Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Chair, there were three positions. There’s been a competition. One of the incumbents was successful. There are two vacancies as case officers. The other two incumbents, to my knowledge, have applied for those jobs and are expected to get them as priority status employees.
These programs are delivered, I’m told, two to three times a year. They take six weeks each, so they’re not delivered constantly.
The case managers — the same people — will stop doing case management for six weeks, be backfilled by experienced corrections officers and deliver the program. That’s my understanding of how it will work: essentially, the same people delivering the program but under the name of case officer as opposed to a PDO.
I might add that this model is the one that is used in all of our smaller facilities for delivering programs. We were asked to find efficiencies within the system. We’ve tried to do that. We’re satisfied that the programs will not be adversely affected, and actually, this particular reduction won’t result in any layoffs.
Mr. Abernethy.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. A slightly different topic but still in the same area: can you tell me exactly how many female young offenders are housed in Arctic Tern?
The Minister of Justice.
Mahsi, Mr. Chair. To date we have two inmates at Arctic Tern.
Can you tell me how many female young offenders are currently housed at the North Slave Young Offenders Facility?
Currently we have none at that corrections facility. Mahsi.
Has the department housed female young offenders at the North Slave Young Offenders Facility in the recent past — one, two years?
Deputy Minister Cooper.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. On a short-term basis that has been done when a female has been arrested here, prior to being taken to Inuvik. For short periods of time that has been done.
Next on the list I have Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t want to cover a lot of the ground. I agree with what my colleagues Mr. Bromley and Mr. Abernethy are saying.
I’ve been here for just over four years, and I’ve seen the North Slave Correctional Centre go into the new building. I’ve had many discussions with the former Minister about the new approach to corrections: how it was going to be holistic, more healing, and how they were going to do some good things there.
I share the concerns of my colleagues that the program delivery officers are being taken out of the sexual offender and family violence programming. That causes me some concern. I listened to the deputy minister’s rationale and how the programs will be delivered, but you just have to question whether the frequency, the reliability, will still be there if the programming gets left to case workers and the psychologists, or whoever is going to be delivering the program.
I think there is going to be an impact on the frequency and reliability of the delivery of those programs. I’m not sure why we would, in our largest correctional facility in the territory, want to go to a model that’s followed by some of our smaller facilities.
Again, I know the department was up against the wall in terms of reductions. If you look at the reductions, they’re obviously not going to touch the security side of things in corrections. It would be almost impossible to look for reductions there, so programming is the obvious soft spot, I could say, and an area where they could look at reductions. I don’t agree with the reductions on the program delivery officers. I think it’s a step backwards.
I’d like to find out a little bit more about the program Ms. Schofield talked about — the federal funding — and where it looks like we’ve applied for federal funding for the YO facility. I’m wondering if we’ve applied for federal funding under that same program for the adult facility.
The Minister of Justice, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chair. My understanding is that the federal funding is only provided to the young offenders, not the adults.
Mr. Chairman, I guess the other thing I wanted to talk about was the reduction in the nursing position at North Slave Correctional Centre. There is not going to be any coverage on the weekends, I’m to understand, because of this reduction.
I’m wondering if the department has done any work on trying to figure out what it’s going to cost. We’ve all been to the emergency room at Stanton. It can take six to eight hours to get in to see a doctor there. If that’s going to take a corrections guard out of that facility with an inmate to go to the hospital on the weekends to see a doctor, a nurse practitioner or whoever’s there, that’s just not good enough use of his time. They should be staying in the facility and not having to transport inmates over to the hospital on the weekends.
I’m wondering if the Minister has any idea of the impact that would cause to the operations at the facility on the weekends if guards are going to have to take inmates over to the hospital on a regular basis.
Ms. Schofield.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The nursing position that’s been eliminated has been vacant for some time now. It’s anticipated that with the reduction in the scheduling, they will be able to accommodate the workload and that there is no plan for any impact on the service provided to our inmates.
Does that mean there will be full coverage at that facility over the weekend?
There won’t be full coverage, but it’s not an everyday occurrence at Corrections. But certainly, that is one area that we did highlight as the Justice Department before we even went to cutting the vacant position. There wasn’t much weekend activity. Mahsi.
My fear is that if there is no coverage on the weekends, inmates are going to want to go to the hospital. If they need to go to the hospital, they are going to go to the hospital, and when they go to the hospital, there is going to have to be a guard or two guards with them when they go. Vacant position or not, I think we need to have coverage at that facility on the weekends.
Certainly there are incidents at the Corrections. The avenue that, I guess, we’ll access will be at Stanton. But we will certainly continue to monitor that. Mahsi.
Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had a couple of questions also on the nursing support services for the North Slave Correctional Centre but also for the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. There is a proposal to reduce funding for these functions by the amount of $109,000. I have heard now that for North Slave it will be the elimination of a vacant position at the North Slave Correctional Centre. What is proposed to be eliminated in terms of service or people in the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre?
Deputy Minister Cooper.
There is one maintenance position, and it is the only position in that facility, so there is only one affected employee. It has been recommended to senior management that this could be done. The DPW looks after the more sophisticated and complicated repairs and maintenance that need to be done. The COs and the inmates can look after the more minor maintenance matters. We understand that there will be two retirements this summer, and the affected employee is almost certain to get one of those positions as a corrections officer.
To my question, I am not clear. Is there any proposed change to the support at South Mackenzie Correctional Centre for nursing support?
Minister of Justice.
Mr. Chair, to answer the question for the Member, no, that is not part of the plan. Mahsi.
Can the Minister please tell me: what is the anticipated savings from the elimination of the vacant position at the North Slave Correctional Centre?
The proposed savings by eliminating the position would be $87,000. Mahsi.
So the savings of eliminating a vacant position for a nurse at the North Slave Correctional Centre…. Will there still be a nurse at the North Slave Correctional Centre working Monday to Friday?
Yes, that is correct. There will be a position there.
Why was the position vacant? How long has it been vacant, and why was it vacant?
We don’t have that detailed information at this time, but we can certainly provide that to the Members. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mrs. Groenewegen.
I have a motion I’d like to move. We don’t have that information. It would be helpful to have that information in our deliberations here to help us make decisions. Since we don’t have that information, I’m going to make a motion.
I move that this committee strongly recommends that the government take immediate action to reinstate funding in the amount of…. We’re going to have to amend the motion here. Can I just get some clarification? Let me read the motion, and then I’ll find out if that needs to be changed.
I move that this committee strongly recommends that the government take immediate action to reinstate funding in the amount of $109,000 for the proposed elimination of nursing positions at the South Mackenzie and North Slave correctional centres under the Department of Justice, under Community Justice and Corrections.
Mr. Chairman, that’s my motion, and I’m now hearing from the Minister that there is no anticipated change at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre and, in fact, the only position being eliminated is the one position at the North Slave Correctional Centre, for a savings of $87,000. Do we need to amend the motion, or what?
Excuse me. We do have a motion that’s been put on the floor. We have a motion. It’s been read out. We’ll circulate the motion, and then we’ll deal with the motion. We’re circulating the motion.
To the motion, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question which might clarify the difficulty we’re having with the dollar amount. When the department numbers were discussed at the Social Programs Committee, we were given information that indicated that a nurse position at SMCC for a value of $22,000 was going to be reduced. If, as the Minister has advised, that position is not being reduced, could the department advise what that $22,000 reduction is related to? That might help us out here.
Again, we’re dealing with the motion. At this time we can only discuss the motion. You can’t ask questions to the Minister. I’d like to ask the mover of the motion, Mrs. Groenewegen, to the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the motion, which is to recommend that the government reinstate the $109,000 for any proposed reductions to nursing services at the North Slave Correctional Centre and the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre, I would like to say that I believe these are important services, and they are there to ensure that the corrections officers are not having to extend their time dealing with health issues. I think that the funding for them should be reinstated.
Our motion is premised on information that we received from the Department of Justice. If that information has changed, so be it, but this is the information we have before us. This is the information that we’re going to vote on.
To the motion.
Question.
The question has been called.
Motion carried.
Maybe at this time we’ll take a short break.
The Committee of the Whole took a short recess.
We have a quorum, so we’ll reconvene. We’re on page 7-35, Department of Justice, Activity Summary, Community Justice and Corrections, operations and expenditures. Do we have any questions? Mr. Krutko.
There was a program that was in place with the Tl'oondih Healing Society in Fort McPherson, where we were looking at developing a program which was implemented for, I believe, three clients who went through three different times with the program. The whole intention of the program was to reintegrate inmates back into their communities and to allow them to deal with some of their issues so that they don’t re-offend. But it also tried to make them aware, to be able to cope with society but, more importantly, to deal with their issues before they’re released from prison.
In regard to that program, there was supposed to be a report done on that in regard to the program itself. It was a pilot project. I know we worked with the Department of Justice and the Tl'oondih Healing Society. A lot of work and effort has gone into that. We still have wilderness camps, but I think this was one step up on that. I’d like to ask the Minister: exactly what’s the status of that program, and is that something that the department will continue to look at?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. Certainly reintegrating clients or inmates back to the community is an important step to our process. I will look further into what the Member is alluding to. That will be our commitment from Justice. We’ll certainly look into that.
