Please read your motion, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the government provide funding and resources in the fiscal year 2014-2015, to develop and update materials related to the translation of legal terminology; and further, that the Department of Justice work with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to provide specialized training in legal terminology to enhance interpretation services in the courts for all Aboriginal residents. Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The motion is being distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The motion speaks to providing some funding and resources in 2014-15 to update the materials related to the legal terminology in our court system and having some materials that will be used for our interpreters in our communities.
When we go into our small Aboriginal communities, usually you look for who has the services for providing there, some of them provide these services without the legal terminology training, the concept of what is happening within the court system. It is all done in the English language. More so than is done in the legalities of the court system, so interpreting that into an Aboriginal language, and back and forth for a person who is not very knowledgeable in the English language what has been said, so the language has to be there up front as a constitutional right for any person going through the court system.
This motion talks about Justice working with Education, Culture and Employment to provide some of the specialized training in the legal terminology so that the people have the best possible opportunity and that their needs are being met, and response from the justice system, as the Minister has duly noted in his opening statement.
I would urge the Members here to look at this and give support to Justice to look at this legalized terminology training for our workers. Too many times we hear, in our small communities, where they take somebody off the community street or put them into the justice system and interpret for us. Those days are long gone and we need to put the focus on our interpreters.
I have talked to some of our interpreters in our Sahtu communities and they are saying we need to have some training in the legality and terminology of our court system. We need to have this training done so people who are more comfortable in the language, going through the court system, could have that opportunity other than to provide it only in English or very minimal and not understanding the legalities of the court system. So, this motion is brought forward to support the government to move in this direction to see if we can get some results. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member has requested a recorded vote. All those in favour?
Mr. Yakeleya, Mr. Menicoche, Mr. Dolynny, Mr. Nadli, Mr. Hawkins, Ms. Bisaro, Mr. Moses, Mr. Bromley.
All those opposed?
Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Abernethy, Mr. Miltenberger, Mr. McLeod – Yellowknife South, Mr. Lafferty, Mr. Ramsay, Mr. McLeod – Inuvik Twin Lakes.
All those in favour, 8; all those opposed, 7. The motion is carried. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. It is unfortunate to do this, but a Member can’t walk into a Chamber during an actual calling of a vote as it has been called, so I would say that it is my observation that there are issues with that vote. Thank you.
Thank you, give me just a moment here to consult with the...
I think at this time we will take a break for supper. After supper we will come back and discuss the motion. Thank you.
---SHORT RECESS
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. Just before the break there was a motion on the floor. There was a motion that was read and about to be voted on and a Member was not in their seat at the time that that motion was read, so their vote cannot be counted. It was counted, so when we take that vote away then we have a tie.
The principle applied is this: where if no further discussion is possible, a decision should not be taken except by a majority. So that leaves it to the Chair to break the tie. According to our policies, our traditions, I will be voting against the motion. The motion is defeated.
---Defeated
Justice, activity summary, court services, operations expenditure summary, $12.415 million.
Agreed.
Okay. Justice, information item, court services, active positions. Mr. Bromley.
Actually, I was on page 27, Madam Chair.
Does the committee agree to go back to page 9-27?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I want to mention both the integrated case management work, which I assume is in this division, and the wellness court, which I also assume is in this division. I know these are new initiatives and I’m wondering if I’m correct that the dollars that the Minister announced are listed on this page somewhere, the $807,000, I believe it was, for integrated case management, $300,000 for wellness court. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The wellness court is on this page. The integrated case management is under community justice.
Minister Ramsay, please continue with your answer.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The integrated case management is under community justice.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand that the wellness court will rely quite heavily on the case management program. I wonder if the Minister will just explain that to me, if I understand that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Madam Chair. For that detail, we’ll go to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Ms. Haener.
Thank you, Madam Chair. For individuals to participate in the wellness court they will require considerable support and case management. During the coming year, we have resources coming to the wellness court for two positions, and we expect that the Integrated Case Management pilot will help support the wellness court because it will put into place an intensive case management process for individuals, and that kind of a process could also support participants of the wellness court. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Haener. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. That makes sense to me.
