Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have with me to my left Bronwyn Watters, deputy minister of Justice. To my right is Kim Schofield, director of finance for the Justice department.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Welcome, witnesses. General comments on the Department of Justice. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to provide a few opening comments on the Department of Justice.
First off, I really do appreciate all the good work that the department does do. I know I’ve been critical in the past on, you know, especially the area of rehabilitation and programming. I want to make sure that we are providing the best rehabilitation services and programs. I look forward to seeing, you know, we talked a little bit earlier today about an action plan being developed out of the 18 recommendations contained in the review of the programs back in 2008. I really think there’s a lot of good recommendations there. All 18 of them are good in their own right but there are some of them that I think we need to act on much sooner than later.
Services in the area of mental health I think is a big one. We have to take a serious look at how we deal with folks that are incarcerated that have cognitive disorders of some type and treat them accordingly. I find it really hard to believe we’ve gone two and a half years since that program review was done without a clinical psychologist at our largest corrections facility. I continue to be amazed at how that happens. Considering the increases in violent crime, considering the repeat offenders, considering the rate of incarceration in our Territory being the highest in the country, why we don’t have a clinical psychologist on staff boggles my mind. If you look at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre where they have an inmate population of I think it’s 51 or 60, somewhere in that neighbourhood, they have a clinical psychologist on staff there. I think they should, I’m not saying they shouldn’t, but they should. Then you look at North Slave Correctional Centre with an inmate population sometimes getting close to 200, I think currently it’s probably running about 165 inmates, without one. We really... Again, I think the Minister knows that. He’s also committed to trying to address that need at that facility. I wish him well on that.
Seeing as we have Justice here, I just wanted to make a few comments, too, about some of the things I’ve been saying. I understand the role of the judiciary. Some of the remarks I’ve made are in no way to disparage the good work of the courts. The judges, the lawyers in our Territory, I think they do a great job for us. I’ve talked about light sentences and when I talk about light sentences I think that’s just part of the equation. I’ve been standing up here trying to provide the department with some suggestions on how we can improve things. I understand sentences are not the only component of how we deal with inmates, their rehabilitation, and the issue of public safety at the end of the day is paramount. I think that’s really important and we can’t underestimate that. We do make the laws here. The judges enforce those laws. That’s our role. I understand my role completely. When I might have made reference to how our Minister could influence things, when I make reference to influencing things, I’m making reference to our Minister of Justice working with his federal counterpart in Ottawa on how we can get tough on crime. That is going to be a concerted effort by politicians who make the laws in this country to get tough on crime. I’m a firm believer that jail isn’t the answer for everybody and those folks who can be rehabilitated, we should have every opportunity to rehabilitate them.
What I’m talking about is the repeat violent offenders that we have in our Territory and the fact that I don’t understand why if somebody has 15, 16 or even 20 violent offences against people, an application is not made by the Crown to go after them under the dangerous offender clause or status. To me if we don’t do that, we’re not protecting society. I know there’s so much that goes into that application to look at dangerous offender status. I’ve read through it myself and I just don’t understand how many times it takes. That’s the only thing I’m trying to get at. How many times does somebody have to hurt somebody else, inflict pain and suffering on somebody else, not just the victim but their families, and continually be institutionalized, not get rehabilitated and get back out and the cycle just continues to repeat itself.
Of course, as I’ve mentioned many times, there are root causes to all of this and I think the government really needs to continue to chip away at what ails and plagues our communities, like addictions and poverty, homelessness, all these things. We’re not going to solve all of this overnight, but certainly the numbers could be getting better and I think we have to start measuring. That’s another one of the recommendations that’s contained in your program review a few years back. We should be measuring ourselves off of something. When a government comes in in year one, violent crime at the end of the four years should go down. Suicide rates should go down. High school graduations should go up. I mean, those are things that a government should and can be measuring itself by, and I don’t think we do that often enough.
I think we continue to just throw money at things and not really have a plan or a way to measure the success or the failure of what we’re doing. That’s something I always had a concern with, because, as I mentioned, we spend close to $700 million as a government between the three departments, Justice, ECE and Health and Social Services, and really, are things getting much better. Well, arguably, they’re not. I think we need to be moving in the right direction.
I attended a briefing with the Minister and staff and I caught the tail end of it this morning. I wanted to say I appreciate the work that the Minister and the staff are putting into the area of family courts and mediation services for people going through family breakup. I think a lot of good work is being done in that area. I continue to say that equal-shared parenting is the way to go. The default has to be to equal-shared parenting. Both parents have to have a role in the child’s upbringing. I look forward to us moving towards that and continuing to work on getting towards that.
