Debates of August 20, 2007 (day 13)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There were also the previously mentioned concerns with having all investigators located in Yellowknife. People who came to talk to us would like to see personnel in their communities. At minimum, a regional presence is required. This is not what is being proposed. From what we have been able to learn as to how this bill would be implemented, the committee is unable to see how it could work without substantially more resources and effectively setting up a second tier of policing services in the NWT. If the end result of this legislation is the setting up of almost a parallel policing service, there is a need for a public policy discussion on the merit of such a policing structure in the Northwest Territories. This would, in turn, require an in-depth cost-benefit analysis of whether this is how and where we need to invest as opposed to enhancing our existing policing and justice services.

In a presentation to the standing committee in the community of Fort Smith, Ms. Mary Pat Short, who is the chair of the NWT Human Rights Commission but was speaking as a private citizen, offered the following observation: “Manitoba has a population of one million people. They introduced SCAN in 2002. Initially, they had two investigators and four employees. Now they have expanded to seven. They have investigated 13,068 complaints, and this has resulted in 198 evictions over four years. Now, if we put these figures in terms of the Northwest Territories, the Northwest Territories has one twenty-fifth of Manitoba’s population, which would be eight evictions over four years, if it was the same pattern. So we spend $1.0 million a year for two evictions. Obviously, I don’t know if that is actually what would happen here, but that would certainly not be a good use of public money.”