Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My point is that if there were infractions of the Criminal Code and there was a serious rise in the statistics related to crimes committed, this government would be obligated to respond to that. If that required more financial resources, they would also be obligated to find those resources to deal with that. You wouldn’t just turn a blind eye to the crime and say, oh, well, we don’t have the money to deal with that.

The point I’m trying to get to, Mr. Chairman, is that when the government wants to do something or wants to find money for something or needs to find money...

Mr. Chair, I hope people can see this for what it is. Did the Minister envision, when this government spent $50 million on a new North Slave Correctional Centre, that you would be sucking the services out of the communities and bringing the inmates from all corners of the Northwest Territories in order to justify this $50 million expenditure? We talk about an expenditure of $400,000. Isn’t it ironic that we had to spend $50 million to save $400,000 here and $1 million there? I hope people can see the irony in this picture. Did the Minister or his department envision having to relocate and...

Agreed. Activity summary, services to the public, infrastructure investment summary, total net book value and work in progress, $814,000.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we’ve been talking a lot on this side of the House today about discrimination. I’d like to talk about the way this government treats casual and term employees. In an earlier set of questions, the Deputy Premier indicated that we’re not even including the casual employees who are going to be losing their jobs as a result of the actions taken in Hay River. I’d like to ask Mr. Roland, the Minister, what’s the purpose of hiring people on a casual and term basis in this government? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, let’s just say that the department’s projections are incorrect with respect to additional uptake and demand for justice services as a result of social impacts of development. Let’s just say that there’s a lot more people in the Northwest Territories and there’s a lot more crime associated with those people being here, and we, as a government, have to respond to that crime. We can’t just say oh, well, it’s not in our budget, therefore, we’re not going to deal with it. What would happen, Mr. Chairman, if the government needed money, I don’t know what they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is hard not to pick up on whatever the last person was talking about. I have been trying to kind of work my way methodically through my issues, and I have a lot of issues. But it is hard not to pick up where another Member has left off. For example, Mr. Braden has raised some very good points. When the Minister says that the unused capacity at North Slave could not, in the foreseeable future, actually be utilized, and yet the six beds in remand in Hay River are historically over the past year, if there are six beds. I think it is actually 5.9, but far be it for...

Agreed. Thank you. Page 6-9, activity summary, community justice and corrections, infrastructure investment summary, total net book value and work in progress, $55.079 million.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker it is just a little more than unfortunate, I must say, given the already relatively low number of public service jobs in Hay River; I believe there are only 281, excluding the health board positions. If you look at it on a percentage, in fact, the government was looking at almost 20 percent of the government jobs in Hay River in one fell swoop, in one year.

To keep my supplementary question brief, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Finance Minister, when he laid out the reductions that were going to be attempted to be achieved over the next three years...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, isn’t it true that within the public service in any department at any given time on any given day, at least 10 to 15 percent of the positions are vacant? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was also some reference with respect to integrating casual employees into the main workforce of the SMCC. Could the Minister elaborate on that and tell me what he could possibly mean by that? If they're looking at eliminating the equivalent of nine casual positions plus 5.5 indeterminate positions, what does that mean when the report says they will work at integrating casual employees into the mainstream workforce at the SMCC? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.