Debates of March 7, 2005 (day 50)

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Roland.

Further Return To Question 561-15(3): NWT Affirmative Action Advisory Committee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t have the information available to me. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Last week I spoke about taxation on aboriginal education that’s due to take place April 1st. I was just wondering if the Minister knows how much of an impact it will have upon our students and is it actually SFA funding that’s impacted as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Dent.

Return To Question 562-15(3): Taxation Of Grants To Aboriginal Students

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Finally I have some good news to report. Although I can’t confirm it, because it’s only in the Canadian Press and we haven’t gotten official word from the government, but we understand that the federal government will scrap the proposal to tax grants for aboriginal college and university students. So it sounds promising. I think the federal government has recognized that aboriginal students are the most underrepresented in terms of success in university and college in Canada and they need the support of the federal government by not taxing. I think it sounds like it’s good news, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Supplementary To Question 562-15(3): Taxation Of Grants To Aboriginal Students

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am, indeed, very pleased to hear that news. It will impact a lot of our students going to school, particularly down south who don’t need that extra burden of being taxed, Mr. Speaker. At this point, the Minister doesn’t have too many details to offer. Has he been in contact with his federal counterparts in the federal office with regard to this issue?

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Further Return To Question 562-15(3): Taxation Of Grants To Aboriginal Students

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Canadian Press article I saw quoted Minister Andy Scott for the source for this. What we have not been able to do is confirm it through CCRA, or Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. That was the agency that was proposing the tax initiative. So we are in the process of trying to confirm that this is accurate but, based on what I have seen so far in the press, I am pretty confident that the Canadian government is following the right path here.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I actually don’t have any further questions at this point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to table an excerpt entitled Public Service Growth, 1999 to 2004, public service growth by community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Menicoche.

Madam Chair, the committee wishes to consider Bill 19, Appropriation Act, 2005-2006, specifically the Department of Justice. Thank you.

Is committee agreed?

Agreed.

Agreed. Then we will do that after a short break.

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Thank you. For the record, Mr. Minister, can you introduce your witnesses, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me today I have Deputy Minister Don Cooper and the director of finance, Ms. Kim Schofield.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. We shall now convene our Committee of the Whole. First on the list I have Mr. Ramsay for general comments. Thank you. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m glad to have the opportunity to provide some general comments to the Minister and his staff. I’ll start off with one of my favourite topics, the North Slave Correctional Centre. I’m not quite sure how it all plays out, but there were some expenditures that had to have taken place in order for the department to continue to operate the North Slave Correctional Centre. I made my best guess estimates here last week, at well over $1 million. Maybe just a comment from the Minister on those cost overruns, especially in the area of staffing and how the department is handling that would be the first thing I would like to ask the Minister. Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, I’ll just go on with my comments. That was the first one.

The second thing in terms of the Department of Justice I wanted to talk about was the anticipated new courthouse for Yellowknife. Obviously I’m supportive of that and other Members have had an opportunity, as well, to look at the business models that would suggest the current location of the courthouse over a longer period of time is going to cost the Government of the Northwest Territories more than it would to build a new standalone court facility. I don’t believe there ever is a good time to spend upwards of $40 million, but if the government was to wait five, seven or 10 years down the road it is only going to cost more money. As I mentioned, the business case has been made for the courthouse being built and I do look forward to moving this agenda item forward and working with the Minister and his staff on realizing it. I know it’s been a dream of many people here in the Northwest Territories to have that standalone courthouse. It’s a nice piece of public infrastructure to add to this area of the capital city of Yellowknife. So I’m looking forward to that happening.

The other comment I wanted to make, Mr. Chairman, was in regard to RCMP positions. I’ve mentioned this to the Minister previously. I know there are still vacancies out there. The $1.4 million that was earmarked in this year’s budget to provide for 10 more positions doesn’t even get us halfway to what we needed in the 2001 report. So in whatever way possible, I think the government really has to look towards the RCMP and policing being a top priority of the government and trying to identify financial resources to make that a reality so that we don’t have a shortage of RCMP officers, so that we can address the crime rate here in the Northwest Territories. I know the number has historically been bad. I mean, they’ve always been that way, but when you look at strictly growth rates, it has grown 25 percent in the last three years and 21 percent in Yellowknife. So it’s something I think the government needs to pay close attention to.

