Brendan Bell

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are monitoring the costs both internal and our departmental savings. As the Member knows, we took $400,000 out of the budget, but we are looking at what our actual costs to deliver programs and services in that area will be and see what the true savings are. The other aspect that we are monitoring is the cost of the RCMP. Of course, their budget did not go up but, anecdotally, we wanted to know from them whether or not this was an additional workload, whether it was taking them away from other duties. So by year end I will have an analysis of that done. I would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a hypothetical question at this point. I am prepared to consider that information when I get it. I would also propose that I would like to see the facility, have a tour of the facility, get a better sense of how the remand services were delivered and take a look at options. I know we have improved surveillance in the facility now and installed some new cameras. I think that goes a long way toward dealing with some of the safety concerns that we had and were raised by the chief coroner. There are a number of things that I can look at, but I still want to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have to sit down with Indian and Northern Development and talk about outcomes from this conference, but I know that the Minister of Health also had some follow-up work that he had initiated coming from other conferences, so this will feed into that. We will take that input and that consultation and ensure that we discuss that across departments and with the federal government, which is obviously important, as they sit down with the $500 million fund to talk about priorities. So we will collate that information. We will make sure there is a discussion of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The work that's underway is looking at the frequency of patrols, it's talking with the communities about how we have longer stays in those communities, how we might implement community policing crime prevention initiatives, and one of the things we have to do is assess our assets on the ground. In Sachs, we have to ensure that those structures are still up to code, or could be brought up to code quickly. But, Mr. Speaker, it is the federal government that provides the capital dollars. We take care of 70 percent of the O and M, but we would have to get any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to also recognize the entire UNW executive, but specifically my constituent Gayla Wick who is first vice-president of the UNW, and also Sheila Laity who is regional vice-president for the North Great Slave region of the UNW and, interestingly enough, also enrolled in the Nurse Practitioner Program at Aurora College. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This consultation is part of a broader consultation we’ve been conducting up and down the valley on socio-economic impacts, understanding concerns of people in the community and certainly trying to better understand their aspirations in terms of what they see this pipeline and project more broadly meaning for them. I think it was a very good conference. I want to applaud the Member for setting out to organize this almost by himself initially. He managed to get funding from DIAND, funding from our government. We were happy to participate, but he took the step, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; we established a joint working group between my officials -- Department of Justice -- and the RCMP to look into various options that would increase police presence in our smaller communities. There are 13 communities in the NWT without RCMP detachments and it's a concern for us. So we started to study the problem and we've used the policing strategic consultations with communities to do this work, regional level consultations. They will be coming forward with some recommendations. We have started to address some issues on a community-by...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think Members know by policy decision of this government, we engaged with the Gwich’in to sit down and talk about an MOU that would see the GTC represent companies in the Gwich’in settlement region and there would be targets for procurement in that region. At the same time, we made the commitment some years ago in the past government to do likewise in the Sahtu region. We have now sat down to start these discussions with SSI, who will be the umbrella group representing the MOU. We have provided them with a contribution to sit down and do some policy development work...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I understand, there is nothing preventing a Territorial Court judge from conducting this right now. RCMP officers have been used in the past. We could use the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories. There are provisions for this in the Act, currently. It is just a matter of having the federal Minister designate these people as such. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am aware of the concern. The Member is right that, under the federal Constitution Act, it is the federal responsibility for these issues. Nonetheless, we are concerned. I did hear the story on CBC and have inquired into the reasons behind what seemed to have happened here. I get the sense from the federal government that setting it up one time a year on July 1st allowed it to be more special. They thought that this was an approach that they wanted to continue with. I have had discussions with our Minister responsible for immigration, Minister Dent, and he has...