Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Throughout the week I’ve made comments and Member’s statements and asked questions regarding such things as the coroner’s report and the Forfeiture Act. Today I’d like to take a moment and talk about the victim services that we currently provide in the Northwest Territories and take another stance on how we provide services and support to people that are victims of crime.
Specifically, for victim service coordinators in the Northwest Territories, the mandate of victim services is to provide information, assistance, referrals and support to victims of crimes or tragedy in the Northwest Territories. Some things our victims might be struggling with are sudden death, suicide, disasters such as house fires, floods, motor vehicle accidents, and most prevalent in the Northwest Territories is violence and assault.
I looked at some statistics from the NWT family violence report card, and from April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013, victim services has provided services to many victims in the NWT. For instance, brief service contacts, there was 537 cases; for new clients, 563 new client cases – and this is a big one – for continuing cases in the Northwest Territories in that short amount of time there were 842 cases that were continuing. In that sense, that makes me think that these victims are afraid to stand up or afraid to go before the courts to see through with charges. That is a total of 1,942 cases of family violence in the Northwest Territories.
The victim service coordinators provide a great service to our victims in the Northwest Territories, not only to victims but their families and their relatives. They provide services such as emotional support, dealing with the aftermath of serious crime, even accompanying victims to go talk to the police to make impact statements, visits to the hospital, referrals to appropriate community agencies and services such as counselling, which I must say there’s still waiting times for people to go to counselling.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Thank you.
---Unanimous consent granted
Like I said, there is a lot of waiting time for counselling, so even if the victim coordinators can get our victims to counselling, they still have to wait to go and see them, and even treatment.
They also provide information on the criminal justice system, the court processes and notifications on the status of their cases. They also help victims fill out court-related documents and, as I said earlier, victim impact statements.
Today I want to recognize all our victim services coordinators in the Northwest Territories and the great work that they do.
I will be asking questions later to the Minister of Justice on how we are continuing to support these victim services and how we can do a better job of helping those that really need the help. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