I think that’s about it for my comments, Mr. Chairman. So I’m looking for some clarification from the Minister on how the department is handling the staffing costs going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member asked about cost overruns at the North Slave Correctional Centre. There were some overruns. The Member is talking about the two previous years so we’re going back some time even before the life of this government, but there was some over expenditure at North Slave compared to budgets for the year-end at March 31, 2004. There will likely be some over expenditure this year as well. Although at this point we can’t even predict that, because of the pay problem that happened not too long ago that all Members are aware of. So it’s going to take some time to work all those adjustments through and figure out just exactly where that’s going to shake up.

However, as Members will be aware, the department didn’t come forward for a supp and doesn’t expect it will have to come forward for a supp this year to deal with those overages. Through the course of business, you look for other opportunities to save money in other areas. For instance, we didn’t hire as many family law lawyers as quickly as we thought we would. So that wound up not costing as much money in that area. So you always have areas, or you hope you’ll always have areas, that will balance off and so far we think that that’s going to be possible.

In terms of the courthouse, the Member is right; one way or the other we’re going to wind up with a new courthouse here because the work done by Public Works indicates that the present courthouse can’t be renovated to provide the sort of space that is needed to deal with the security issues. So we’re looking at either being a landlord for new space or for building a new one ourselves.

In terms of the RCMP, I met with the RCMP last week and discussed the issue of open spaces or vacant positions. They assured me that they were working on a plan that would see them all filled very quickly and have, since that meeting, gotten back and said that they believe that they are very close to having all of the positions filled already, and they are now working on making sure that they have people to transition for the positions where officers will be leaving the North this spring. They are very confident that they will be able to fill all of the positions.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for his response. I am happy to hear that through the budget year 2004-05, and we’re just coming to the end of that, the department was able to find internally the savings to account for the expenditures in terms of staffing at the North Slave Correctional Centre. So I’m happy to hear that.

Just two other things while I have the floor. I just wanted to mention Hay River and the remand unit in Hay River. I’ve been following this quite closely with some of the concerns that have been raised by Regular Members and Mrs. Groenewegen in particular, and I went through the Audit Bureau’s presentation of the numbers and there is some concern there that maybe all the factors haven’t been taken into consideration. For what it’s worth, I think maybe we should hang on for a while and make sure that we are sure that their action would be a cost savings going into the future. So I’m supportive of the remand unit at SMCC and it staying there.

The other thing I wanted to mention -- and I know that the Minister was here the other day when we were talking about drugs and the impacts that they’re having in all of our communities -- our facilities are becoming filled with people that are there because of crimes related to drugs. I believe there’s a correlation between the crime rate and the amount of drugs that are being used. If you look at crack cocaine, folks that are addicted to crack cocaine will steal and end up in jail. Are we going to take a good, sober look at this issue and what are we going to do? What is the Department of Justice going to do in terms of the drug problem? I know it has to be a collaborative effort with the Department of Health and Social Services and Education, Culture and Employment, but what are our plans in dealing with the drug issue here in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think in terms of the people that we see coming into the correctional system so far, while drugs are becoming more and more of a problem, still the majority of substance-related issues relate to alcohol. So we still have an ongoing problem with alcohol. There’s a considerable amount of programming within the facilities that is aimed at helping people learn to deal with their addictions and we are quite supportive of that kind of programming continuing. In terms of prevention, we do encourage the RCMP to ensure that they are working in communities as much as possible; public relations efforts and so on to deal with, as I said on Friday, putting a human face on the force, but also talking about making productive choices or making the right choices, which is certainly something that is supported through our education program.

