Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions today for the Minister of Justice. Yesterday in his Minister’s statement, he mentioned that we had some individuals who are participating in the Wellness Court. There were five that he mentioned and 13 were actually referred. If five are participating and 13 were actually referred to the Wellness Court, what programs do the five who are participating in the Wellness Court, what kind of diversion programs are they participating in instead of being institutionalized? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you. It’s quite possible that each of them is in a different scenario, and a care plan would be established for each one of those individuals. So, I could get that level of detail for the Member if he so wishes. Thank you.
It just shows anybody who’s having addiction issues or mental health issues that they don’t have to be institutionalized, that there are other streams of helping these individuals out so that they don’t go into the system. However, of the 13 who got referred by the same, and, yesterday, it sounds like there were eight who were institutionalized. For these eight individuals who didn’t get referred through the Wellness Court system, what kind of plan of care is given to these individuals who were referred from the Wellness Courts but didn’t meet the requirements? When they get into the same North Slave Correctional Centre, what’s in place for them so that they can get the rehabilitation services that they need? Thank you.
Thank you. Again, that’s a bit of a level of detail that I don’t have here, but if they are ending up in our facilities, it’s incumbent upon us to have the programs and the services required to treat them when they’re in our facilities and after the OAG’s report, we do have some work to do in that area and I have given my commitment to the House and the Members that that work will continue and that we will have programs and services that are going to address the needs of the inmates that we have in our facilities. Thank you.
In terms of individuals who do fall out of the Wellness Court system or don’t even get to the Wellness Court system, they do become institutionalized and spend some time in the North Slave Correctional Centre, or any of our institutions for that matter.
I was wondering if the Minister had any information on how much it costs to house one inmate per day in the North Slave Correctional Centre. Thank you.
To my recollection, it’s just over $303 per day. That’s to house federal inmates. Our own inmates, the number may be a little bit different, but when we invoice the federal government for housing federal inmates it’s $303.08 a day.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When some individuals commit a big crime, they’ll get put in jail for a very long time. I just did some quick calculations here and at $303 for a year, that’s about $110,000 per inmate within our correctional system, which is equivalent to a job position, possibly a part-time nurse in a community, just to put it out there.
But I want to ask, what is the Minister doing to work in the communities to develop some type of treatment or counselling program, especially in our small communities, to prevent individuals from having to eventually come to the end result, which is being institutionalized in our North Slave centre? Thank you.
Community justice committees have been successful in the communities. Tomorrow, in fact, we have proponents who have expressed interested in the on-the-land program. They will be meeting here in Yellowknife tomorrow. So we’re hopeful that out of this meeting tomorrow we will arrive at a proponent that we can work with that we can see the program get up and running somewhere here in the Northwest Territories. So we are doing that, and we also are looking at mental health first aid for our staff in our facilities. We also have three psychologists on staff in our five facilities across the Northwest Territories and we will continue to provide the required help that the inmates who are incarcerated in our facilities need and deserve. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Bisaro.
