Debates of February 24, 2014 (day 17)

I request a recorded vote, Madam Chair.

Thank you. The Member is requesting a recorded vote. Any further comments to the motion?

Question is being called. All those in favour? Please stand.

Mr. Moses, Mr. Bromley, Mr. Yakeleya, Mr. Dolynny, Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Nadli, Mr. Hawkins.

All those opposed?

Mr. Menicoche, Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Abernethy, Mr. Miltenberger, Mr. McLeod – Yellowknife South, Mr. Lafferty, Mr. Ramsay, Mr. McLeod – Inuvik Twin Lakes.

All those abstaining? Seven in favour of the motion, eight opposed. The motion is defeated.

---Defeated

Page 9-23, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start by asking how many legal aid lawyers we currently have on staff, what the wait times currently are and how they vary across the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Currently, the board has 15 positions for staff lawyers and the wait time is 60 days. Thank you.

I assume that’s an average across the whole NWT, so that would vary region to region. I wonder if I could get a rough idea of what the variation would be like. Thank you.

I should also mention that the waiting list for family law clients is 43 days. Urgent matters are assigned to counsel right away. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am very happy to hear that about the family law clients. Did the Minister have handy on what the variation is on the 60-day average across the NWT?

I don’t have that detail, but we’d be happy to provide the Member with that detail. Thank you.

Much appreciated, Madam Chair. I get to Social Programs when I can but I don’t always, so perhaps that’s been supplied and will be easy to pull out.

From time to time we have heard concern from legal aid lawyers about various issues and I’m wondering if the department has a process where they collect feedback from legal aid lawyers about what issues they’re having and how the department responds and whether there are any examples. Like, when would this have been done most recently?

For that detail, perhaps we’ll go to Deputy Minister Haener.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Haener.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In terms of information on cases and the length of time that individuals wait or the length of time a matter takes, we would have to consult further with folks in the legal aid unit.

Thank you, Mr. Haener. Mr. Bromley.

I was switching topics a little bit there so I may have not been clear. I’m just wondering: our legal aid lawyers are obviously a very important part of our service delivery here, and I know that they have issues from time to time, and they may very well have suggestions for how the system can improve.

What is the process that we have in place to check with that professional staff, collect up any comments they have and respond to it, and assuming there is a process in place, when did we most recently do that?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.

The staff lawyers that we do have, the 15 positions that I spoke of earlier, as they’re doing their job and interacting with the clientele, if they have issues or feel we should be looking at resourcing things in a different manner or doing things differently, they would bring that up to management. It would end up going to the Legal Services Board and we could make some decisions from there through the Legal Services Board. That’s currently how that’s handled and it’s an ongoing process, so as situations arise.

I should also mention that all of the positions that we have are currently fully staffed. We just had our eighth family law lawyer. She just started on January 20th of this year, so we’re fully staffed now as well.

Thanks for the Minister’s response there. I wonder if the Minister would consider it worthwhile taking the initiative to approach and offer these professionals the opportunity for feedback in an open way beyond the expectation that if they have issues that they will raise them. Sometimes you will get different input that way. It’s not an essential. I just think it might be a worthwhile exercise, a one-off if it doesn’t work, but if it does produce good results, that may be something to consider.

That’s something we could take into consideration. There may be other avenues where we could get, perhaps if the Standing Committee on Social Programs wanted us to get some staff from the Department of Justice in to have a discussion about legal aid services in the Northwest Territories, that’s something that we could see happen, as well, and then Members could have that type of dialogue with our staff that are dealing with legal aid on a day-to-day basis here in the NWT.

I appreciate the Minister’s interest there.

Moving on to another subject here, I see the legal aid clinics, Yellowknife, Beaufort-Delta, community legal aid clinic and the Somba K’e. I have to get some explanation about what the community legal aid clinic is there. Maybe that deals with all other communities or something. But there are budgets for each of those, and I’m wondering if the information on what the various workloads is for each of those units is accessible, if in fact they’re… I’d like to see if the funding is related to the workload there.

All the clinics are located in Yellowknife with the exception of the Beaufort-Delta Legal Aid Clinic.

Thank you for that information. Just in relation to my question, what is the workload of each of those clinics? Do they share between them or are they specific to the regions? I’m just wondering: is the budget directly associated with the workload of each of those clinics.

The workload is disbursed among those clinics, so there is no conflict and things can be divided up as appropriately as possible.

I’m going to leave it at that and I certainly will talk to committee and see if there is interest to take the Minister up on his offer to do a briefing and discussion on our legal aid work.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bromley. I’ll take that as a comment. Page 9-23, Justice, activity summary, legal aid services, operations expenditure summary, $6.224 million. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I can see through the position allocation and activity on the further page, I’m not speaking to that, but what I’m asking about is the garnered dollars. How many positions are vacant in this particular section? I’ll start with that first question. Better under the compensation and benefits area of $4.1 million.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Ms. Schofield.

There are currently five positions vacant within this activity.

What positions and how long?

I don’t have the length of time that the positions have been vacant, but I believe we had offered that in the other sections so we could provide it. They are court worker positions and one legal aid criminal lawyer.

Thank you. If the offer is on the detail of how long they’ve been vacant and the money attributed to that specific position, that will be all I require.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Ramsay.

No, we made a commitment to the Member and we will get that information.

Thank you. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. How many court workers do we have in this division?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s 10 in total.

I know we went through a review not so long ago and emphasized the importance of the court workers and their multilingual status, so I think they do play an important role.

Are there issues about filling these positions generally or is this perhaps there’s just a higher turnover in court workers?

Yes, at times, there are some difficulties in staffing those positions.

I don’t have any other questions, I am sure the Minister is on top of what the issues are and will be trying to address them, and if there is anything committee should be aware of, then he will let us know and we can help out too. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Page 9-23 Justice, activity summary, legal aid services, operations expenditure summary, $6.224 million. Agreed?

Agreed.

Thank you. Moving on to 9-24, Justice, information item, legal aid services, active positions. Agreed?

Agreed.