R.J. Simpson

Thank you. So I mean, I could answer as the Minister of Justice. It sounds like it might be a much more broad question than that, but there are things like legislation like the SCAN legislation which I guess in Alberta is actually the sheriffs use that legislation quite often. I just saw a story about the sheriffs in Calgary closing down a drug house in Calgary. But, you know, ultimately, it's a public health issue and we need to move towards integrating our services, making them easy to access, and ensuring that they are appropriate. At the end of the day, the solutions are community driven...

Thank you. The GNWT has a staff retention policy in situations like this. The Minister of Finance would be the expert in that on that policy, and so I'd prefer not to comment. But I know that the department will be working with those employees directly as they make their way through this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think we're skipping ahead a couple sections this time, but I will say that in terms of the negotiations when it comes to the budget, I think that we can do what we need to do within the budget. I've been meeting with the negotiators. I've been talking to the departments. I've been expressing my views on how we need to proceed. And I've been meeting with Indigenous governments. And the department will be bringing forward options to try and get by some of these roadblocks on some of these negotiations. Thank you.

Thank you. If you could just give me one moment while I turn to that page, thanks.

Thank you. So I don't have a lot of detail on that, but one of the issues that has been identified is who is included in that definition under the Act. And so that's one area that we're looking at. And the other, we're also looking at other amendments. But I can get back to the Members with more information on that specific legislative initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate the Member's concerns about the lack of target. This document and the mandate were prepared almost simultaneously and so we were including items underneath each of the topics, and they aren't necessarily all fully fleshed out yet. But the idea behind this here is around integrating the services and ensuring that someone who needs access to services is able to get those services when they need them. Often, the root cause of a lot of crime is addictions issues, and so if we can support people in a way that will actually assist them, you know, get them out...

So with the transfer of integrated case management unit from the Department of Justice, along came $854,000 with that. Thank you.

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Thank you. So they will be looking at the community partnerships and the activities that were undertaken, the number of calls for support, as well as the impact on the RCMP calls for support, and prisoner counts. So I don't have the exact details. I don't have the evaluation framework here, but I would imagine that when you look at things like community partnerships and activities, there's interviews with other groups in the community and things like that. But once that evaluation framework is finalized, we can share that. Thank you.

Thank you very much. The NGO sector is more part of EIA than ever given that EIA is now responsible for integrated service delivery. With that comes the homelessness file. The reason that integrated services and homelessness is in EIA is because when it was in Justice, and I was the justice Minister, I found that the Minister had no authority to actually integrate services, that the program with integrated case management was just a program of the Department of Justice. And so to the comments earlier about why homelessness is in EIA, it is beside integrating service as the approach we're...

Thank you. So in Indigenous and intergovernmental affairs, the division we're currently discussing in the main estimates, there won't be any movement. What we're talking about with integrated service delivery is colocating GNWT services. So it could be housing and income assistance and social services. But those are existing positions; it's just a matter of getting them physically close to each other, ensuring there's proper agreements in place so that they can share information amongst themselves. And there are opportunities to work with Indigenous governments as well. I know that TCSA has...