Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too had a look at the Auditor General’s report on some of the issues dealing with the Department of Justice and corrections, and it got my attention in terms of the rehab services, mental health services, and just the treatment that our inmates need to go through or lack or don’t have. However, I want to take a different route on this one.
When I was reading this, I was conflicted in the sense that we have people who are in the jail who have mental health issues, and if we actually had the services in the communities, they might not be there. As my colleague mentioned, they referenced the report as scathing, and it’s been getting a lot of media attention. It has been getting media attention here in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon. Like I said, if we had those services in the communities, we can’t forget about the people who are struggling in the communities.
I know some Members from this government did a tour of the North Slave Correctional Centre and it was great. Inmates had three meals a day, they had a fitness centre, they had programs, services, stuff that we don’t have in our communities. It makes me go to wonder: do we have to get the Auditor General to do a report on our small communities to get the services there? Because when an Auditor General report comes out we jump all over it, we say we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that, and it’s binding, but we fight for every service on this side of the House throughout the year, throughout the government, but sometimes we don’t see anything, nurses, RCMP, mental health, psychiatrists. But when it comes out in a report, then we jump all over it and say it needs to be in place, it needs to get done.
We can’t forget about the communities that need these services, and we need to look at how we can put some of these programs and services that we are putting into the institutions that can help the people who need the help. We’ve got to find ways to prevent people from going to the institutions now rather than later and wait for another Auditor General report to say we have to do it again.
I will have questions for the Minister of Justice on how we’re preventing people from going into the institution and how we’re rehabbing them back into the communities so that they can become a member of society once again.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