The issue of family breakup, too, I think we underestimate. The feeling it gives people especially in a small community where there might not be all the services that there is available for folks going through a family breakup in Yellowknife or Hay River. If you’re out in a small community and your family is breaking up, you have absolutely nowhere to turn sometimes. Maybe some family members, maybe not. Maybe you don’t have any family there, but that takes an undue toll on families in small communities when families do break up. I think any services we can get into the smaller communities in dealing with family breakup and mediation and helping people through what oftentimes is one of the most difficult times in a person’s life is when they break up and you have children involved. It’s a very emotional, stressful time in a person’s life so people need all the help they can get.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Minister’s time and I do know that he and his staff are moving us in the right direction. It might not be as fast as I’d like to see us moving but, again, I think it’s in the right direction and I know the department’s heart is in the right place and I know that they’re trying to do the right things there and I wish them well. Thank you.
Since there’s quite a bit there, I will allow the Minister to respond to Mr. Ramsay.
Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Most of the discussion that the Member addressed I agree with. The 18 recommendations that are being brought forward, the implementation should be sooner than later. I agree with him. Those are the areas that we are pursuing and we will follow through with those recommendations.
The clinical psychologist, we’ve dealt with that in the House. As I stated in the House, we will have a trained individual within a month or so from now and we’re looking forward to that individual coming on board as a fully fledged clinical psychologist. That’s in the works.
The life sentence versus the heavier sentence. This is a national issue, Mr. Chair, but what we can do at our end and what we had done is also focusing a lot on the preventive measurement. Currently we’re finalizing the review of the Community Justice Program because one of the focuses we want to elaborate or enhance more is preventive measurement. These are the areas that we continue to stress, we continue to heavily invest in, because we firmly believe that if we prevent things from happening, then lack of dealing with sentencing in the long run.
Also just enhancing our rehabilitation programs. Over and over that has been brought up and definitely those are the areas that we need to increase our focus on. We will continue, as we’ve done in the past, to push the federal government to be tough on crime. Mr. Chair, for the repeat violent offenders, this is an area that it’s a serious issue at the national stage even with our Northwest Territories Department of Justice. We will do what we can with our Crown, as well, here in the Northwest Territories, even at the federal level too. We’re not going to stop here. We’ll continue pressuring our colleagues at the federal level.
Another area that was touched on was that violent crime should go down. I totally agree with that statement and even the statement that was made by Judge Vertes on Northbeat that it is our responsibility. The Northwest Territories politicians and the general public need to do their part. It’s not just our department or the GNWT, but as whole. Government of the Northwest Territories, Aboriginal governments, the general public at large, we have to do this together.
The programs on the family breakup, we did a presentation this morning to the standing committee. We’ve highlighted various programs. That’s just the beginning of what we offer but we’ll continue to develop more programs along the way. Again, this is part of supporting those individuals that may be in a breakup situation. There is a mediation program. There are different programs that we offer, but we’ll continue to explore on how we can enhance those programs, Mr. Chair. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. Next I have Mr. Menicoche and Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I just want to begin with the community of Wrigley. I think we spoke with the Minister about this before and in the House, is that striving towards a full-time detachment in the community of Wrigley is still a goal of our government and it’s something I support and the community supports. So as we work towards getting a full-time detachment, I’d just like to ask the Minister once again to raise it with his federal colleagues. It’s still a priority of our GNWT and I understood that it may still be in the federal capital plan but a couple years down the road. Any way we can advance that will sure go a long ways.
I think one of the opportunities, too, is that when they’re talking about the socio-economic fund for the pipeline. I think some of it was actually supposed to be used for those services and in health and justice, so a huge opportunity to mention it to the federal counterparts or else if they start up the… I forget the name of the pipeline coordinating group that’s going to oversee how that money is distributed throughout the Northwest Territories. I think another huge opportunity to advance a capital project such as that. It will only enhance the programs and services in the community and it’s hoped at that time, too, that that pipeline fund will be used for nursing in our communities as well.
I just wanted to mention to the Minister a new subject there that was brought to my attention that two former constituents actually applied on a job in corrections, I think it was a case worker position or something like that. They are Aboriginals, experienced. In fact, there were three Aboriginals that applied for that position, Mr. Chairman. I do want to say that, yes, I spoke in the House about how strong my support was for our policy of hiring Aboriginals, our Affirmative Action Policy, and the person that got hired is not even Aboriginal, nor even from the North, Mr. Chairman, so I was really taken aback by that situation.
