Cara Loverock
Northern News Services
Published Monday, September 8, 2008
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The GNWT should develop comprehensive safety standards for all wilderness camps in the territory, deputy chief coroner Cathy Menard recommended in a recent report.
The report comes roughly a year after two Yellowknife teens died after they were left at a healing camp near Behchoko.
Michael Luzny-Ouellette, 18, and Randy Leisk Jr., 15, perished on Great Slave Lake July 5, 2007. Both had been staying at Sacred Fire Healing Camp - a place for troubled youth run by Bertha Blondin and her son Grant - when they died.
The camp was operated by the Nats'eju' Dahk'e Association and the property where it was located was owned by the North Slave Metis Alliance.
Luzny-Ouellette was working at the camp while Leisk was there of his own accord. The camp was not in operation at the time. The boys' deaths were declared accidental by the deputy chief coroner.
The NWT coroner's office has ruled there is no need for an inquest.
Bronwyn Watters, deputy minister of Justice, said the drownings of the two youths "raised the priority" for government departments to establish safety standards for camps.
"This was something that was going to be done at some stage but that really made it a high priority," she said.
The government is hoping to have new safety standards in place by next year, but is currently still assessing how new regulations or standards will be put into effect, according to Watters.
"What constitutes a wilderness camp? What can you regulate and what is really up to the private individual? We have to work through those things," she said. "But the first step would be to have these standards in place for anything the government was involved in any way."
The wilderness camps run by the Department of Justice, like the Alcantara wilderness camp located near Fort Smith, already have stricter standards in place because they cater to inmates, said a department spokesperson.
The new safety guidelines will be geared towards camps for individuals who are not offenders.
An employee at the Tl'oondih Healing Camp in Fort McPherson, who did not want to be named, said she had not heard of the new standards currently in the works.
http://http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/stories/papers/sep8_08bc.html