These are government assets and we work with the communities to advise them of best practices.
I think as you go travelling to more of the smaller communities, you’ll see the standards of building that they have put in. I think they’re being standard. If the Member’s looking for blueprints or plans, it’s maybe something that I would have to work with the communities to see what we can provide to the Member.
I appreciate that offer to work with communities to provide that data. Thank you. I’ll expect that soon.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Just a comment. I have nobody else on my list. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m wondering, in our advising to communities, what are we doing to bring the concept of full-cost accounting to communities so they actually can bump up their capacity to that of the larger communities and understand the benefits that can accrue with a higher building standard approach and energy efficiency approach. Are we offering courses on full-cost accounting? The reason I ask that is I am often met with sort of blank looks when I try to bring up that discussion. I know the department has a School of Community Government. Do we have courses such as that? What action is being taken to ensure we’re putting good infrastructure in place?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We sort of have a multi-pronged approach when we work with communities on developing their infrastructure and how they acquire that infrastructure and how they construct that infrastructure. As the Member is aware, each community has an energy plan, a capital plan, and we work with the Arctic Energy Alliance to try to marry those two plans together to come up with a good capital plan that’s sustainable over the long term for the community. In support of that, through the School of Community Government, we do offer communities training in the areas of asset maintenance to help them maintain the assets that they have, not only to an applicable code but to get the best value for costing that they can out of the assets that they do procure and they do construct. We also try to take the view, work with the community and their vision. If their vision is to have a sustainable community, which we encourage them to do, is to work over a long-term plan to achieve their vision. We work with communities to get the best value for the money that we do provide them and the money that they also raise themselves.
There’s nothing that’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day across the Territories. It will be a slow, steady, methodical march towards achieving their vision. As new supports are required from MACA, we will endeavour, through the School of Community Government, to provide those supports to the communities.
I guess to summarize, would that be a no, we are not providing any explanation or education on full-cost accounting?
We do not have a course specific around full-cost accounting, but certain aspects of the concept that the Member is articulating are embedded in the courses and training that we provide to communities.
I appreciate that. The last part of this is that the deputy minister mentioned the community energy plans and I think the Minister did too, and the capital plans. Were there any standards provided to be met in the development of those plans in terms of energy efficiency or whatever?
There were no specific standards that communities were asked or demanded to adhere to other than the regulated codes that are applicable to, and depending the type of asset they wish to construct. Communities were, however, encouraged, depending on what their vision was in this area, to be the best they could be. We shared best practices not only from the larger communities that we have here in the Northwest Territories, but also some of the smaller ones. The Minister alluded to it earlier, that costs are high enough there that people already have the incentive to be as efficient as they can. In terms of formal standards, none were demanded of the communities.
Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Mr. Bromley, your time has expired, but I will allow you one more question. You’re good? All right. We’re on page 4-4, activity summary, regional operations, infrastructure investment summary. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of things. I guess, first of all, I wanted to ask the Minister if he could provide an update to the House on the situation at Northland Trailer Park here in Yellowknife and whether or not there’s been any plan formulated on how to deal with the infrastructure requirements of that trailer park here in Yellowknife.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The City has made application to the federal government for some of the Green Fund, and we have supported that and are waiting to hear back from the federal government.
I look forward to hearing back on how that rolls out.
Just a couple of other things. I just wanted to voice my concern over the dusty conditions in small communities. I’ve had the honour and the privilege to serve in this House for the past several years and the opportunity, as well, to travel to a number of small communities. We get in there oftentimes in the spring or summer. The thing that is always... I’m left with the impression that things are really dusty. It detracts from the quality of life in our small communities. I think the department, we can try to put it all back on the communities, but I think at the end of the day the Government of the Northwest Territories has an obligation to partner with the communities to get, in a meaningful way, dust suppression occurring in our small communities around the Territory. I would be very supportive of a program that would enable that to happen and trying to find the dollars to make that happen. It’s a health issue for people with respiratory illness and it also leads to increased incidents of respiratory illness in small communities. It would build up pride in the communities. I think equipment would last much longer.
