BONNYVILLE – The number of family violence instances is up in the Bonnyville and Cold Lake area.
Both the Bonnyville Victim Services Unit (VSU) and the Cold Lake VSU saw domestic violence files jump in 2020 when compared to 2019.
According to Bonnyville VSU program manager Debbie Winstone, cases jumped by 30 to 289 last year.
“That’s a lot of files,” she stressed.
Cold Lake saw an even bigger jump with 541 cases in 2020, up from 44 files the year prior.
David Zimmerman, program manager for Cold Lake VSU told Cold Lake council during a Feb. 23 meeting that a number of calls regarding family violence also fell under the Mental Health Act.
“A lot of the mental health issues we were dealing with were within the family unit,” he noted.
Despite the challenges caused by COVID-19, the Bonnyville VSU responded to 100 more calls in 2020 than the previous year for a total of 824 files.
There were six homicides within the area that Bonnyville VSU responds to, 31 sexual assaults, four robberies, four online incidents, 99 thefts or frauds, 39 break and enters, 60 sudden deaths, 17 fires, 28 cases under the Mental Health Act, 43 traffic-related incidents, and more.
A major change for the Bonnyville VSU in 2020 was the on-call for victim advocates was put on hold and still is to this day. Instead of being called out to a scene when the police need their assistance, everything is dealt with over the phone.
“Going into this, nobody thought we would be sitting where we are today. We’re not going out on calls so if there’s an incident where the RCMP needs us, they call the on-call phone and we deal with it over the phone. In-person visits aren’t happening, a majority of our files are looked at over the phone,” Winstone detailed.
She added, “It’s hard because... I’ve had some people say ‘can’t we just meet?’ and I’ve said ‘no, we can’t. We can do Facetime or something like that electronically.’ A lot of people don’t like that and it’s still not personal. Yeah, you can see the person but it’s not like having that person sitting there with you.”
The pandemic also impacted community involvement. Like many other groups, a number of the Bonnyville VSU events and fundraising endeavours weren’t allowed to go ahead due to the provincial mandates, but the community still came together with donations to help provide direct client services.
“It’s for things like sending someone to the shelter if they don’t have a means of going, that’s where the direct client services come in. It’s arranging for transportation to the shelter, maybe putting them up in the hotel room if there’s no room at the shelter, those kinds of things,” Winstone detailed. “That’s an important part and those things aren’t covered by our operational grant.”
The Cold Lake VSU was also impacted in a similar way, but was still kept busy with the 1,037 files that came in.
“We seek to ensure that our clients work toward a state of wellbeing after experiencing a crime,” Zimmerman said. “We don’t want them to be a victim for a long time. We want them to get help, go through court proceedings, and get stronger.”
Along with domestic violence cases seeing an increase in 2020, Zimmerman noted sudden deaths were "the highest we ever had in one year’" at 53, a jump of 25 cases when compared to 2019.
“We were busy this past summer,” he continued. “We had a number of homicides and then we had a lot of sudden deaths. A lot of unfortunate accidents that happened in our community.”
The Cold Lake VSU had 87 files for assaults within the city and surrounding area, 58 robberies, 57 files for theft or fraud, 46 threats or harassment, 28 attempted or homicide related files, mischief and vandalism was sitting at 18, while mental health came in at seven, among others.
One blow also experienced was a cut to provincial funding, which Zimmerman said took a significant hit.
“The Alberta government cut our funding substantially, so our future is still up in the air. There will always be victim services, but I don’t know what it's going to look like. They’re looking at different models right now... I just want them to figure out what our future is because I want to continue to get to the business to help victims of crime.”
According to Winstone, the Bonnyville unit is coming up to their final year of a three-term grant and the organization is expecting cuts in 2021 to their provincial grant.