There is a reason we have an Affirmative Action Policy. That is exactly it. We want to keep jobs for Northerners and I know that the Minister of Justice is a firm believer in it as well. How could the situation like this happen? I am not too sure, but I think the focus for me as MLA is that if I don’t say anything about what happened, then I am actually agreeing to it.
At this point, it is a concern that this happened in Yellowknife, but people are watching. Other departments are watching. If they get away with it here, they will get away with it in other areas. That has to stop now, especially for the fact that we are not a representative workforce and all MLAs throughout this whole budget session raised it time and time again, yet here we are raising an Affirmative Action Policy and they are not hiring a P1 Cabinet, so that is a really strange kind of behaviour. If you are saying one thing and you are doing another, that is not very consistent. In our government, we have to be consistent, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to raise that issue at this point.
Also, I will just raise the issue that one of my colleagues, Mr. Yakeleya, has raised about corrections and on-the-land programs. That is something I certainly would like to see pursued. It is probably not in the budget now, but sometime in the future we are going to have to work towards that. When we did have it, it did work well. I certainly would like to see it in the communities, if at all possible, and opportunities for regional communities to at least try that, Mr. Chairman.
With that, I will just close those comments. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Lafferty.
Mr. Chairman, there is Wrigley and also, of course, Gameti. They are still priorities for GNWT and the Justice department. We have invested resources to make that happen. Now we are just waiting for the federal government to do their part as infrastructure.
I can assure the Member and also the Members, that at every provincial/territorial/federal Ministers meeting this has been addressed at every table, Wrigley and Gameti. They are fully aware of it. Our understanding is that federal infrastructure is still part of the plan, but it has been backdated from what we have heard. We are looking at other options as well. We call it mobile cell units. Those are just some of the key initiatives that we are pursuing with the chief commanding officer of the Northwest Territories RCMP, Wade Blake. He is exploring and it is much cheaper than the regular detachment. We did present the idea to the federal Minister back in December 2010. Part of my plan is to see the federal Minister, Minister Toews, possibly some time in March to follow up and see what the status is on those two detachments. We will continue to address those matters because it is important to us as a department. We want to see that happen. We put RCMP officers in Fort Simpson to serve Wrigley. We have done our part. We have committed. We will continue to provide those resources. We will continue to again pressure the federal government to do their part.
Mr. Chairman, the other matter on the two workers that applied, I think we need to deal with these matters when they arise. Let’s say these complaints or concerns are brought forward and it usually goes through the MLA’s office and the MLAs usually send it to our department so we can follow through what happened. How come those individuals weren’t hired? Of course, there is a due process, but I did commit in this House that we are developing and we have started on a Northern Development Program for within our Justice department focusing on the Aboriginal workforce. We want to increase the Aboriginal workforce, especially in the corrections area. I hear the Member’s concern. I want to address it as well. These are the areas that we are going to tackle in the area of correction institution. Mr. Chairman, these are the two areas that have been addressed and we will continue to work with those individuals. I commend those individuals for applying. I hope they will continue applying, because we want to make some changes as well. They may have gone through some hoops in the past, but we want to develop and enforce this Northern Development Program within our Justice department. Mahsi, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will start off, again, on air charters. I still see and I know the Minister told me last year that the court circuit, when they are travelling to the communities, it is up to the judge whether he is going to hold his aircraft or he could let the plane go for the day or stay in the community. I think, if the Minister could see if he could talk to the judges, I guess, to see if he could stop doing that in holding the aircraft in the communities, because they are tying up a lot of aircraft. I don’t think that is right.
In regards to the next one is the court workers. It is good to see that we still have our court workers in the long term. They are really needed in the communities because the court circuits, when they do come in, it is good to have the people, innocent until proven guilty, briefed in what is going on and on their case. It is good to see that their contribution under the delivery program is still there for the long term.
Also, the community justice committees that are under-subsidized, they are not getting enough money. I have people in the communities, elders’ committee, that sits on the justice committees that need more funding. We just need to do something about it. We brought this up a couple of times, that we never saw any changes yet. We have to keep pushing towards that. Victims assistance support services needs to be really taken care of in our small communities. When something happens in the communities, people need somewhere to go to receive help. We should be trying to utilize that more. Our elders program which allows the inmates to come in from corrections to come in to help elders in the communities, I think that is a good idea. More funding should be given to that. I see that. I don’t think that is going to be enough money to try to utilize that program in a positive way. I think you get one or two people out and then it has to be utilized more.
With the wilderness camps, the funding that we are providing for the operators to operate I think it is a really good program. My colleague Mr. Menicoche said that we should be utilizing the wilderness camps more for the prisoners. They are just leaving them down in the corrections here.
