Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Justice and I want to follow up on his statement from today about a Community Safety Strategy.
I was really pleased to see, and I totally agree with the Minister’s statement, that the people of the Northwest Territories know their needs and priorities, and communities should take the lead on determining how to address issues. I think that this is going to be a great initiative and I just would like to ask the Minister some questions about getting a little further information about this particular strategy and what it means.
My first question to the Minister would be to advise me and the House on how this particular strategy was developed. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What has been developed, the strategy is basically a skeleton or framework that will be able to go into the communities, we’ll be able to work with communities so that they can set their priorities based on this framework. The framework was developed in cooperation from a number of different organizations, including the Department of Justice, the RCMP, as well as input from communities, so the types of things that they would like to see that will help them develop their own individual strategies. So it’s more of a framework that will be able to be used by the communities to help them set their priorities.
Thanks to the Minister for that explanation. I guess I would like to know if the Minister can tell us at this point – I recognize that it’s a framework – what sort of content is going to be within each individual community strategy. What sorts of activities are you anticipating the community would undertake? What sorts of particular initiatives or what services would a program require to set up their Community Safety Strategy?
That would be presupposing what is specifically appropriate for every individual community. The framework offers the tools to help them set their priorities based on resources they have in the communities, resources that are available regionally, resources that are available territorially. Communities need to set their priorities and each community will have their own individual Community Safety Strategy. I’d hate to presuppose what anyone would look like, given that every community in the Northwest Territories has their own unique realities.
I guess I also don’t want the Minister to presuppose, but I was hoping I could get a few examples of the sorts of things that might be in a Community Safety Strategy.
I’d like to know from the Minister, in terms of implementation within each and every community, is this going to be an initiative or a strategy that is going to require a certain amount of funding? Is it going to be a request within the budget for funding for community safety strategies?
There are a number of programs that already exist in the Northwest Territories. It’s about creating access to the different programs and services, whether they are health programs, whether they are education programs, or whether they are justice programs. We need more money. It’s difficult to say at this point in time. We will have a better assessment of that after we have created the pilot in these first three communities, Tulita being the first community that we are going into. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
He mentioned three communities, and there’s one mentioned in a statement and I would be interested in knowing the other two.
My last question to the Minister goes to how a community can get a Community Safety Strategy. If my community, for instance, wishes to have a Community Safety Strategy, what steps does my community or I have to take to ensure my community gets on to the list to get a Community Safety Strategy? Thank you.
I would like to know what the three communities are as well. We did have the three communities identified. We had discussed them in business planning. Since that time, we’ve had a couple of changes and we have had to reconsider the communities that we are going into. We haven’t decided fully on what the other two communities are going to be, but we are working on that right now. We hope to have those communities listed in short order. So for now, it’s Tulita. We will get back to the Member as soon as we can with the names of the other two communities.
I forget the other part of the question, so I’ll sit down. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Well, she’s out of questions, so we won’t get it until tomorrow. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
