Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to continue to speak about violence and crime in our Territory. I have the utmost respect for the words spoken by our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Honourable John Vertes, who appeared on Northbeat last evening. I appreciated what he had to say and I agree with him that we have to address the issues that face us. He stated that in the last five years violent crime has gone up by 28 percent in the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories. Our violent crime rate continues to rise and we have the highest incarceration rate in this country.
Yesterday I talked about recidivism, data collection, and the need to better measure the success of programs and services we have for those incarcerated for violent crimes. Work must continue in this area.
My opinion is we should be putting violent, dangerous, repeat offenders away before they kill or maim someone else. I’d like to see our prosecutors seeking dangerous offender applications on those individuals that continue to prey on our people and use violence as a means to get what they want. My point is: how many violent crimes does it take, how many people have to get hurt or even killed before dangerous offender status is sought?
Our problems run deep. I have to agree that we have to address the root causes of violence and violent crime in our communities, like homelessness, unemployment, alcohol and drug addiction, gambling, poverty and family breakdown.
Between Health and Social Services, Education, and Justice this government spends over $700 million a year. We have to start asking ourselves what kind of difference are we really making. Is all the money being spent on the right programs and services for our people? Do the programs and services that we have currently work and for their intended purposes?
We cannot afford to keep trying to spend our way out of all the problems that face this Territory or limp along hoping all of our problems are just going to go away. We have to continue to chip away at the problems. They’re not going to disappear overnight, but, again, we must continue to tackle the issues facing our communities every day.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