The office space in Tuktoyaktuk, it is good to see any kind of expenditures from the department in communities. It is always good. Crime prevention, we should be getting RCMP detachment commanders letting members go into the schools under their program if that is possible to more utilize the DARE program in the communities. It’s a really good program. I think in the newspaper last week we have Sergeant Norris back up in Inuvik, which is a good thing. He’s a role model for all students in the community and it’s good to see one of our own policing our own.
I just really want to stress with the Minister that we must get more funding for the community justice programs and the deferral. Deferrals that we could try to work with the people who are going up against court instead of just putting them in the regular court circuit. I think these justice committees are underutilized and underfunded. They have to start getting more funding into them so they can do it properly, like having assistants and being able to get the mail and just the funding needs to be there. I can’t stress more need for that to keep going on.
My last one is the emergency financial assistance funds for victims of crime. I think that should be really looked at again. It’s a pretty low number. Just imagine if we could stop one of those planes from being held 24 hours, probably could give double that.
I’d like to thank the chair and the Minister for his remarks. I look forward to page by page.
Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. We’ll try to continue to spend more money in the Member’s riding as much as we can. Court circuit of course is at the discretion of the judge. At the same time, there’s got to be a cost effective of how they travel. Sometimes the court is done early so the plane waits on them and then a couple of hours later they fly back as opposed to the plane going back and coming back again. That would almost double or triple the cost. Those are just cost factors that the judges take into consideration.
The court workers, we’ve expanded their role. We’re trying to utilize their service even more at the community level, because they are an asset to our organization in the communities.
The victim support services, I agree we need to do more in those areas. There are initiatives on the way with victim notification services and other areas of support that we’ll continue to put more emphasis on at the community level and regional level.
The wilderness camp, on-the-land program has been brought up on numerous occasions that there should be more resources and funds invested. I can’t agree more. Those are areas that we always push through our shop, Justice, with the communities. We want to see more into the communities and we need to work with the communities and regions on who wants to take advantage of that. We’ll continue to push that venue.
RCMP members go to the schools. I can’t agree more on that as well. We highly encourage that with RCMP “G” Division and we do see them in some schools. It would be nice to see them in all schools over a year period. This will be brought up with the RCMP “G” Division chief superintendent, because we do meet and discuss various issues that are being brought to my attention.
Community justice programming, we are at the final stages of going through the recommendations and review. Obviously any changes that occur will cost additional funds and this is what the Member is referring to, that maybe more additional investment should be geared towards community justice because it is part of the preventive measurement and I agree with that. This will be before us and before the standing committee. I’m looking forward to meeting with the standing committee in due time.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. General comments. Detail?
Agreed.
Okay. So maybe we can bring our attention to page 9-7, Justice, department summary, go past that and get into the whole budget. Page 9-8, Justice, department summary, information item, infrastructure investment summary.
Agreed.
Page 9-9, Justice, department summary, information item, revenue summary.
Agreed.
Page 9-10, Justice, department summary, information item, active position summary.
Agreed.
Page 9-13, Justice, activity summary, services to government, operations expenditure summary. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did want to ask a question here with regard to the money we’re spending for access to information and privacy... I forget the whole title. Protection of privacy. We’ve been receiving a lot of requests, I gather, over the last couple of years relative to residential school investigations and so on, and I understand that there’s an increase in funding for ATIPP. I think if I remember rightly, there is an extra position in this budget. Could I get an explanation as to if that’s correct and why we need to increase. Are we still getting residential school inquiries or is this for another reason that we need to expand our ATIPP staff?
Ms. Schofield.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, there is an additional position for access to information and privacy. We had a two-year term position half-year funding that sunsets this year, sunsets in 2011-2012. This provides the full-year funding for the position. The increased workload or the additional work that’s happening is centred around more the overall government-wide coordination of access to information and privacy, working with departments, providing training, working in establishing a continuity of service across government.
Thanks for that explanation. I did want to ask as well about the Aboriginal consultation unit. I can’t remember if that’s a new unit or not. If it is a new unit then my question is mute. Could I get a report on how that unit is going or, if it isn’t yet established, when it will be operational?
Minister of Justice.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. This is a new unit. My understanding is it should be up and running around September, this fall.
Thank you. Just one last question. What is the work going to be of the Aboriginal consultation unit?
Deputy Minister Watters.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The role of this unit is to provide support, training and the necessary education for staff across government to do consultations. This unit will not be necessarily doing the consultations, in fact they won’t be, but they are to provide the legal advice, to develop resources, to provide training to ensure that there is a consistent and appropriate quality of consultation across government.
