Brendan Bell

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a dangerous answer for me to give a comprehensive one. I'll try to be brief and concise. I think as Members know by now, there's a CBC contest running on the radio that seeks to interpret an answer I might have given to Mr. Ramsay yesterday. I think they've decided it was the most obtuse and confusing answer they've ever seen, so hopefully I can do a little better here. We are meeting with the RCMP and communities to come up with strategies for policing in small communities. We're doing a number of things. The old Special Constable Program that used to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would agree and it is troubling, obviously, that aboriginal people are overrepresented in our institutions. We have been working well with on-the-land programming. We continue to make efforts in our institutions. Members in committee will be aware that we have some what we believed to be culturally relevant programming at the institution. We made some change and improvements. We now have elders from many regions coming to the institution to work with inmates from those regions to talk about what went wrong, how they can make improvements, how they can...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have that information. What we do is go through our facilities and see who would be eligible. First of all, we have to make sure the person is not a risk to the camp operators or to the general public before they are eligible to go out on the land, because it doesn’t have the same type of security that we have our facilities. Next, Mr. Speaker, they have to want to participate. I am sure that our staff and the facilities are going through measuring the people there based on those two criteria, but I can certainly provide the Member with more information when...

I agree with the Member.

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A promotion. I agree with the Member, Mr. Speaker. I share his concern. It is of highest priority that we are able to establish some detachments in our smallest communities. There are communities that are very remote. It's difficult to provide and ensure safety. We know that there are weather concerns. So, yes, Mr. Speaker, it's a priority. We will continue to make sure the federal government understands that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The challenge with providing officers and having a permanent presence in all our communities is that, as Members know, we need two in each community now. That's the labour standard. We think community constables, or whatever the program will become, makes a lot of sense and will be well used in the Northwest Territories. We'll continue to lobby the federal government in that regard. It's not about, at this point, coming up with more money from this government for officers. The feds pay the tab when it comes to capital. We are looking at capital for Sachs Harbour...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for his support of this program. It has been instrumental in helping us get this up and running in the Sahtu. Yes, there is programming available and we do work with the inmates to makes sure there is a plan upon their release to help them be reintegrated into their communities. We use the community justice groups locally to help us achieve this as well. So there is both programming in the institutions and upon release for the inmates and we think this corrections on-the-land camp model helps us deliver much of that program as well. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a dangerous answer for me to give a comprehensive one. I'll try to be brief and concise. I think as Members know by now, there's a CBC contest running on the radio that seeks to interpret an answer I might have given to Mr. Ramsay yesterday. I think they've decided it was the most obtuse and confusing answer they've ever seen, so hopefully I can do a little better here. We are meeting with the RCMP and communities to come up with strategies for policing in small communities. We're doing a number of things. The old Special Constable Program that used to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have piloted a wilderness camp initiative in the Sahtu. It was very successful the last time around. We are preparing to do it again this year. In the Tlicho region we have also been working with the MLA in the region to talk about a model that would work there. I think we have discovered that exactly the same model can’t be transferred. We have to look at a slightly different approach, but we are talking to the region about that. So we are looking forward to the pilot again being rolled out in the Sahtu and we will have an evaluation after that’s done, but I think...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the Minister on this point.

Mr. Speaker, thank you. They all get visits from RCMP members from the larger communities and the regional centres, but there are 13 communities that currently do not have detachments. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.