As the Member knows, we’ve been working to increase the numbers of positions in the Northwest Territories to respond to the RCMP’s request and we are hoping to, by next year, completely respond to what they have requested. I’m sure it will then lead to them examining their staffing levels and we’ll be talking about where we go from that point. I certainly heard from Members around this table that there’s an issue about looking at the smaller communities that don’t have officers. When we talk about drugs, one of the communities that doesn’t is Tsiigehtchic and it’s right on the highway and a lot of the drugs that are coming in are on the highway. So certainly some of the concerns that are raised we are going to have to take a look at and try and assess how we deal with them.

In terms of the Audit Bureau report that the Member spoke about, I guess we’re in a situation where maybe we’ll have to disagree about what the report says. I look at it and see that it says that had we laid 5.5 people off, we would have achieved the $400,000 savings, but because the department chose to take a more humane approach, they may have miscalculated on the numbers of casuals in use and, therefore, in the first year won’t likely save that amount of money. But the report does say that quite clearly. Had we laid the people off, that that savings would have been made and it says as the staff reductions go through, that the level of savings will increase to half-a-million dollars annually. So that’s, again, something that in the grand scheme of things, when you look at the overall government budget, is that a huge amount of money? No, it’s not, but it also would translate into, say, four RCMP officers. So if we’re going to make these choices about where to spend money, I think we have to take a look at that sort of thing too. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of topics that I would like to offer some comments on. They have to do with court registries, the South Slave remand centre, the North Slave Correctional Centre, community corrections, crime prevention, RCMP policing and the courthouse.

Mr. Chair, court registries; I know that these services were in the books for possible reductions, but I just want to speak again on this more because I’ve had time to think about it. I know that one of the reasons why there was some suggestion to close the Inuvik office or the Hay River office was because of the difficulty in recruiting and retaining skilled people to do the job. I understand, having been in this field, that this is a skill that needs a lot of training and very little room for error and such. But now that we have decided to keep them open, I think that with the resource development happening in both the North and South, I think that was a wise move. I would like to ask the government and the department to look for ways to provide more training for the people that are there, instead of reducing the office because they can’t staff it. I know there are people that are already working there. So I don’t want them to misunderstand what I am saying here, but in order to make sure that there are enough resources there, I would like to ask the government to make sure that people that are working there and extra people that might be able to work there get the kind of training and repetition that they must have to remember all the dates and such. So I’m going to ask for some training in that area.

I would also like to state, for the record, that knowing that there is a vacancy in the Inuvik region for a judge, I think it’s a Territorial Court judge, I understand that we don’t have a say in that, but I would like to think that we have some influence and there are people out there listening who have the power to decide on this. I think that I would like to see the next Territorial Court judge based in Inuvik. I think that was the plan before. I think all these things have to go together. I think if we’re going to be a territory, we need to have regional centres and I think north and south if not all regions. But I think this is a basic minimum and the way to keep the services going and have enough workflow to keep the jobs going is to have a judge based there. I’m sure there are ways to do this. I think the judge that was appointed in Hay River was required to be based in Hay River, and I think that the same thing has to be done for the Inuvik region.

The second thing I want to talk about is the South Slave remand centre. I know that this has been a topic of much discussion in the House, in the committees and such, and in the House as well. The first information I heard was when the government was looking for a $20 million cut, we were looking at things that would have minimal impacts on the public and that would have minimum impact on jobs next. At the time this sounded like a feasible thing to do, especially when we were assured that there would be no job cuts or there would be no person losing a job and that it would all be done by attrition and there would be no layoffs. Having had time to revisit this and having had a chance to listen to everything, I would like to reiterate the recommendation made by Social Programs and I would like to confirm my support to reinstate this. I’m doing this on balance. I have listened to the Minister’s numbers. I think there are numbers there and money to be saved, but it has to be balanced with the future needs and I’m going to speak in support of reinstating it for the future. I think if the service level is not there now, I believe that it will be there in the future. For the money that we’re going to save, I think you could always make equally convincing arguments to go on the other side. I think that the Minister had numbers to make that argument, but I think there are more things to consider, especially in light of the fact that the government is closing down Dene K’onia and we have the responsibility and right to consider the overall impact of one budget and this probably was too much in one community. So I would like to state that for the record.