Thanks for the explanation. I believe that the GNWT has a consultation framework, so will Justice be working kind of across government either to amend or adjust or help people implement the consultation framework that the government has?
Minister of Justice.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. That would be part of the ongoing work that we’ll continue to have with the Interdepartmental Working Relations and ensuring that this consultation framework remains current and consistent with the evolving laws and best practices across the board. Also communicating changes and updates to the framework to GNWT departments on a timely basis. Those are just some of the areas that we’ll continue to work with departments.
Thanks to the Minister and his staff. I’m done.
Thank you. With that, we’ll take a short break.
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I’d like to call the Committee of the Whole back to order. Prior to the break we were on page 9-13, services to government, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to just reiterate some of my colleagues’ concerns and I suppose it’s really just a comment. I’d be happy to have any remarks from the Minister, but I disagree with this Aboriginal consultation unit. My goodness grief, I mean, we have been dealing with Aboriginal people, we are Aboriginal people, our society is Aboriginal. I think we have to start drawing a limit here. There are so many competing demands, as we’ve heard repeatedly today, for these dollars and for this department, which already has the legal expertise to start creating positions like this and using these valuable dollars is just not appropriate, in my mind. I’ll leave it at that as a comment.
Minister of Justice.
Mahsi, Mr. Chair. This is, again, across the board consulting with various departments. It’s a GNWT consultation unit so this is before us and we need to work with this initiative. We feel that it’s a valuable tool that we need to move forward with, so that’s where we’ve engaged the GNWT departments’ engagement in this area. Mahsi.
I guess the Minister has elevated my concern if this is happening across all departments. I mean, again, I say good grief. We have so much experience in this area. I mean, I just can’t feature it. This is a waste of valuable resources. We have so many competing demands. We’re talking about kids’ lives here today and we have to start getting real here. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, this is the only unit that we have that deals with across the departmental discussion. I take the Member’s concerns and issues that are being brought forward, but this has been in the works for quite some time now and we feel that it’s needed and it’s part of our consultation process. Mahsi.
I guess I don’t buy that, Mr. Chair. I think the department’s been doing a good job and I think they’ve got lots of good programs going with a lot of Aboriginal people and I think that’s only going to enhance their already obvious capability of consulting with Aboriginal people. Thank you.
I’m not sure what else to add but it’s a government-wide initiative and it’s a unit that deals with Aboriginal organizations on projects and initiatives that will affect various spectrums of issues that may be brought forward. Mahsi.
Again, that just elevates my concern. Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations spends hundreds of thousands on this. I mean, that’s our lead. They’re there to provide advice, I learned yesterday, and that’s who should be doing this work. We just have so many competing demands that I totally disagree with this new decision to spend yet more hundreds of thousands of dollars in every department on Aboriginal consultation units when we are Aboriginal people, we deal with Aboriginal people every day, we hire Aboriginal people, our staff are Aboriginal people, we are Aboriginal people, a lot of us. I think we have decades of experience as the field has changed and the legal situations have developed to set rules. We have extensive experience in this area. I disagree with this in terms of the many competing demands for these dollars. As I mentioned, we’re talking about very important other priorities that need dollars.
Mr. Chairman, this is an area that is part of the specialized unit across the board dealing with the Aboriginal organizations. It has been established with expertise when it comes to lawyers in different areas. We do have lawyers but they are dedicated to their own respective roles as well. This is specifically in a target area. I will get my deputy to elaborate a bit more on that process. Mahsi.
Ms. Watters.
Mr. Chairman, this unit is actually created. It is a government-wide initiative. This was not an initiative of the Department of Justice alone. The need was identified because of the increase in the need for the consultation around economic and resource development, around conservation and the environmental issues, that has become very apparent that the need for consultation was certainly going to increase. It was not going away. The investment in this unit I think is actually much less than the investment that would be required should we fail just once to consult appropriately.
This unit was established. The decision to have it in the Department of Justice was made so rather than having just one lawyer who would be assigned the file, there would be access to a bank of lawyers with expertise. It didn’t have to be in the Department of Justice, but it was felt that that was the most appropriate place for it. It is very definitely to provide services to all departments to ensure that the framework is maintained, to ensure that people are appropriately trained and training has been going on and to maintain that level of training to enhance the training and to provide support, to provide policy and legal direction. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bromley.
Mr. Chairman, I guess I will just add I was saying I think this and I think that, but I have to say that it was an Aboriginal person that brought this concern to me. I will leave it at that. Thank you.
