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Lighthouse won’t be shut down: Cox

Battlefords MLA Herb Cox has pledged the province is interested in seeing The Lighthouse Serving the Battlefords keep going. “We’re going to see that The Lighthouse stays open.
lighthouse pic

Battlefords MLA Herb Cox has pledged the province is interested in seeing The Lighthouse Serving the Battlefords keep going.

“We’re going to see that The Lighthouse stays open. That’s the bottom line,” said Cox, who spoke extensively about The Lighthouse Serving the Battlefords in an interview with the News-Optimist Wednesday afternoon.

The Lighthouse had been suffering a financial shortfall since last December, when Social Services had informed the shelter a number of its clients would no longer be funded. Social Services funds Lighthouse clients on a per diem basis.

That situation created a major shortfall at The Lighthouse. Battlefords Agency Tribal Chiefs came in with interim funding to keep The Lighthouse open through the end of March. However, the shelter is still in need of some sort of longer-term funding solution.

In speaking to the News-Optimist, Cox shed some light about what has gone on with the funding situation. 

The Saskatchewan Party incumbent expressed support for the work The Lighthouse has been doing.

“The Lighthouse is doing a great job, make no mistake about it.”

But Cox denied reports that have been circulating in the media, as well as from the opposition, about funding cuts by the province.

“We have not cut any funding to The Lighthouse. That has not been the issue,” said Cox.

“In fact we’ve actually increased funding for homeless shelters for individuals by 21 per cent and by families for over 300 per cent, so we have increased the funding. We have now agreed, Social Services has agreed, that they’re going to fund anybody that comes in for the first night, and the next day they’ll do the paperwork and everybody gets the first night paid for.

“And that’s the problem that we’ve come into. The Lighthouse has been taking whoever’s come in, and that’s a good thing. We don’t want anybody sleeping on the street in the wintertime in this country, so I applaud them for that. But what has happened is some of those people may, for example, perhaps may have already been on social assistance, had a residence elsewhere, so that’s kind of double-dipping. We don’t want to pay for double. Or they’re from out of town or from a First Nation that were under federal responsibility, and the federal didn’t come through with the money. So when they did the paperwork, they didn’t qualify. So that’s what happened, so that’s led to the funding shortfall for The Lighthouse.

“So we’ve corrected some of that and some of that we are going to go back retroactive actually to help them out. So we’re going to see that The Lighthouse stays open. That’s the bottom line.”

He adds it’s going to be “a joint thing” with the city and commends the fundraising that went on recently.