Brendan Bell

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 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. 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 we could probably go even a step further and have some discussion with other provincial and territorial jurisdictions, because I have looked into the numbers. Apparently, there are only 19 citizenship judges appointed in Canada representing just five of the 13 jurisdictions. That leaves Atlantic Canada, Saskatchewan and the North without citizenship judges. Obviously we need another approach. I think this is something that our Minister of Immigration will take up with the newly appointed federal Minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have, as a department, looked at other jurisdictions that might be able to offer some advice and some support in this area. What we found is that really there aren’t other jurisdictions doing this type of wilderness programming on the land. We have been pioneers in this area. I think the most effective approach for us here is to work with the elders in the region. That is, in fact, why we have undertaken this program. We heard from elders in the region that they were very supportive of on-the-land programming, and yet, when we tried to roll out programs, there...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, indeed. We are, at the Member’s suggestion, working with an elder from Fort Good Hope, Charlie Tobac. We are having preliminary discussions with him. I have had staff go up to visit with Mr. Tobac at his home to discuss the model. As I have said, we are trying to be as flexible as possible and, if there have been unnecessary complications in the past, reduce those hurdles. I think that has been part of the problem. Typically, we would issue an RFP and see very little interest. We were expecting elders to provide programming and counselling on the land, be...