It was a packed house Wednesday afternoon for the first open house at the Saskatoon Tribal Council Emergency Wellness Centre at its new location on Fairmont Drive.  It was an opportunity for the STC to engage with the community regarding their goals and plans, as well as hear any concerns.

The majority of those who spoke up during the more than two hours of discussion expressed support for the Centre although there was concern about problems that are expected to result from having it in the neighbourhood.

One woman in the audience sparked umbrage when she said, “Why do you not use funding to build communities for your people?” This was on the heels of Chief Arcand sharing statistics around the homeless count in the city where 82 per cent of the 550 counted self-declared as Indigenous.  Arcand said it’s not “you people” it’s all of us as a community.

Tribal Chief Mark Arcand explained for every five individuals staying at the facility there is one staff member on shift and once they reach their maximum capacity of 100 people there will be 15 Peacekeepers to provide security, and five support staff on each shift.  Other staffing includes receptionist, custodians, cooks, supervisors, a scheduler and a manager.

There is a community paramedic on site from noon until 10:30 every night and one of the paramedics who has been working at the temporary site downtown on 1st Avenue says they have had 135 contacts in just over a month offering everything from wound dressing to pregnancy tests and dealing with overdoses.  They say that at least 40 to 50 people have been deferred from going to the hospital or Emergency because of having a paramedic on site.

And Tribal Chief Arcand’s plans continue to grow.  He wants to have four different pods at the current site each dedicated either by gender or needs.  He wants to get Social Services on site in the building, he wants to build a commercial kitchen so the people who need their services can get their food safe certificate and in turn feed those utilizing the Centre, and he wants to build an addition for more programming.

Since the Emergency Wellness Centre opened on December 15, 2021, there have been 1,413 people through the doors.