Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister of Justice. It’s regarding RCMP and their side job, if I may describe it that way, in transporting prisoners back and forth between the jails. It’s been brought to my attention that the RCMP do this activity regularly. The question came as why doesn’t the sheriff’s office either use their existing resources or bolster their resources to do that particular job?
Frankly, we all know that a member of the RCMP, when you do what’s called the all-in cost, runs in the range of $175,000 to $200,000. It’s much more cost effective to have the sheriff’s office doing those duties between their other ones if they are shuffling prisoners back and forth between the jail and the courthouse. The point is I think it’s better use of RCMP time to put their service in the community, responding to crime and investigating crime.
Has the department investigated this idea and what consideration have they put to it? If they haven’t, will they?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To my knowledge, it’s corrections services that transports people back and forth between the facility and the courthouse. I can look into this matter further for the Member and get some further detail, but to my knowledge, it’s corrections services that provides that service and not the RCMP. Thank you.
I know that that’s probably normally the case that the corrections services does that one, but there’s also interjurisdictional travel that is required by shuffling inmates back and forth or other types of similar situations, and we bring the RCMP off duty and they have to find folks to wear that duty outside of normal operating hours, and that affects the RCMP, and everyone complains in this community that they’re unable to get more RCMP on the ground doing the job that they do, and they certainly do so well.
When it comes to interjurisdictional transfers of prisoners and usages of those types of resources, would the Minister investigate the possibility of using the sheriff’s office? If they don’t have the resources, bolster the resources appropriately, because it’s cheaper for us to afford a few extra hours as the sheriff doing that duty than it is taking an RCMP off the street.
It would go back to the circumstances surrounding the individual who was being transported, but again, to my knowledge, the corrections service does supply that type of duty or obligation in getting inmates transferred from facility to facility. But again, depending on the nature of the individual and security risk, the RCMP may be involved in that. As to whether or not the sheriff’s office could take part in transferring folks around, again, that’s something that I’ll go back to the department and ask them about.
Well, if the Minister is not sure it happens, I can tell you, I was in a plane recently and there were two RCMP officers shepherding an inmate from a court duty in Alberta back to the Northwest Territories. I do know it happens. I’ve seen it personally, and I’ve seen it personally from my experience working at the correctional centre many years ago, that I know that they do this duty occasionally.
What I’m asking for is: Is the Minister willing to do an evaluation of the resources on that particular matter that evaluates the cost effectiveness of taking RCMP off the street, from providing policing, responding to crime and investigating crime, to considering putting the sheriffs into that particular role? They do it in other regions such as all the provinces across Canada. Why can’t we consider the same type of functionality of our sheriff’s office?
I do know and I am aware that the RCMP do provide transport and do that type of work. I’ve seen it myself as well. I will go back to the department, as I mentioned in response to a previous question, and get some further detail on this.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the information and I certainly look forward to it coming before the dissolution of this Assembly, because I’ll have to wait until next term, if things all go well. In all fairness and in all seriousness, I’m asking for an evaluation of the cost effectiveness of the Government of the Northwest Territories paying RCMP to do this as an overtime job, an extra duty job, finding a couple of them, when we could be using our own resources internally through the sheriff’s office, so an evaluation and a little bit of a strategic look needs to be done on this. It’s not just I’ll go look and get the numbers. Will he be willing to do an evaluation on this possibility?
To my knowledge, that type of evaluation hasn’t been conducted, but it may have and I may not be aware of that. Again, I’ll go back to the department, I’ll ask them and we’ll see what we can do. I know there are only 17 days left, so I will see what we can do.