It was about three or four years ago we were in Tulita and they had applied, I think it was E35 dust suppressant chemical to their roads. What a difference that made walking around the community and vehicles driving around the community, not throwing up the dust you would normally see. It’s something we should pursue as a government. I really do believe that’s the course of action we should take. We should try to find the dollars to make it happen. If we’re not going to, and this is the last time we’re going to go through this process as the 16th Assembly, if we’re not going to do it, I’d like to see that included in a transition document for the next government to actively pursue that for small communities.
Tulita was a good example. There are a couple other communities that I’ve been in where the communities took it upon themselves to deal with the dust control. They’ve actually done a very good job. Jean Marie River I think this past year has put a dust suppressant down that I understand has worked quite well. Fort Providence as a community did some groundwork and they’re going to do some chipsealing next year.
Communities are starting to realize that it is a health issue, as the Member and a few other Members have mentioned. They’re starting to include it in their capital plan. We’re starting to see some good results out of this. I think as more and more communities in the future realize they have the authority to determine, well, yeah, let’s put dust control in, I think we’ll see more communities doing that.
Part of our role at MACA would be assisting them with some of the expertise and some of the costing and just giving them an indication of how much it may cost to apply the materials.
I agree the communities should be partners, but I really think, and my belief is, that the Government of the Northwest Territories, in some way, shape, or form, has to be there with dollars. I know the New Deal is there, but communities are being forced to decide on important community projects over dust suppression, and oftentimes the dust suppression doesn’t quite get to the top of the list, even though I spoke of the benefits of having dust suppression. We need to come up with a way to fund in partnership with communities if they want to have the GNWT partner with them. I’m talking about some substantial dollars, not just hundreds of thousands. It’s probably going to cost the government $3 million or $4 million to do it in a meaningful way in partnership with communities. That’s something I’d like to see happen. I know the Minister is trying to say the communities get their money and they should do it, but what I’m saying is the communities get their money. Let’s find some of our money, partner with them and do it in more of a meaningful way so that we ensure it gets done in some of the small communities. That way it will get done.
The communities have used some of their infrastructure dollars that they get from this government. Some communities have an opportunity to use the gas tax money that they get. Some have used Building Canada Fund money to do some of the work on their roads. As a department we have absolutely no infrastructure dollars. I mean, $28 million right down to the last $2,000 goes to the communities. We leave it to them. If there are ways to identify or go after more funds to assist the communities, then that’s something that MACA is always going to do. If there’s federal money available, it’s something that we continue to try and get our hands on as much money as we can and then we’ll flow that to the communities.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay. We’re good. We’re on page 4-4. Mr. Krutko.
One of the other areas that I think we as a government need to put a lot more focus on is the fire departments and training that is required in communities, especially looking at front-line workers and the people who have to deal with them. In most cases it’s a volunteer fire department. A lot of people volunteer, but they need the training. They need the capacity to do their job. They need the equipment to make sure that when they put their lives at risk responding to a fire, we equip them with the equipment they require. The same thing for ambulance services on the highways. We do have to work with communities and community governments and the local fire chiefs and volunteer firefighters in the communities to give them the capacity and the tools to do it. A lot of it falls under the fire marshal’s domain. With having the fire marshals going into our communities, that’s something that’s required.
I’d like to ask the Minister what we’re doing to ensure the communities have the capacity to respond to fires in their communities, that people are qualified with training for local firefighters, volunteer fire departments, and giving the communities the capacity to respond to highway accidents and making sure that they have some means of dealing with the ambulance services of some type, which in most cases are handled by the local volunteer fire department.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I couldn’t agree with the Member more on the need for improving our training to fire departments and assisting them with training. There’s a whole new program that’s coming forward. We’ve identified the need to improve the training that we provide to small communities. The assistant fire marshals in each region are coming up with training plans and we’ve identified some dollars that would be put towards this, obviously pending Legislative Assembly approval. It is one that we’re quite aware of and we know that communities are challenged, so I think we’ll see after the next fiscal year a move towards more regional-type training, working with the assistant fire marshals, going into the communities and working with them to identify some of their needs, some of their equipment. It is one that we recognize is quite a challenge and we’re moving in that direction and starting to work with the communities to deal with them. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Just a reminder to Members that we’re talking about capital here today. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is around the area of capital with regard to fire equipment and making sure people are equipped to do their job. More importantly, we had an instance here in Yellowknife where two firefighters lost their lives. There was a major review done on that through the Workers’ Compensation Board. There was, basically, an injunction filed against the City of Yellowknife because of the incident, and there were a whole bunch of recommendations that came out of that inquiry. I think, if anything, we should learn from that and make sure that we do give those firefighters all the support we can and, more importantly, that they have the training that they need to respond to a fire and when they find themselves in a dangerous situation.
