Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, we are one year into this. One thing we’ve learned is it’s expensive, and it will continue to be expensive. We pay 70 percent of all costs associated with the RCMP, and as a result of the contract, we’re also paying for the infrastructure as well. The costs have gone up.

The benefits of the contract are, obviously, the different types of relationships that we have with the RCMP. We’re still in our first year there, so there are still some growing pains trying to figure out what exactly that means, but we are in a different position as far as providing some...

As I indicated, we have pulled off a director position to actually do some analysis and start working with corrections to identify means by which we can help the people be more aware of workplace injury, how people can be more aware of ways to avoid workplace injury. The WSCC has a number of courses and staff within the facilities, and the government as a whole have been taking advantage of these courses. We’ve done some worksite assessments on the sites themselves to see if there’s anything about the sites themselves that are causing or leading more people to be more prone to injury, and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The community justice committees are an incredibly valuable resource that’s available in the communities. We provide funding support to the communities. It is limited but the committees have been very creative with what they are able to accomplish with those dollars.

In addition to dollars to support the committee, they can apply for funding to do special activities like on-the-land programs or whatnot. Many, many communities take advantage of that. We don’t tell communities what to do. These community justice committees come up with ideas based on what they know about...

We’re doing the work; we will come to committee. With committee, we will talk about how to move forward. We will get something done in the Government of the Northwest Territories.

This reduction is across Canada. It’s affecting all jurisdictions. For the specific impact on our programming and what we’re doing here in the Government of the Northwest Territories, I’ll go to Ms. Schofield.

It’s been done with the committee internally. It’s several different departments led by the Department of Justice. We have had an opportunity to look at models in different jurisdictions, learn about those models, get as much information as we can, look at what capacity may exist in the Northwest Territories, where we might have some complications, where we will need to do additional work to make this a reality in-house.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On my right I have Sylvia Haener, deputy minister of the Department of Justice; and Kim Schofield, who is the director of finance with the Department of Justice.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Noted, and we look forward to working with the Member, with committee, with communities and with the RCMP to find solutions to these issues as we move forward.

Today I am presenting the main estimates for the Department of Justice for fiscal year 2013-2014.

The department’s main estimates propose an operations expenditure budget of $116.8 million. This represents an increase of 2.7 percent over the 2012-13 Main Estimates. There is just over two million additional dollars to ensure core programs and services have sufficient resources to operate, with the majority of these funds targeted at policing and collective bargaining increases. These main estimates also propose $837,000 to fund initiatives that will enhance and expand service delivery to the...

Madam Chair, the Aboriginal community constable like the one we have in Hay River, they are still RCMP members with a particular focus. We would have the same difficulty putting an Aboriginal community constable in that community without backup. There are requirements to have legal backup in case of a complicated situation or when dangerous situations arise.

We are open to creative solutions for the community. I think the meeting that is going to happen on April 9th can be productive. We and the RCMP are very interested in working with the community to find some real solutions. We as a...