With respect to the North Slave Correctional Centre, I just want to state that everything I’m hearing from there is good. I have run into people that work there, people that used to call me last summer and last fall about their concerns. Some of them are very, very long-term residents, some of them have worked there for many, many years in the corrections systems and most of them had never really called me on anything before and they were very, very concerned about what was going on there. The same people are telling me that things are better. Changes are being done, people are more relaxed. There is a lot less overtime and stress and such. So I’m happy with that and I would like to ask the Minister to continue to implement the human resource plan and hopefully we would continue to make improvements and everyone will be happier.

The next issues are community corrections and crime prevention. I know that Members would like to see a lot more resources put into this and I don’t disagree with that, but I would like to see more focus on the part of the government on crime prevention. I talked about the Yellowknife Community Wellness Coalition; I said this is a group of people who just got tired of seeing all this crime going on and drug problems and everything that their kids and their families are affected by. They rose up and they wanted to do something, and I know there are groups all over the Territories who are doing this and I really think that government has to stand ready to react to that.

I know that sort of program is not available, or not as much in Justice but, in the future, I would like to see the Minister and the department come with a pot of money that would be able to be used for that. There are increases in crime happening everywhere. The government can’t do everything, they can’t be everywhere for everybody. But if there are community groups that rise up and say, we want to do this and we will volunteer and we will patrol the streets and we will find out where these crimes are happening and we want to do something to prevent crime, there should be as much resources, or somewhere near as much resources, as there are for community corrections.

We spend so much money correcting after people commit crimes, rather than trying to prevent. These groups are not asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they are asking for $10,000 to $20,000 to help people feel like they are making a difference in their communities. I would like to see a program like that develop from the department.

The last thing is just about the RCMP policing and staffing. I have to say, first of all, that I am very disturbed by reports of abuse of RCMP by our citizens. I think that the RCMP, the department and the government should do more to…I don’t know what we can do, but I just have to put on record that it is appalling that our RCMP officers are being attacked, whether on duty or off duty, in doing their job. Anything the government and the RCMP could do to get the people to be more aware of the importance of RCMP officers and the role they play would be better.

Another thing I want to say about this is that I am having a real problem with this Charter thing, or whatever, that’s happening that says, unless we can have two RCMP officers in a community, we can’t have any at all. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I go back to base-level services -- indoor gyms, schools, health centre -- I think right up there has got to be an RCMP officer in every community, a nurse in every community and if it requires two, that is fine. I know that the RCMP and the government have been fighting for a long time to increase the staffing and I know that it has to do with the negotiation with the federal government and I know it has to do with resources and such, but surely with all the money we have, we could commit to having at least two RCMP officers in every one of 33 communities.

That just should be a basic thing, whether the government can find the money within or go to the federal government. I don’t know what the rules are. If it is for safety reasons that the RCMP can’t work alone, for safety reasons isn’t it the right of everybody to have police protection? I would like to see a more aggressive approach on the part of the Minister and the department to make sure that the federal government or somebody understands that in our remote communities, we just have to have that as an essential service.

Mr. Chairman, the last thing I want to say concerns the courthouse, so I don’t put my name up for a second time. I know that $41 million seems like a huge amount of money, but I need to state, for the record, that this is something that has been in the plan for 26 years. About 26 years ago when this courthouse was leased, that was supposed to be a temporary measure. It was always understood that we would have a Legislature and the courthouse should have been there back in 1967 when the government moved here.

I understand that this has to do with security reasons; it is not desirable when a victim has to face an offender in the same elevator. It is also not desirable when lawyers have no room to interview their clients; it is not desirable when federal court judges come up and the local judges have to vacate their offices because there is no space. Sooner or later, it’s either we pay landlords to provide this service or we make the commitment to put the capital infrastructure so that at the end of the day we own the building. I don’t think that in the end we are going to spend any more than what we are already spending. I know it is shocking for the people to know that you would spend $41 million over 20 years or 25 years, whatever the life of this building is, but I think it is really important that we look at this in the business sense and that the headlines don’t derail a little bit of logic on this.