Again, I think it’s important that we, as government, who are responsible for giving the volunteer firefighters the tools and the equipment and the training that they require, but more importantly, with the situation that occurred here in Yellowknife, and again because of that, it’s an incident that we don’t want to happen anywhere else, and more importantly, we have to learn from that, and more importantly, take what the recommendations that came out of that inquiry, and more importantly, put them in place so that we do protect our firefighters throughout the Northwest Territories.
Again, I’d just like to ask, what are we doing as a department to follow up on those recommendations that were put in place and also in regard to the consequences of the review by the Workers’ Compensation Board and, more importantly, the recommendations that came out of that inquiry and ensuring that we are following those recommendations going forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of the duties of the assistant fire marshal will be going into the communities and assessing some of their equipment, working with the communities to identify the life of their equipment, and possibly working with the communities to put that equipment into their capital plan. Obviously training, as the Member said, is huge. No point in having a fire truck in the community if you don’t have the training for it. That’s where we see in this part of the new program that I had mentioned to this House a few minutes ago, is training is a huge part of it and it’s something that we’re focusing on, and I think in the coming fiscal year we’re going to see progress in the area of training. That way, we don’t have situations where we have firefighters that are untrained trying to operate equipment, going into buildings. We want to make sure that we stay away from that. It is something that is in the works. Equipment is a huge part.
I’ve been in a couple small communities where they’ve shown me the equipment that they’ve had and how they need to be trained to operate it. We take those very seriously and that’s part of why we wanted to make sure we had all the proper training in place for the equipment that’s there. Thank you.
My final question is: How many fire departments do we have certified at this time? That are certified, that are trained and do have the certification required to actually be certified firefighters in our communities.
I’m not expecting those folks’ questions. We don’t have the information, but I would be willing to provide the information to the Member as to the number of fire departments we have and what kind of capacity they have. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. We’re on page 4-4, activity summary, regional operations, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $28.002 million.
Agreed.
We’ll go back to the summary page 4-2, Municipal and Community Affairs, departmental summary, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $28.002 million.
Agreed.
Does committee agree that we have concluded MACA?
Agreed.
Minister McLeod, on behalf of committee, I’d like to thank the witnesses for coming in for today. If I could please get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please exclude the witnesses, that would be great.
Next on the agenda is the Department of Justice. Minister Lafferty, do you have witnesses that you’d like to bring in today?
Yes, Mr. Chair, I do.
Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Does committee agree that we allow Mr. Lafferty to bring in his witnesses?
Agreed.
Sergeant-at-Arms, if I could please get you to escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Thank you. Minister Lafferty, if I could please get you to introduce your witness for the record.
Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I have Bronwyn Watters, the deputy minister of Justice.
Thank you, Minister Lafferty. We’re going to defer page 7-2 until we have completed the detail. Is committee agreed?
Agreed.
We’ll move along to page 7-4, activity summary, community justice and corrections, infrastructure investment summary. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to community justice and corrections, one thing that we’ve been pushing for years from a community perspective is having more say in the judicial process, but more importantly, finding ways instead of incarcerating people in large facilities, to start looking at community-based justice programs and incarcerating people closer to their homes, either on-the-land programs or also working with community justice committees in regard to having community sentencing circles. I’d just like to know where is the community involvement when it comes to community justice, because it seems like we’ve strayed away from the old notion of on-the-land camps by way of offering inmates opportunities to serve out their sentence in wilderness camps and also looking at programs such as the program through the Tl’oondih Healing Society in regard to a transitional justice program for people to transition out of the justice system back into their communities. I’d just like to ask what are we doing in regard to those types of initiatives to include the communities in the justice system.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chair. This has been an area of interest to the Member and also the Members as well. The community-based programming has been very successful to date in the Sahtu region. It was unfortunate that we lost an elder, but the program still continues. It is open to other regions, as well, if they are interested in pursuing the community-based programming to deal with the corrections offenders.
