Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll try this again. My questions are for the Minister of Justice.
Can the Minister state how long it takes the RCMP to respond to complaints in Tsiigehtchic compared to Fort McPherson? Thank you
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The response time would be the amount of time it takes to get the call through the centre and get an officer dispatched to the community of Tsiigehtchic, which of course, as the Member knows, is a fair distance from the community of Fort McPherson. But, as soon as possible. As soon as they can respond to the concern in Tsiigehtchic, they’d be there. Thank you.
At times it takes anywhere from two hours to 24 hours for response calls, just so the Minister has that information.
I’d like to ask the Minister to describe the benefits of having a permanent police detachment in those communities lucky enough to have them.
When deciding if it’s appropriate to invest the significant amount of funding – and I mentioned in the House last week that it’s between seven and 11 million dollars for a stand-alone RCMP detachment – some of the things that we must take into consideration are population, crime rates, workload of members, remoteness, calls for service historically, financial and human resources, infrastructure, types of calls for service, access to the community via all-weather road, winter roads, weather variability and also funding and priorities. So, there’s a number of factors that go into whether or not a detachment would be constructed in a community. Thank you.
That wasn’t the question. The question was to describe the benefits of having a detachment in those communities, but I’ll let the Minister answer that again. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The benefits of having a detachment would be obvious. Calls would come in and members would be located in the community that has a detachment, so response times would be that much quicker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Blake.
Will the Minister meet with the community leaders in Tsiigehtchic to discuss ways to build up a grassroots, community-based policing presence? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As Members know, I have a track record of wanting to get into communities and discuss with community leaders how best to police communities. We’ve got community policing plans that we’ve got in place across the territory. We’re also moving forward with community safety plans. At the earliest opportunity I’d be happy to accompany the Member and also the RCMP to visit the community of Tsiigehtchic, to sit down with the community leaders and the MLA to discuss how we can move forward. I know the issue that we had last week is also an issue that we want to see overcome with the housing and having members overnight in the community of Tsiigehtchic. So yes, the answer to the Member’s question is: at the earliest opportunity. If there is a community tour we can get into Tsiigehtchic, the sooner the better. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
