Glen Abernethy

The Member mentioned yet another program that’s available, and that’s Parenting After Separation, which is actually a course that’s available to help individuals who maybe haven’t gone through the mediation. There are a number of these programs available to help maintain family structure when living in separate homes. The children’s lawyer is available to make sure the interests of the child are heard and taken into consideration in all three of these situations. There are limitations when that service can be used as a result of a child apprehension but, where appropriate, they have been able...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated previously, what we’re interested in doing is working with inmates and people in the Northwest Territories who are ready. If an inmate isn’t ready for healing, if they aren’t ready to go through treatment, forcing treatment on them will have no results.

We have great case workers. We have a great case management team who will sit down with our inmates when they come into the facility, identify their needs and will work with them to encourage them to take the program, to take that healing journey, if you will. To force them is not going to work. Thank you...

The position is intended to provide representation for youth and children in custody cases and similar types of situations to that. Make sure their voice is heard.

Diversions can happen at many different levels. We have front-line diversions that are actually being conducted by the RCMP. As I’ve indicated previously, our numbers here in the Territories have dropped significantly since 2003, but in the last year and a half or two years we’ve seen a sharp spike, which I think what everybody wants to see is more front-end work done on that end. We’re also doing diversions with our community justice committees depending on different levels of crime where youth, as an example, are engaging with the community justice committees to find alternatives to...

Thank you. Within our youth facility we actually have some teachers in there that are providing basic education to the inmates that happen to be in those facilities. Within our adult facilities we have adult educators that come in on a regular basis and provide training and education supports to individuals who have had it identified within their individual case plans. We also, within the facilities, have work teams. We have people working in kitchens, we have people doing cleaning, we have people doing other things where they can gain some work experience and get familiar with different types...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The report that the Members are talking about today is actually a report on federal facilities only. It does not address territorial facilities. Remembering that territorial correctional facilities, as opposed to federal jails, are for Northerners who have been sentenced to two years less a day for different levels of crimes. Aboriginal programming is strong in our territorial facilities and on average, to the Member’s question, the population of Aboriginal individuals in our facilities is about 88 percent of the total count.

Madam Chair, a plan is a cooperative plan put in place with the inmate and the case worker within the facility who has had a history with that particular inmate, as well as probation, whether it be regional or local. They develop a plan together to reintegrate the person back into their home community or whichever community they will end up in, based on their individual needs and programming that they need, where programming is available.

The probation officers have a requirement to meet and discuss case plans with their clients on a regular basis. Every one of them would be different, based on...

Thank you. Anecdotally, I’ve heard that there is, and in my previous career that’s been suggested. It was usually suggested that we’d see higher incarceration numbers over the winter months, but we’re not actually finding that to be the case. We are at some of our lowest incarceration rates in our correctional facilities than we’ve been at in years. Over Christmas we were down to 121 adults where our capacity is 248. We’re less than half. Today we’re at 177 adults in our facilities with a capacity of 248. So right now we are at some of the lowest numbers we’ve seen in many, many years. So...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is right. That was federal money, and that federal money is no longer available. But we had dollars that were in there, as well, and we’re continuing our dollars forward so that we can continue to run the program which is quite popular and quite effective.

I listed off a number of programs during question period today, and I think I’ve left my actual list with all those programming by facility at my desk. But I have it printed out with a list of every facility and the different types of cultural programming we have. It’s comprehensive, and I’d be happy to share that with committee, I just can’t quote it to the Member right now.