Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues.

Who will help our communities be adequately prepared for any and all emergencies when this position is gone? Who will help our residents, following a flood or a forest fire, to access the federal funding they are due when this position is gone?

In closing, our residents, our voters, through their elected local governments are telling us to delay this budget — that it lacks analysis, rationale and that the proper consultation was not done. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At the risk of being repetitive, I want to state again that it has been stated that there hasn’t been a full uptake on these programming funds for Community Justice. And at the risk of being repetitive, I want to state that without a coordinator, it’s quite understandable that the funds haven’t been taken up.

A coordinator will allow communities to have some leadership, to give them some guidelines to follow. And to reiterate what's been said by the two previous speakers, we need to start dealing with justice issues at a community level as opposed to a territorial and on a...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to make a motion. I move that this committee defer further consideration of the Department Summary for the Department of Justice, Infrastructure Acquisition Plan, at this time.

Thank you. Just to wrap up before we go to the question, I appreciate the Minister’s response. But I feel very strongly that giving money to a community without any resource for them to assist them in properly applying that money is pretty much throwing good money after bad.

I think that this coordinator is necessary to assist communities that currently don’t have Community Justice committees — to get them established and to also assist those that do have those committees to be more efficient and to operate better.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to speak to the rationale for the deletion of this particular activity. The Social Programs Committee discussed Community Justice and Corrections and facilities at great length during the department presentation, and afterwards when we discussed how we had viewed that presentation. At this point the program committee feels very strongly that this is not the correct time to begin planning a new facility. We don’t know yet whether or not the Arctic Tern facility in Inuvik is suitable for a secure facility for corrections. It’s undergoing a review — an engineering...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to make a motion.

I move that this committee strongly recommends that the government take immediate action to reinstate funding in the amount of $83,000 for the proposed elimination of the program/projects coordinator position under the Department of Justice under the Community Justice and Corrections activity.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to make a motion.

Thanks. These finances are going over my head, so I’ll have to ask for a bit of an explanation. So we’ve received money from the federal government. How much is it? I guess, then, the point is that in order for the federal money to be used in 2008–2009, we would have to have it added back in, in order to actually use the money that we got from the feds in 2008–2009. Is that correct?

Just a short follow-up. All of these figures, then, on pages 46 through to 49 are all revenue dollars, if I understand Ms. Schofield correctly. That wasn’t clear to me. If I could just get that clarified, I would then understand this is the revenue. The expenses, I presume, are sprinkled throughout the rest of this department’s document.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions. I wanted to revisit the issue of nursing positions and the reductions in nursing positions. I think we’re clear on what’s been reduced at the North Slave Correctional Centre, but as I mentioned in my question that I didn’t get to ask earlier, the information the social programs received indicated that there was a $22,000 reduction in a nurse position at SMCC. As the Minister stated earlier, there is no reduction in nursing positions at SMCC, but there is a reduction in a maintenance position. Could I get an explanation for this $22,000...