Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up to my Member’s statement earlier and my questions today are for the Minister of Justice. With most of the criminal activity that happened in the community of Inuvik, it was stated in the news today that a lot of it had to do with youth. I wanted to ask the Minister of Justice what type of preventative measures or programs are in place to help these youth that are high-risk youth, maybe troubled youth, to get back and become a part of society again. What kind of programs are in place in the communities that can help these youth get back on track and become part of society again?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a couple things. Some of it’s promotion and advertising. We do have the Not Us campaign, which is actually a community-driven promotion and awareness campaign. It does exist in Inuvik. The RCMP are working with the community group who is delivering that, and I think we’re getting some pretty positive results in Inuvik.
We also have community justice committees in most of our communities in the Northwest Territories. They are working through diversion to work with youth to find alternatives and healing methods, and ways to divert them out of the criminal justice system. There are things that are happening in the communities. Thank you.
The Minister alluded to justice committees and alternatives in terms of programs in the communities. Can the Minister confirm how many communities in the Northwest Territories actually have active community justice committees and what type of activities they’re carrying out in terms of diversion?
I don’t have the exact number of communities that actually have community justice committees in the Northwest Territories. I do know that it is the majority of communities. I also do know that currently 30 of 33 communities have access to the program and are accessing funding. I don’t know how active they are specifically, but I do know that 30 of 33 are accessing the funding for their committees.
That’s really good news to hear, that 30 of our 33 communities are actually accessing this funding for these justice committees.
In terms of alternative and diversion programs having our youth go out and do certain projects or do things for the community, can the Minister allude to what type of projects that these youth are getting diverted into to helping out in the community in terms of volunteering to ensure us that they are not just doing labour work, that they are actually doing some type of skill set that will help them become mature and responsible youth as well as teenagers, and eventually become responsible adults? Can he allude to what type of skill sets they are getting diverted to? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, many of the individual diversions are very specific to the individual involved in the diversion, whatever can be arranged in the community. It would be difficult to provide a comprehensive list of every specific diversion that has taken place, but I will commit to getting to the Member a bit of a summary of the types of things that are being done in the different communities as well as a little bit of a summary on what some of the communities are doing as far as prevention and individual diversion.
I do know that some of the communities have submitted applications for money to run some on-the-land programs that are open to youth so they can get them away from communities and talk about positive activities. I will commit to getting the Member some additional information. I will be happy to share that with him once I have had it compiled. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Do these community justice committees take into account possibly the learning challenges, learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities that these individuals come before them might have when actually dealing with them and dealing with the youth in terms of putting them into an appropriate type of diversion program, or that the youth understands what they are actually going to these community justice committees for? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, every community justice committee consists of representatives from the individual communities. They all come with different strengths, weaknesses and ideas. I couldn’t say whether every committee does exactly what the Member is talking to, but I know many strive to do that. Specifics would depend on the community-by-community basis and what skills they have in their communities, what knowledge they have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
