Debates of March 10, 2009 (day 26)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Justice in response to his Minister’s statement on improving family law services. I’m quite pleased to hear the announcement that they’re going to be moving or setting up a new mediation project with a roster of five mediators. I know that a number of Members in this House, both in the House and in the back hall, have been encouraging the department to go in this direction of setting up a mediation process.

My first question is just a question for clarity to the Minister responsible. Is this mediation going to be mandatory or is it going to be optional?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Justice, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I think on a long-term basis we’d like to have this on a mandatory basis. I did mention in my Minister’s statement that other jurisdictions do provide it on a mandatory basis. We’ll continue to work towards that. This is a new program we want to initiate. We’d certainly like to look at the pros and cons of the particular program, but that’s a long-term commitment that we have within our Justice department.

I’d like to thank the Minister for that. I think it’s a great program. I’m really happy to hear that they’re looking to going mandatory. I’ve done some research on this as well, and everything that I’ve seen has suggested that mandatory will save us a lot of money. To the Minister, how long do you think it will be until we can make some sort of decision as to whether or not we are going to make this mandatory for the sake of the children?

Certainly the program will be rolled out within a couple of weeks, three weeks. Certainly we will continue to monitor the program itself and how the program is going, and also looking out for other jurisdictions and how their program is doing, with mandatory or without mandatory. We can probably say late fall we’ll certainly look at this as if it could be mandatory at that time. Certainly we need to have some time to deliver the program, see how it turns out. From there we’ll certainly decide to move forward and we’ll certainly give the standing committee an update at that time.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.