numbers out there is an important part of finding solutions, FSIN vice-chief Heather Bear said.

“The province hasn’t taken action on this, and neither has the federal government. It’s time to take it upon ourselves. We want to deal with this issue in a more meaningful way,” she said.

“Part of that is looking at what the real numbers are.” The numbers surrounding suicides amongst young people, and especially young women, “disturbed” Bear.

For the time period of 2005-2016, the rate of suicides per 100,000 population amongst Frist nations men was 47.4, compared to 14.1 for non-First Nations men. For women, it was 28.2 First Nations deaths by suicide per 100,000 population, as compared to 3.4 for the rest of the population. Suicide rates for First Nations people are 4.3 times higher than the rest of the population.

The disparity grows when looking at people under the age of 30.

The suicide rate for First Nations women aged 10-19 is 26 times higher than non First Nations teen girls, and for women in their 20s, the suicide rate for First Nations women is seven times higher.

The suicide rate for First Nations teen boys is six times higher than the rest of the population, and for men in their 20s, the rate is seven times higher.

Further, 25 per cent of all deaths by suicide of First Nations people were teens, compared to six per cent of the rest of the population. Sixty-two per cent of First Nations suicides were committed by people under the age of 30, compared to 19 per cent of the non-First Nations community.

“It just breaks my heart to think that a young girl as young as nine or ten years old is giving up on life,” Bear said.

The long-term plan is to build capacity for care at the local level. The discussion paper authors found that while people may be seeking treatment, care, especially in the province’s north, is very hard to come by.

Additionally, services don’t always consider historical “intergenerational trauma” young people experience growing up in communities where members are still recovering from treatment in residential schools.

“Existing models of suicide risk and prevention typically focus on proximate (immediate) risk factors,” discussion paper authors wrote.

“They do not adequately explain elevated rates of suicide in some (but by no means all) indigenous communities, as they do not adequately take into account distal (background) risk factors: larger-scale social and community factors such as colonialism, intergenerational trauma and socioeconomic and other inequities.”

“It just breaks my heart to think that a young girl as young as nine or ten years old is giving up on life.” — Heather Bear

Bear said the problem runs deeper, and until issues such as food security and housing are affected, things won’t change.

“I don’t want to pre-empt the outcome of the strategy, but just in my experience — my daughter committed suicide at 19 — when you’re looking at the grieving and those patterns of how it impacts other children and families in terms of the thought of suicide, the thought of giving up, when you’re down, it’s the most hurtful time anyone can imagine,” she said.

“And then, when there’s little or nothing to do, and you’re dealing with poverty, poverty has a huge impact on how people feel. Without access to food, without access to services to get help you need, when you look at multiple families living in homes — my goodness — so many are falling through the gaps. Those conditions have to be fixed for us to even get a head start on it.”

Step one, Bear said, is to document the problem, and consider different solutions.

Now that the discussion paper has been released and distributed to all chiefs, health directors and managers in every First Nation in Saskatchewan, the mental health technical working group is working on completing the strategy. Youth are also taking a leading role in informing the strategy what they see as the issues plaguing their communities.

The working group includes First nations community health directors, along with two technical advisors, Jack hicks, a community health professor at the U of S and First Nations therapist Dr. Kim McKay-McNabb. They will “be preparing an evidence-informed, multifaceted draft strategy.” They will also look at successful suicide prevention models in Quebec, New Zealand and Australia. The final version of their strategy is due next year.

Bear is hopeful it will make a real difference for First Nations people.

“Know your community. Get that documented evidence so you can make wise investments that are really going to affect change,” she said.

“It is my vision down the road that some day, my grandchildren will never have to deal with this issue. You’ll always have some of that behaviour in all cultures, but not to the degree where, I think, it’s a crisis.”