Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, I was aware of the concern. It was addressed to the House earlier. I met with the chief judge to discuss a number of issues. This was one of the issues that we discussed. The chief judge assured me that this change would not impact on the delivery of justice and that the court circuit would be adequate. I know that it is an issue that is watched regularly. I have recently, within the last few weeks, been in receipt of e-mails discussing the numbers of cases in different communities. In fact, the suggestion is that this has not caused a problem...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t know. I will have to take the question as notice.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the Member that the two incidents about which she speaks are indeed tragedies and we’d like to make sure that I extend the government’s and I think all Members of this House condolences to the families of those who were involved. Particularly, both incidents were quite disturbing. In terms of notification, the RCMP are notified when an offender is released on parole. So they would have been aware in this instance of the release of the offender on parole, and the RCMP has the jurisdiction to determine whether or not a public...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if we’re invited by Corrections Canada to participate formally we would be happy to do that. I believe that we have had one member of our staff from Justice who has been approached about serving on the committee. So whether it’s formal or informal I know that we will have some way of knowing what the outcome of the investigation is. I can assure the Member that our policies and procedures and the safety of GNWT staff is something that is of paramount concern, and an incident like this would, of course, cause us to review our policies and procedures.

I should...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it depends a lot on the parolee. Because of an Exchange of Services Agreement with Justice Canada, in most communities outside of Yellowknife we provide supervision services. So there may be, at any given time, a number of federal parolees who are being supervised by NWT parole officers. In those circumstances, we will have worked closely with national parole to know who they are, what their terms of release are and work with them closely on the supervision. In those instances in Yellowknife where the parolee is under the supervision of a Corrections...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm sure that the Member knows that I feel it's very important that we have aboriginal language instructors in our schools and that we support the development of them. In fact, the college has an aboriginal language and culture instructor program as part of its offerings. This government spends over $1.6 million a year on the teacher education program. The reason we do it in the Northwest Territories rather than seeing all our teachers go down south, is we want to encourage people who have language skills to learn in the North so that they can be in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association as they celebrate their 50th anniversary in service to teachers in the Northwest Territories. During their tenure they have provided strong and effective representation for their membership, and through their work, services to the students of the Northwest Territories.

The association was first formed in Fort Smith during a teachers’ conference in 1953. At the time, there were 63 teachers in the Territories. The association was responsible for providing services to teachers spread out across a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the only one I can answer for sure is that I will endeavour to have the answer to Ms. Lee’s written question within a week, and I will copy all Members on it so that they have access to it. It will contain the sort of information the Member asked for specifically, subsequent to that, which I don’t have at my fingertips.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have every confidence that the training and supervision is adequate at the centre. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, I am not planning any public process. There have been enough reviews of the income support program over the course of the last nine years and I don’t think we need to do that again. I hear from advocates quite regularly. I have committed that I will work with the standing committee. The Member is on that committee, so he knows we have had an initial briefing and there is another briefing planned for later this month, at which we will see if we can move things along. As is the process here, if any changes are to be made to a program which will impact it fiscally...