Debates of March 4, 2005 (day 49)

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I have Mr. Hawkins next.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’m just going to talk about a couple areas, no specific questions at this time. I wish to reaffirm a couple areas. The first one is simply the Minister made note of legal aid and the improvements of legal aid services in our community. I really believe that was something that finally we got the Minister to be able to put dollars behind. He knew it was a problem, this side of the Assembly knew it was a problem, and I was willing to go toe-to-toe as long as it took, to at least get that need recognized and I was really glad to see it came in last year’s supplementary during May and into the fall. The issue at hand is that we are addressing those needs. Even yesterday it was noted by the Minister in oral questions regarding trying to fill those positions. The fact is it’s being addressed now and it’s good to see that it’s being supported for the long term. Without that basic access to justice, I think our people are put into jeopardy and I think it’s important that the support mechanisms such as legal aid are there to support people, especially in their time of need.

I’m just going to speak briefly again on a couple other areas, as well. I’m going to speak in the area of the courthouse and the RCMP and our drug problems here in the Northwest Territories. As far as the courthouse coming forward, I look forward to seeing this initiative in detail. At this time I am in support of a new courthouse. I truly believe that a courthouse is yet another one of our pillars of society here, and the Northwest Territories is in no different case than anywhere else in Canada. That needs that clear pillar to show people that we are here for them and your society is here to protect you in the most fair way. I think, like government, that pillar of society needs to be continually recognized. The problems, as I understand them right now, are the incompatibility with the present courthouse and hopefully this new institution will address some of those needs. However, of course, this does not go with carte blanche support. We will always be concerned on the overall end cost of this facility, so I will be making sure I have input in the long run to make sure that it’s kept within a good dollar figure. Again, supporting the pillar of our society, but these things can’t come at any cost. There will be support behind that initiative.

As far as the RCMP are noted in this year’s opening comments, I wish to affirm the good thing, the presence of the RCMP in our community is a much needed item. Especially in the sense where we’re getting a lot more drug trafficking problems up here in the Northwest Territories, which is not unusual due to the circumstances and we need the forces to fight this. With more disposable money draws this type of attention. We need those support people to be able to keep us safe in our communities and to make sure that we’re catching those bad people who are creating a mess to society.

At this time I just only had a few comments and, Mr. Chairman, I will bow out at this time. I may be back later though.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, a lot of interest too I’ve read in the Minister’s opening marks with regard to this important department. I find it very interesting that the operations budget for the department has increased this year from last year, as stated in his presentation, by $460,000. I guess I will save some specific questions for later on in terms of the reason why there are increases in the operations budget and we’re making some cuts in other areas. The increase is $460,000 from last year’s main estimate. This increase is to help our communities become safer and provide improved access to legal aid services. I have some questions around there. Who is it really serving?

Also, the amount of money that’s being spent on law enforcement, community justice and corrections, in there it says 70 percent of the total budget is spent on those three areas. Again, I want to look at the numbers in more specific detail in terms of law enforcement where most of the communities that have a huge population have a lot of law enforcement officers in their communities, community justice and in the correction facilities. I’ll save those comments for later in terms of how this is really coming out in terms of at the end of the day it really is a numbers game, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, the one issue I guess I’d like to comment on, and I’ll ask the Minister later on again; is in regard to the Wilderness Camps Program. If we’re not being successful in any of the regions or there’s no uptake on some of the wilderness camps programs, is there something within his department to initiate those camp programs? I know Tl'oondih has a good successful program, because I spoke with some of the people in Fort McPherson and I’ve been to that facility. According to the people in Fort McPherson, they had a successful program. Why are we not using more and more people? Some of that could be similar to the Sahtu region. Why are we investing so much money in facilities in Yellowknife? There are huge facilities here.

Regarding young offenders, I know there are some people who need to be put into those institutions, there’s no doubt about it, but there are a lot of them who could stay in the community or stay in the region. With the high cost of living, people can go hunt and fish for the elders, provide food, wood. Let them do their time out there. Why are we cutting back in the regions? Get it back to the regions.

I guess that’s why I have a difficult time supporting the initiative on the new courthouse building. Forty-one million dollars can do a lot for a people in the communities. We have a facility here in Yellowknife. I don’t really understand, and it’s hard to tell that to the people in the small communities, that we plan to spend $41 million in Yellowknife so that we can have a nice courthouse and say it’s ours. Let’s have some nice camps and some nice facilities on the land and in the bush in our communities. Put policing in those 11 communities that I spoke about yesterday in my Member’s statement about putting the police officers in those 11 communities. How about some programs there? Do some preventative programs. I know there is an aboriginal policing recruitment and aboriginal policing initiatives, but I don’t see that there’s enough there. It’s way too low. It’s just too low.

