Mr. Speaker, one of the initiatives of this government has been called the community justice initiatives. This initiative basically suggests that those communities that want to take on more responsibility for the administration of justice, when they get involved in the courts, advise the system on how to do sentencing, what to do with the offenders, and that sort of thing. It takes more and more

ownership, and they start to say how do you think justice should be handled and administered. That would be, I think, the route, that I would see, addressing this issue. It is interesting to note, I think Coppermine is one of the communities that has asked for a meeting with Justice, to start discussing how the people of Coppermine might want to start telling the Justice people how they want justice administered. I think there is a couple of good examples. I think comments were made during the Standing Committee on Finance that building large jails, having non-aboriginal people taking responsibility for aboriginal inmates is not going to work, that it is going to continue to grow in cost with very little return, as the Member says, with very little money for work in rehabilitation and educational work with inmates, and support. We should develop support systems for inmates after they are finished their term of incarceration. It seems to me that my view is communities that will provide that, and right now there is nothing in the budgets for work with communities, but, I think, that with communities like Coppermine inviting government to go and talk about how they can get involved, for instance, in sentencing, alternative sentencing systems for minors, for adult offenders, for women, for the youth, for the elders, then they will come up with suggestions that the Members are seeking. I do not think that we could attach it to the present system, since the large majority of aboriginal people are inmates in our jails, what we are doing is taking them away from people by a system that we never really had any involvement in as aboriginal people. Having justice administered from there, sending them to places like Yellowknife to serve a term, and then just sort of spit them back out, to land back in the community, as a Member pointed out, and is disowned. I think we cannot attach a community developed support system onto a system like that. I think it has to come from a system where a group of people at the community level say we want to get involved in the justice system as it relates to young people, and as it relates to adult offenders. One of the things they might negotiate with us is saying, we want some resources for a support system for inmates and people who are sentenced, and whether they are serving it at a community level, which I think they should, the discussion should take place at that level. So, in response to the Member's question, I think I am very interested in that, and a number of talks with individuals about it, and my suggestion would be that should be the approach that we take to it. Thank you.