We are currently finalizing our review of the community justice programming and we felt that we needed to undertake that review to find out which community is not working effectively and probably needs some support, and which community has been very successful. Those are in the final stages and we will be sharing that review with the Members next month, in November. That is the feedback from the communities, the people that are involved.
We definitely want to have the community involved when there are offenders from the communities, how we deal with those offenders so they can be reintegrated back to the community.
The Sahtu region, again, has been very successful to date. We want to continue that process.
Mr. Chairman, again, the communities want to be involved in the justice system. They want to do their part in regards to finding ways to bring down crime rates in our communities and also trying to deal with the biggest affects on incarceration in the Northwest Territories. It is basically alcohol and substance abuse. Most of our communities have taken it on themselves. Two communities I represent, Aklavik went for a plebiscite last year but didn’t quite make it. Again, our communities are trying to do their part by bringing forward plebiscites by saying we don’t want alcohol in our communities. If we do, we want to have some controls in place, but more importantly, we want some means of prohibition to not to be seen to not doing anything, but doing their part also through the hamlet council, the band councils, the community leaders and also enable to work with the Department of Justice, the local RCMP, local detachments to assist them in doing their jobs to improve the quality of life in our communities.
I think that is something that we really have to focus on. Look at the justice system, not from the corrections system and Supreme Court or courtrooms, but look at it from a community perspective outwards and how we can look at justice that flows out of our communities, deal with the problems of crime in our communities and find preventative ways to prevent crime in our communities.
I know we spend millions of dollars in corrections forces. We are spending millions of dollars in regards to incarceration. Is there a possibility of looking at pilot projects with those communities, invest some of those dollars to keep those people who basically may have challenges?
We have a high number of individual inmates in jail with FAS, no fault of their own. It is basically a problem we see throughout our whole system. I would like to ask the Minister and the department, is there a possibility of doing a better job working with communities to find solutions to these problems and reinvest some of those dollars than having people incarcerated, have community-based solutions to bring down our crime rates and prevent crime in our communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I’m not sure that is capital. It sounds more like O and M, but I will go to the Minister for a response.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to see more money. The Member is referring to millions that should be going to the communities. I do agree with that. If we can develop preventative measurements, preventive programs, that is what our vision is, I do believe, with the Members and also our department. That is the very reason why we are doing an overall review. With the outcome of the review, of course, it will take some investment to make some changes.
We want to have community members involved as well. We do have coordinators and community justice committees that are in some of the communities that were in place, established, working effectively. Some weren’t. Those are the areas that we will continue to strengthen. I think out of this particular review, we want to strengthen our Community Justice Program, which the Member is referring to. Most definitely we want to see more programming to the communities, because I am a firm believer, also, that prevention is the way to go and try to prevent even the young ones going through the court process creating more criminal records. We need to prevent that from happening.
Mr. Chairman, we do spend millions of dollars in correctional facilities. I notice that we are looking at more money going into correctional facilities. I think that we have to reprofile those dollars to make use of those facilities that are useable.
Like I mentioned, the healing camps. We are also looking at alternative means of having people that basically have minor offences, that they don’t have to serve their time, taking them out of the communities, find a way that they can serve their time in our communities than having all of these expenditures made to fly these people out; court costs, incarceration costs, a cost of $85,000 a year to keep someone in jail. That $85,000 could be invested in our communities to keep those people at the community level, work with the communities to work with these individuals and make the positive choices in their lives and turn their lives around and find solutions at the community level. For $85,000, we probably could do a lot more in our communities than being able to have a person incarcerated in a larger facility such as Hay River and YCI. Thank you.