I support this totally and I am sure we will have more chances to discuss it. Those are my six issues on Justice and if the Minister wants to respond, I would welcome hearing that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Member noted, the government has agreed to maintain the court registries in Inuvik and Hay River.

The issue of training is certainly something that the government is prepared to invest in, but the problem we have been having, particularly in Inuvik, is even getting qualified applicants to bring in for entry-level positions and then to do that training. We are going to have to look for a way to deal with that. It has been a challenge, but I am confident that we will find some way to do that.

I appreciate the Member’s remarks on the North Slave Correctional Centre. We are intending to keep moving forward with the plan and I will continue to update Members as it progresses.

On the Member’s comments about community corrections and crime prevention and seeking more of a focus on crime prevention, the Government of the Northwest Territories Department of Justice supported the Wellness Coalition by having an RCMP work with them to help set their programs up here. That officer has also been to Inuvik and now is going to be stationed full time in the Sahtu to help work with communities in that area to try and develop this sort of approach. We are investing in that community-centred, community-driven, community-involvement type of approach to crime prevention and we are quite anxious to see that expanded.

We also work with communities to make sure that they are aware of the federal crime prevention program and that the funding is available to communities through that program.

I have to agree with the Member that it is appalling that the RCMP officers in the Northwest Territories have come under assault recently. It is quite shocking; I don’t recall two incidents like we have had in the recent couple of weeks happening in the North for a long, long time.

In terms of why we can’t have two RCMP officers in every community, we can. It’s an issue of money and if this Legislative Assembly says that that is the priority, we can do it. I have already committed to this Assembly that I will be investigating the costs and bringing forward some paper for consideration by my colleagues and we will take a look at it through the business planning process. It is not the federal government that we have to go to. We pay 70 percent of the cost, so it is up to us to put that money forward and then negotiate the other side of it. We would have to negotiate with the federal government. We can’t just say that we will come up with the money and they will automatically do it but, in general, I would think that if we came up with the money they would be hard-pressed not to come up with their portion.

I am corrected; the deputy minister tells me that they do have to come up with it. If this House votes for 70 percent, they will come up with the balance. It wouldn’t be much of a negotiation. The issue then is with us finding the money to do it and that is certainly going to be an issue that we will have to work on.

I can’t disagree with anything that the Member has said regarding the courthouse. She is right; one way or the other, it is going to cost us a lot of money, either in lease payments or in building it. I agree with her that the best investment is to build one. It is not a 20 or 30-year investment if we build it; it’s the building that will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court in 50 more years. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Before I go to Mrs. Groenewegen, maybe I can go to Mr. McLeod, because he hasn’t had a chance to make general comments. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just would like to make a few general comments on the Department of Justice. I said in my Member’s statement the other day that a lot of emphasis is put on the offenders, and I stand by that statement. I don’t think that it was a very popular statement with certain people, but I received an e-mail from a lady who agreed with what I had to say and I will quote from it.

She said, "Many people feel that the title of criminal justice system is just that; a system that caters to the criminals in our society instead of placing the focus on where it belongs, which is on the victims of crime.”

I e-mailed her back and said that I appreciated her comments. I am still trying to figure out the rationale for closing the remand centre. I didn’t agree with it in committee and I stand by it; I still don’t agree with it now. I think that transporting prisoners is time-consuming and expensive. I heard a comment regarding the overbuilding of facilities in Yellowknife and trying to justify it by closing services outside of Yellowknife.

I was glad to see that Justice decided to keep the court registries in Inuvik and Hay River open. In Inuvik, we were going to lose a couple of real active people in our community who were planning on moving down here because registries was going to close, but I am glad to see…I heard the Minister make the comment about finding qualified applicants and I think now that people know that this registry is going to stay open, we may have better luck in finding applicants; I am sure we will.

