Glen Abernethy

I could do that but it would be different for every community. In some communities that may be true. Other communities it may not be true. Depends what we negotiate in cooperation with the communities and the RCMP. It’s hard to say.

I’m just going to make a couple of comments for Mr. Bromley and then I’ll just go to Kim for some of the specifics.

The three key messages and priorities from the coalition building upon the 19 are social media campaign – I’m happy to sit down with the Member and share the document that I had – the program for men who use violence, which is a 24-week program; and community outreach. Quite frankly, I asked them for some additional information on what they mean by a social media campaign and what they would like to envision seeing. I haven’t got that back from them yet. I’m happy to have a...

There’s not much point. It’s already been done. The numbers are consistent. It takes into consideration the addition of all Class A and Class B buildings since the report was done. They’re built in there. We’re confident. The contract has been awarded. The building is being built as we speak. The ground will break in September. We’re making next steps. At the end of the day this building is going to save the people of the Northwest Territories significant money, money that we can once again roll into the program. Given the history of buildings in Yellowknife it’s not going to have a...

We were able to fill our three positions and we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to fill our fourth one, should it be passed by way of supp. We have been able to fill our positions. One of our biggest challenges here in the Northwest Territories is a shortage of the local Bar. There’s not enough lawyers here that are private, independent lawyers. Not government lawyers. We’ve filled ours. There is definitely a shortage of local Bar.

As a result of this new contract that we have with the RCMP, it does change the relationship a little bit between us and them. One of the good items of that is the fact that there is more of a reporting relationship, more of a data relationship where they have to provide us with some of this type of information that Mr. Dolynny is talking about.

What I will do is I will commit to working with the department and the RCMP to figure out a way to get that information into our process, so that it’s at least there as an information so that people can see it. I can’t tell you what it’s going to look...

Madam Chair, that was in the community justice section. This is more legal services, coroner services, childrens lawyer, public trustee, those types of things. The services he is talking about are in the previous section.

I’m going to be talking square metres because that’s the information I have in front of me. The absorption rate in Yellowknife has been about 2,000 square metres annually. If you factor in the new buildings that have come in over time, such as the Greenstone and the new office building, everybody has said we’re going to have a big problem in Yellowknife with too much space. Almost immediately, within a year, year and a half, two years, both those buildings have been completely filled.

The analysis that was done shows that this is the trend in Yellowknife and that we can handle more office space...

The Member is right; we need to do more work, we need to do better work, we need to make sure that the service is there and I will absolutely work with my colleague, Minister Lafferty, on this language issue to see if we can find a solution in the best interest of the people of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member is absolutely correct. This is probably the area where the department saw its greatest growth. A number of the items are forced growth: radio replacements, $105,000; RCMP contract renewal, $2.8 million; isolated post and government housing allowance, $328,000; Commissioner’s contracts, $312,000; police reporting operations, $33,000; operational readiness and availability, $245,000; aviation fuel, $72,000; RCMP compensation and benefits, $207,000; and then some strategic initiatives from the RCMP, $137,000 for the family violence coordinator and $110,000 for...

Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the areas that unfortunately sunsetted for us is the Aboriginal Justice Strategy, which is probably where you see the significant amount of this decrease, but we understand that that money is coming back. If it comes back, we will see it added back in.