So, Mr. Chairman, those are just my comments for now, and again I would bring some more specific questions to the Minister and his officials in terms of the budget that they’re presenting before us. I think now is the time the Justice Minister made some radical changes in the communities. We’ve been doing this for how many years? It’s like we’re spinning our wheels in some areas. I think it’s time to go back to the basics. Some of those programs do work in the communities. Support them and initiate them. That’s all I have to say, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent, would you like to comment?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I should probably go back to Mr. Menicoche because I haven’t been offered the occasion to respond for a number of Members. I can’t disagree with Mr. Menicoche that the RCMP in his region have a big area to cover with the six communities, and I certainly heard the Members yesterday talking about the need for more police services in communities that don’t have any services right now. As the information that I have with me here indicates, there are eight RCMP positions in Fort Simpson and four in Fort Liard. I don’t know if any of them are vacant at the moment, but that’s the approved contingent, according to the notes that I have with me in the House.

The Member has called for us, along with other Members, to increase the number of communities that have detachments of RCMP, and I’ve committed to discussing with the RCMP what approaches there might be in working with the RCMP to get some pricing. We’re hoping that there are going to be some alternatives that we can talk about, because the RCMP are saying that we can’t open a new detachment with just two members; it has to take three to get the safety issue dealt with. So we’re talking about a significant increase in numbers. But there may be some other options that we can examine, and the Member suggested perhaps longer stays in communities as one option. Perhaps increasing the numbers of RCMP in the relief units so we could increase the number of visits and so on. It’s an issue I’m going to have to deal with the RCMP and Members on to try and come to some resolution.

Mr. Menicoche also talked about the concern about support or liaison with the RCMP, between the RCMP and community justice committees. One of the purposes for us funding the part-time coordinator in every community was to provide just that facility. If communities find that their committee is not working, we still have some resources available through the department and a resource person available to help communities get things back on track. We haven’t given up all the resources and we do still maintain some ability to improve or to work with communities to make sure their community justice committees are supported.

The Member also talked about the Protection Against Family Violence Act. I want to make it perfectly clear to everybody: that act is not in force. The Protection Against Family Violence Act is not in force as of today. It will come into force on April 1st and only on April 1st because, at this point, we do not have the designates trained so the act can actually be put into place. That’s one of the reasons that you haven’t seen public advertising about it. We don’t want to confuse people to make them think that it’s available when it’s not. The whole program is set to kick off by April 1st, with a public relations campaign that will make sure that people in communities are aware that now this act is available to them. The designates will receive their training next week and there will be further training that is undertaken and then, beginning in April, we will have people who will travel to the communities to make sure there is greater awareness and to further train people who might be involved in application of the Protection Against Family Violence Act.

Mr. Pokiak brought up the issue of the Family Law Clinic and wondered about the level of standing. I’m pleased to announce that as of today we are fully staffed in the family law area. We have five lawyers practicing through the Legal Services Board, four in Yellowknife and one in Inuvik. Family law; sorry, I’m corrected. The question was whether or not they have enough space. As far as I’m aware, I’ve heard nothing from the Legal Services Board to indicate that the space is not adequate.

I understand or have heard that the Member has, in the past, expressed his concern about the expenditure of money that’s proposed for a new courthouse, and I just want to assure the Member that this is an issue that’s been…I have letters going back almost 10 years from judges that have pointed out the concerns about the space being inadequate, that there are security issues and that they don’t feel it’s something that can be withstood. The problem we face is that Public Works has, on more than two occasions now, in consultation with other experts, told us that there is no reasonable way to renovate the facility we have. So either one way or the other, we are looking at new space. The advice we have received is that this is the most economic way to deal with it.

Mr. Pokiak also talked about wilderness camps and the issue of liability insurance being too costly for new camps to get set up. Part of the problem is that in terms of operation, the revenue source or the revenue stream for anybody who sets up a new camp is difficult, because we can’t force people to go to a camp. They have to want to go. We can make the offer, but they have to be ready for a temporary release from prison. So unless they are in that position and then request to go to a camp, we can’t get them to go. So it’s difficult for operators to know just what sort of revenue stream they could get. If there was a better uptake on the numbers going into camps, then it would be easier for operators to know whether or not they could afford liability insurance.

I think it’s more of a revenue issue. General liability insurance is actually covered by the department for the operator. So it’s really an issue of the level of revenue.

Mrs. Groenewegen raised a number of issues around the proposed closures in her community. Like Mr. Yakeleya asked how the department budget could go up and still have reductions, the department was, like all departments, every department has to go through the reduction exercise. We would bring forward the reductions for consideration by FMB. So we proposed them there. Then they came off of the department’s budgets before any new initiatives were included. For instance, one of the new initiatives that we had included $1.489 million for additional RCMP. So in spite of the reductions to the budgets in some areas, we did get increases for forced growth and some new initiatives like adding RCMP to the budget. So that is where you would see that there might be an increase to the budget, even though we had to go through reductions.