I have a hard time justifying a $41 million courthouse in Yellowknife. I hear that…

---Interjection

Good chair.

I have a hard time justifying a $41 million courthouse in Yellowknife. Granted, Yellowknife may need a new courthouse, but $41 million seems quite expensive. A leader back at home that I had a meeting with was saying that with a $40 million jail and a $41 million courthouse; they are setting us up to fail.

You don’t hear much from me regarding preventative maintenance. I was always a firm believer that preventative maintenance starts at home. We seem to be saying, well we have to educate the children, we have to educate the children, and I think we have it backwards. I think we have to educate the adults. The children seem to know more than the adults.

Other than that, that is just a few general comments that I had on the Department of Justice. I don’t think there was a question in there, but if the Minister wants to respond to that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is certainly right that we spend a lot more on offenders than we do on victims, but we do have some programs that provide services to victims. We have, in the past year, increased the funding for those services by 22 percent -- actually, that was not in the last year, that was two years ago, to $305,000 in 2004-05…I guess that is this current year. We have added money to victims services. It is an area where we support victims to provide victims’ impact statements; we provide other services to help them with counselling and so on when it comes to appearing in court.

We would like to do more but it is a challenge, given the fiscal situation. In terms of other things that we can do, Ministers who are responsible for the social envelope are always looking for areas that we can work on, on the social side of things; that is another area that the government can look at for providing assistance to the victims.

Our whole area of family violence is one where we do focus on victims of one kind of violence in the Northwest Territories. As the Member knows, on April 1st, the Protection Against Family Violence Act will come into effect and it will provide one more tool in that kit to help people in the North who are victims.

In terms of the remand side of it, the Member talked about the cost of transportation. The Audit Bureau talked to the RCMP and they said that they didn’t think that the cost was going to go up by very much, if at all. We took their word for it; the Audit Bureau seems to have taken their word for it. We think that they are qualified to make that decision.

In terms of the courthouse, again it comes down to, it’s not as if we are talking about spending money, or not spending the money -- the courts here are undersized and they are going to have to be replaced. The courthouse that we have in the budget right now will be scheduled for completion in 2010. One way or the other, we are going to have to have new space by then. If we start leasing it, it is going to cost us, over time, way more than $40 million. It is either we lease it or we build it, and I think that it makes far more sense for us to build a new courthouse.

I understand the concern. I have talked to the leaders from the region that this Member represents, and I know that they have expressed the same concerns to me; they have expressed particular concerns about investing more in correctional facilities than we do in educational facilities. I want to assure the Member that that isn’t the case. We are investing way more in educational facilities, way more in education than we are in corrections. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod. Thank you. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find Mr. Dent’s responses to some of the Members very interesting. I want to say I appreciate the comments of the other Members, specifically with regard to one area which is of importance to me; the remand closure in Hay River. I do appreciate the comments that were made.

The Minister keeps saying, on the transportation costs, that the RCMP says it’s not going to cost any extra; therefore, it is so. Well, they told it to the Audit Bureau, so for sure it’s not going to cost any more. I think that is a very shallow response; the Audit Bureau said that. There has been no good analysis applied to that question. To just keep saying well the costs aren’t going to go up; I’m sorry, that is superficial, it’s not satisfactory.

To the other issue, Mr. Chairman, that we could realize all the savings right now if we just did away with the 5.5 jobs. I think the Minister needs to look at this in the context of the operations of the department for which he is responsible.

Don’t do me any favours; just look at what works within your own operations. That is what I would suggest. I would also suggest that hauling people from every community south of the lake to be remanded in custody in Yellowknife is not a very practical thought, for a lot of reasons, Mr. Chairman.

