Alfred Moses

Mr. Speaker, from the family violence report card that I most recently went through, I think there’s about seven victim service coordinators. I could be wrong, though. But I know the community of Inuvik, we do have an issue in terms of keeping that position staffed because it’s only a half-time position and the responsibilities, the work and the effort that these victim service coordinators go through to get victims to the courts to jail or even the hospital or counselling, it goes above and beyond their scope of work and practice, and sometimes beyond the work hours that they’re actually...

Like I said, there is a lot of waiting time for counselling, so even if the victim coordinators can get our victims to counselling, they still have to wait to go and see them, and even treatment.

They also provide information on the criminal justice system, the court processes and notifications on the status of their cases. They also help victims fill out court-related documents and, as I said earlier, victim impact statements.

Today I want to recognize all our victim services coordinators in the Northwest Territories and the great work that they do.

I will be asking questions later to the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are a lot of good arguments for and against the amendment before us. There are a lot of options out there. We put this and we do have a lot of vacant positions within the GNWT. We see it during business plans. We most recently got on a topic during one of our last sessions, but we also developed this Regional Recruitment Program where we can actually help individuals succeed and go up into a higher level within their departments. I don’t see that, but whether or not that’s being used or utilized are questions that I had on this earlier in the year. We are supposed...

I’m not too familiar with the Staff Retention Policy, but if there are provisions in there that respect that, but it’s also stated in this clause that it’s still under the opinion of the Minister here. Should those type of positions happen where the Minister does direct appoint an employee that’s identified for layoff into a position that wasn’t put up for competition but we did have qualified individuals in that department, is there an appeals process for the affected employees in the department where the job wasn’t put up for competition? Is there an appeals process on their behalf, the...

I guess we can look back at statistics and see what kind of direct appointments might have been done in that sense. It is a concern because we do put a lot of power into the Minister’s hands in terms of his opinion on who might be able to take another job.

I guess, moving further down in the clause, it does say, “without competition to any position in the public service…” As I stated in my general comments, we have over 5,000 jobs in the GNWT. We also learned over this past summer’s session that some of these positions are left vacant on purpose.

How does the Minister have the authority to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Mr. Dolynny summarized it pretty good about the…summarized it very good, actually, in terms of what some committee members expressed as concerns in some areas of the clauses that are being brought before us today. In some cases they are just small little changes to the wording, but what I see out of those small little changes are some possible big consequences not only for the department but for our public service sector and people who have been working with the government for X number of years. You can actually be overlooked with some of these possible power...

I know there is also the issue of the mental health status of individuals who end up being part of the statistics in terms of suicide and, as I said, 43 percent in the Beaufort-Delta.

I’d like to ask the Minister, what is he doing to address some of the waiting times for counselling needs as well as this assist training? How do people in the Beaufort-Delta or any of the small communities know how to get a hold of this mental health toll-free line as well as being able to access some of these counselling services at a sooner time rather than having to wait? I think it’s a two-month waiting list...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier in the week, on Monday, I made a statement on the NWT Coroner Service Annual Report, and in the report it talked a little bit about some of the pressing statistics that came up and, actually, the number of suicides that we had in the Northwest Territories last year. Seventy percent of them were related to alcohol and drug use. Even a bigger statistic over the last five years, 43 percent of the suicides happened in the Beaufort-Delta region, which is a very high number.

I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, what is his department doing to...

In terms of providing services to our victim service coordinators, what type of training is available for them to deal with some of these very highly stressful situations that they find themselves? Not only training for them, but what about counselling services for victim service coordinators that, on a daily basis in some cases, see the harshness of our residents of the Northwest Territories who are going through some type of family violence, or after a specific tragedy, what kind of counselling services and training is provided to these victim service coordinators? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier I talked about what kind of support we have for our victim service coordinators in the Northwest Territories. As I said earlier, I stated that 1,942 cases go to victim service coordinators throughout the NWT, and those are the only ones that need services. There might even be more victims out there that don’t speak up, don’t stand up.

I would like to ask the Minister of Justice, how many victim service coordinators do we currently have in the Northwest Territories address all these cases? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.