David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have opening comments.

I don’t have the exact number of trappers in the Sahtu that we are tracking, but that’s certainly a number I could get for the Member. What I do know, and I know the Member mentioned it himself, is the amount of dollars that are flowing directly back to trappers across the Northwest Territories, and this is money that gets right back into the local economy and, in most cases, into the smaller communities. Last year that was $2.8 million directly back to trappers across the Territories, so it’s a significant amount of money that gets back into the economy.

Mr. Chairman, that increase was for the legal division in support of devolution. Thank you.

I appreciate the Member’s concern and his questions. I guess the main thing is providing a service to communities across the Northwest Territories. If you look at a community like Tsiigehtchic, the RCMP have been working closely with the community leadership in Tsiigehtchic. We have plans now to overnight officers in the community, I believe it’s eight days out of the month.

I mentioned in response to some of Mr. Menicoche’s opening comments that that might be a model we want to look at in Wrigley, for example, or perhaps in Gameti. Those are discussions I made a commitment to earlier, to going...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we can get that level of the detail for the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We can get that information for the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, we haven’t even got to April 1st yet, so my caution to the Member is just let us get to April 1st. We’re trying to put the key pieces in place so that we have the manpower at the Department of Justice to handle the increased workload.

The Member asked for I believe it was the job descriptions or what these positions will be doing. They’re lawyers. One of them will be dedicated to the area of prosecution, one of those five lawyers. We currently have two of our legal team embedded in the federal Department of Justice, learning how that process plays itself out, so that they can come...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The integrated case management isn’t on this page, it’s on community justice. We do have staff at community justice working on that. It’s separate from the wellness court in that the wellness court is going to be a service that’s provided through court services and that’s the separation. But the two are certainly linked, as the deputy minister had outlined for the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we could get the Member and the committee an update on that. Thank you.

Thank you. It’s in all of our best interests to ensure that opportunities for employment are there on an annual basis and all throughout the year. I know some of the opportunity currently underway in the Sahtu is during the winter months. We need to ensure that there are opportunities for people year round, and if there is a way that we can put a bridge between the two to allow people to pursue their traditional economy and also be employed in the oil and gas sector in the Sahtu, that’s something that we should be looking at. As far as a report goes on the money, there would be some...