I haven’t heard one Member from this side of the House speak in favour of that. The Minister talks about consultation with communities. He says that they didn’t need to do consultation with communities because he is consulting with the MLAs. What did the MLAs have to say? The MLAs said leave it alone. We have a billion-dollar budget here and the MLAs said leave it alone. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get that message through to Minister Dent, in terms of targets for reduction initiatives, whatever it is that he is trying to spend.

A lot of things were in the business plans, Mr. Chairman, which didn’t get carried out or acted upon, because the Members said no. Reinvest, spend money in this area, this is important to us, we represent the people, this is our input, this is our opinion. Most often, the government responded accordingly, but not in this instance; they did not. The fact that we even had to have the discussion around the Hay River and Inuvik court registries was an exercise that never should have had to take place in the first place. Here we are talking about a $41 million court services building in Yellowknife, and we just barely saved our courthouse in Hay River and Inuvik. How regressive can we be when it comes to regional services and delivery of programs and services and jobs close to where the people are? It just frustrates me that we even had to have that discussion. But we did, and we managed to salvage those services in those communities which, I suppose, I should be grateful.

It is not about us. It is about the people we serve. The services should be close to the people. You have a great piece of infrastructure in Hay River with the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. People serve sentences there. People do remand there. They are close to their families. People come to Hay River for other reasons. They come there to have their vehicles serviced. They come there to shop. If they have family members in SMCC, they might go see them, and it maintains a tie for those people with their families in their communities.

For some reason, for which we will never have an accounting, the North Slave Correctional Centre was overbuilt. We put too much infrastructure in the capital. We spent too much money on it. The cost overruns were enormous. And yet, still, we are going to keep paying the price for that in the communities. It was bad enough. It was offensive enough in the first place. But now we are going to suffer these losses in the region on top of it, which just even makes it more untenable. I would like to know where the accountability is for the management of this department. Here we are, as well, shutting down the Dene K'onia, Mr. Chair, to bring our young offenders up here and put them right beside an adult facility; open custody young offenders being incarcerated right next to the big house, so to speak, the maximum security corrections facility in the Northwest Territories. What kind of message is that to open custody kids? I argued about this before it was built. I just don’t know what the thinking was that went into that. If we wanted to argue for economies, we would put everything in Yellowknife. We wouldn’t bother putting anything in the regions. We could just build this super jail, this super courthouse, super educational facilities and a super college. We would just put it all right here. But I thought our government had a philosophy of offering services and programs close to the people in the regions that we serve. If we don’t have that, well, I guess we should just say so.

From a dollar and an economies point of view, now that we have overbuilt this monster thing here in Yellowknife, now we have to feed it. Now we have to put people here to justify it. For a small amount, really, that we are talking about, because the Audit Bureau came back and said if you are not going to eliminate the 5.5 positions, you are really talking about $267,000. Like I said, I still challenge that number because I don’t believe that transportation costs are $18,000. I don’t care what the RCMP said about it, because nobody has shown me the numbers to prove that is the truth or the facts. It says there was no historical data examined on which to establish that fact. The Audit Bureau report says that. So I am just amazed, Mr. Chair, at the lack of responsiveness to what the Members are saying here. This is a minority government, I guess. We choose from amongst ourselves. We put people in charge of certain areas of operation, and it is a system that we try to make work. I have a hard time to justify the lack of attention to what the Members are saying on this one.

Mr. Chair, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions. On April 1st, how exactly are the casual employees of the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre going to be dealt with with respect to their employment? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With the closure of the remand unit, we would have 4.5 extra full-time employees that would be worked into the workforce. So it would depend on whether there was anybody who was sick or went on holidays. There would be a number of different factors. It would depend on whether or not casual workers would be called into work on that day. The Member asked about April 1st. It really does depend on the demand that day for backfill, whether or not casual workers will be called in. But there would be fewer casual workers called in generally on an ongoing basis through every shift in the day after April 1st, until the full-time cost measures down to the level of which it should fall. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

So, Mr. Chair, if I could ask then, the casual employees at SMCC are not going to be let go or reduced in number. They might just get called in fewer times. Is that correct? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

That is correct, Mr. Chair.