Glen Abernethy

That is exactly what the position is about. It is not about a street on-the-ground enforcement officer. It is about the types of things Mr. Bromley is talking about.

That change doesn’t take effect until July 1st. We’re sure it will come with some workload, but it’s minimal. The board is an independent board that is responsible for their own operations and administration. We appoint the board and we provide some general administrative direction as far as keeping things affordable, but we don’t interfere with their rulings or their decisions.

I’ll direct the staff at the department to talk to the rental officer to see if he has any suggestions. Thank you.

We wouldn’t want to discriminate anybody because they didn’t have a language, but it is certainly an asset if they have it. If they do have it, it’s something that we can provide bilingual bonuses for. If we can find people who can do the work and have the capacity that speak the language, obviously that’s a real asset.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just sort of building upon the last response, as part of their planning with these community policing strategies they do set targets in cooperation with the communities, targets that are measurable and that they will try to attain. They do that with the communities. The Member is right. I mean, we want to see more RCMP in as much as possible, but it may be not necessarily more days. It might be more appropriate days or better timing or working with the communities on which times they feel that they truly need coverage as opposed to more. It may be more. That was the...

The Member is right; there have been some other courses as part of that. There is an eight-week course that’s been delivered three times for men who use violence through the DVTO court. If the Member wishes, I’m happy to share the information with him on a bit of an analysis of the programs, how many we have run, what kind of results, what kind of turnout we had, and I will share that with committee as well.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll try to be a little quicker on this one. I’ve already answered this question last week when we talked about other changes that the Members were looking for in the Residential Tenancies Act.

Six recommendations were put forward by the rental officer. We’ve committed to doing an analysis of those recommendations as well as the recommendations to find a hammer, if you will. We will review those. We are going to bring those back to committee in the fall, an opportunity to have a discussion and set some direction on how we want to move forward.

The Member is right; one...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have a full-time lawyer, a poverty lawyer, what is referred to as a poverty lawyer within our facility. This isn’t one of our legal aid lawyers. This was a different position. They are doing a significant amount of work and doing a lot of important work for residents all over the Northwest Territories. Some pretty basic things to some more complicated things. Every ounce of feedback that we get back from this position that this person is in, is that they are adding significant value to people who can’t afford these types of services.

It does give us more of a planning cooperation relationship with the RCMP. One of the things that we’ve been doing is the RCMP has been going in to actually set up individualized policing plans for every community, and we’ve been working with the individual communities. For instance, when we went to Tsiigehtchic and Colville, we actually sat down with the leadership, the commanding officer and I, and then the commanding officer continued after I left. We had conversations about exactly how we can provide, or how they can provide coverage that meets their needs. Even after having some of those...

Madam Chair, the Member is correct. I am wrong. The protection of family violence falls under this section. This is where the money is housed.

With respect to those 19 recommendations, I actually had an opportunity to meet with the coalition last week. We had an opportunity to sit down and look at the 19 recommendations. Without minimizing the importance of the 19 recommendations, they indicated they are all important. They have indicated to me and others that they want a priority put on three, particularly a social media campaign, a program for men who use violence, and community outreach. I...