Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just kind of staying on the same theme here with the coroner’s office, the Minister might know that this is something that has been of interest to me with the recommendations and reading of these reports and some of the alarming statistics that we do see with that.

I know in other jurisdictions they have these death review committees that offer recommendations to the government, and that poses another option of bringing accountability to government and making sure these recommendations get acted on.

Going through the Department of Justice website, looking if we had...

I move that this committee recommends that a new territory-wide target of 45 days be established for average wait times for legal aid services; and further, to support this target, in the 2014-15 fiscal year an additional $200,000 be allocated to hiring an additional lawyer for the Legal Aid Services Board. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Maybe I can ask the Minister if there’s a protocol for each of our communities that requires assistance, because in some cases if it’s something really serious, you know, you wouldn’t want to put any other residents in the community at risk to intervene, so we’re missing that part of the initial intervening of an issue that might be happening. In that case, that’s some of our more critical times to respond. So, I guess if you could identify which of our communities have the longest response time, or maybe provide response times to Members that have communities that they represent, so they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just one quick question I want to ask. I know we have some Members here that are concerned that we have some communities that don’t have any RCMP staff in those positions and I do understand that we do have a 1-800 emergency line. For some of the communities there might be some concerns with the health and safety of the residents, should something happen, or with domestic violence or something where we’re sending some of our inmates, who might have been in on serious crimes, back into their small communities, that might cause concern for family members or other...

Just for more clarity, I know that when the interns come – I think one – and they are put into working with the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, one of their projects that they take is that they develop a paper or something as such. I was actually speaking to one of them who was in the position and they mentioned that they came across all these papers, so they are definitely there, reports and papers by interns that do have recommendations, so I do enjoy reading reports. I am not sure if I enjoy reading them, but that is part of my job that I do take that initiative to read reports...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just a couple of questions here. The first one is coming out of the Government Operations report where committee had made a recommendation for stiffer penalties for bootleggers and drug dealers, and creating stiffer penalties such as seizure of vehicles and other materials related to any type of cases. I didn’t know whether to ask the question to this department, so I figured under this department would be the appropriate place. I just wanted to ask the Minister if there was any work that was done towards that or if there is any action going to be taken to these...

Mr. Speaker, going back to the report that was tabled in the House, I’m glad that the Minister did mention trying to keep money in the Northwest Territories. In the report it states that there is about $51 million that is not in the NWT contracts that this government goes into that does contracts for, and I know there are some services that can’t be provided here in the Northwest Territories to do some of these contracts; that goes down to training.

How is the Minister going to try to bring those numbers down, that $51 million that we go out of jurisdiction with contracts and keep that money...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Health and Social Services tabled a document a few days ago entitled, “Health and Social Services Service System Annual Report, 2012-2013.” The title was “Measuring Success and Focusing on Results.” I believe in that. I encourage that and I promote that. I appreciate the information. There are a lot of good stats and results that were in there; however, if I can refer people that might look at the report to priority two, the prevalence of smoking in 15-year-olds and older.

In 2002 our smoking rates in the NWT were 46 percent, which is about half the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The committee recommends this amount of money specifically for child and family resource programs and services to be rolled out in at least six small communities, building on the success of the pilots in Tulita and Ndilo. Members favour these programs and services because it will provide meaningful support to at-risk families. We also strongly believe that the Department of Health should work with the Department of ECE.

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the Minister did table a good report earlier this week and I just want to refer to some statistics that were brought out...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have a few issues within the community programs here, but rather than get into back and forth questioning, I think what I’ll do is begin with reading in a motion regarding the child and family resources programs and services, please.