I assume that integrated case management is the Justice side of things, that it’s primarily Justice staff that are working on it and it relates to the legal or, in this case, perhaps quasi-legal aspects of the case. Is that correct? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The integrated case management isn’t on this page, it’s on community justice. We do have staff at community justice working on that. It’s separate from the wellness court in that the wellness court is going to be a service that’s provided through court services and that’s the separation. But the two are certainly linked, as the deputy minister had outlined for the Member.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. I’m sorry; I couldn’t hear your last statement. Did you say that the deputy minister was going to explain something? Minister Ramsay.
Just to clarify, Madam Chair, no, the deputy minister had mentioned how the integrated case management was working with the wellness court to the Member previously, and I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. I think what the Minister said was consistent with my question that it is primarily a Justice service. Obviously, I am talking about the wellness court. I’m forced into the integrated case management because of the close relationship here. But in terms of the wellness court for success, we would also obviously need a very well-integrated case management approach from the Department of Health and Social Services.
I want to know from the Minister if he feels that integrated case management approach from the Health and Social Services side will be in place to enable success with the wellness court. Thank you.
Madam Chair, the Department of Health and Social Services is part of the steering committee on the wellness court, and a similar process is underway related to the Integrated Case Management Pilot Project here in Yellowknife and in Inuvik, so we’re working closely with the Department of Health and Social Services on that. Thank you.
Just to follow up a little bit more here, is the Minister able to say in this forum what the time schedule is for rolling out this pilot project? Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, that’s yet to be determined. Our hope is it would be sometime this coming fiscal year. Thank you.
I would hope so. I think the Minister knows that we’ve been working on this for quite a while, and I know his staff have been working on this for quite a while. I consider the $300,000 committed here to this project is a very, very modest start, and frankly, I’m disappointed. I was disappointed with the Department of Health and Social Services not to hear any specific expenditures towards this service again, because it really is our best opportunity to deal with a major part of the mental health issues that we have, as well as our legal and corrections costs.
Does the Minister have an estimate of what the cost to our system is of the mental health issues that cause a reoccurrence of people in the system? Thank you.
That number would be certainly difficult to quantify.
However, getting back to the Member’s concern over the $305,000 that we have this year for the wellness court, next year we have earmarked for the wellness courts just shy of $1 million and we have had some of our staff at community justice working on this. We had a presentation that we provided to the Standing Committee on Social Programs today. We’re going to be moving forward and we feel that we have it resourced. We want to get it up and running, and I think once the wellness court is up and running, we’ll have a better understanding of how it operates and what resources may be required to run it. We’re going to ramp that up again next year with close to $1 million being put toward the wellness court. Again, I mentioned this this morning, if we do need further resources if it’s being well-subscribed and there’s people that are going into the wellness courts, we can look at additional resources as we go forward as needed. Thank you.
Thank you. I believe the Minister was talking about ’15-16 for the $1 million contribution, which there I feel that is significant and I’m looking forward to that.
Could I get a cost per day, an average cost per day for an inmate, say an adult male and a juvenile in corrections? Thank you.
Thank you. We can get that detail for the Member, get him a breakdown. I think we even have it by facility as well. Thank you.
I guess I would appreciate that information. What I’m looking for here, the last time I looked, if I’m right, I think it was over $1,000 per person per day, I think in the order of $1,600 or something like that. Obviously, at that rate and given the success of other jurisdictions in Canada that have joined with mental health courts, these costs will be made up very, very quickly. Albeit capital costs won’t go away and so on, and that’s my interest there.
So I think I’ll leave it at that and I’ll look forward to that information and perhaps have the Minister consider what the potential savings are with this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll take that as a note, a comment. Next on the list I have Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just with court services, I know that I think it’s almost been over a year, maybe more, that court services to the communities increased the cycle, I think from four weeks to six weeks. It is impacting people in the courts. I know that a couple of court cases have been thrown out because justice was just taking too long. Based on those cases and based on the length of people going to trial, it really impacts them because a lot of people are on probation, et cetera, even for a year before they get to trial. So I’d just like to know if the department is reviewing it, working with the judges to try to get people’s court cases heard earlier. Well, the principle of law is, of course, if justice is denied or taking too long, then it’s not good for our justice system. Thank you.