The issue around the cuts to Hay River was an issue where I can’t disagree with the Member that it was a huge number of cuts to one community in comparison to what other communities were seeing through the reduction exercise. It was a situation where in Justice, when we looked at what we could do to reduce expenditures and have the least impact on the service delivery, it was unfortunate that most of the reductions came up in that community. It wasn’t something that we were particularly pleased about. It was an issue that we were tasked, at the direction of Members, with finding $20 million in reductions. So we brought those to the table.

The Member has raised the issue of the review by the Audit Bureau and whether or not that supports the figures I have been using in the House. I guess we will have to take different positions on that review as well. The way I read the review, it says the methodology and underlying assumptions were reasonable, the assumptions that lead to us figuring out what the reductions would be. It does say that if we had laid off the 5.5 people, that the reductions of $400,000 would have been realized, but because we chose to try to deal with the reductions in a humane manner by not laying people off, but by waiting for positions to be reduced through attrition, the Audit Bureau says we will not achieve the full level of savings in the first year. It does indicate that the level of savings will be achieved. In fact, it says in their report the level of savings will probably be in the area of $500,000 a year as those positions are eliminated.

Mr. Hawkins talked about legal and, again, we are fully staffed as of today.

Mr. Yakeleya, too, raised the issue of wilderness camps and he says there is a difficulty getting them started in the region and more people should be put in these facilities. I don’t disagree with the Member. I think we should be able to get more people into these facilities, but we can’t. We can’t tell people they have to go to them. We can’t say you need to go out on the land. For them to go out on the land, they have to be finished their sentence, ready for temporary absence, approved for a temporary absence and then they have to agree that they want to go out to an on-the-land camp. So they can’t go initially. When they are first sentenced to custody, you can’t immediately send them to a camp. The only way that would happen is through a diversion, if they were to divert through a community justice committee, there might be an opportunity to look at a community solution like that. Before they would be approved for a camp program, they would have to do at least one-sixth of their sentence in a facility. Then they would be judged as ready for the TA.

So it’s not a question of the department not being supportive of facilities in the regions. The problem is we have more spaces right now available for inmates to go to on-the-land camps than we can fill. If more of them are made available, it would just mean that each of the operators will be getting less money because we pay by the number of spaces that are taken up in the programs.

So one of the things we have started to do is promote the camps. We are looking to provide incentives to inmates. We are increasing the incentives for them to attend the camps. We are starting to promote them much more actively in the facilities and we are hoping to drive up the usage. If we can do that, I think there would be a good argument to see more camps developed in more regions, so that’s what we are going to try to do, but we have to build up the demand before we can increase the supply. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

Mr. Chairman, I have general comments to make, but I can wait until Monday. I am advised that, due to other schedules, we should report progress.

Thank you, Ms. Lee, are you making a motion to report progress?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought I did that, so I will do it again. I move that we report progress.

Thank you. There’s a motion on the floor. It’s not debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

The motion is carried. I will rise and report progress. I would like to thank Minister Dent, Mr. Cooper and Kim Schofield.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Bill 19, Appropriation Act, 2005-2006, and Committee Report 11-15(3) would like to report progress and, Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. There is a motion on the floor. Do we have a seconder? The honourable Member for North Slave, Mr. Zoe. The motion is in order. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Item 21, third reading of bills. Before we go to orders of the day, I would like to thank all our Pages who served us this week in the House.

---Applause

Orders of the day for Monday, March 7th, at 1:30 p.m.:

Prayer

Ministers' Statements

Members' Statements

Returns to Oral Questions

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

Oral Questions

Written Questions

Returns to Written Questions

Replies to Opening Address

Petitions

Reports of Standing and Special Committees

Reports of Committees on the Review of Bills

Tabling of Documents

Notices of Motion

Notices of Motion for First Reading of Bills

Motions

First Reading of Bills

Second Reading of Bills

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

-

Bill 17, Modernization of Benefits and Obligations

Act

-

Bill 19, Appropriation Act, 2005-2006

-

Bill 20, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 3,

2004-2005

-

Committee Report 9-15(3), Standing Committee on

Accountability and Oversight Report on the Review

of the Draft 2005-2006 Main Estimates

-

Committee Report 10-15(3), Standing Committee

on Governance and Economic Development

Report on the Review of the Draft 2005-2006 Main

Estimates

-

Committee Report 11-15(3), Standing Committee

on Social Programs Report on the Review of the

Draft 2005-2006 Main Estimates

-

Committee Report 12-15(3), Standing Committee

on Rules and Procedures Report on the Review of

the Report of the Chief Electoral Officer on the

Administration of the 2003 General Election

Report of Committee of the Whole

Third Reading of Bills

Orders of the Day

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Monday, March 7, 2005, at 1:30 p.m.

---ADJOURNMENT

The House adjourned at 1:43 p.m.