Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make a couple of comments on the overall budget of Justice. First of all, I want to indicate that in our community, we do have a very active victims' assistance program and we've appreciated the work that the friendship centre has done with regard to victims' assistance. Over the past year, I've written to the Minister to ask for support of continual funding for this particular program. What appears to be the concern, and I think that's it's basically the concern of many Members, is that we fund without question, because of the Charter, the areas of legal aid to assist individuals who have broken the law who can't afford to represent themselves or to get a lawyer to represent them. We basically allow this type of funding for individuals who possibly have broken the law through either illegal activity with drugs and sometimes child sexual assaults or whatever the case may be, whatever criminal activity may have taken place.
On the other hand, we're basically looking for a method to assist victims and we don't seem to have the funding or the funding is limited or is difficult to obtain. It just seems that even though we have the Charter, as a government, we try to find a way to assist these people that have broken the law but we always have difficulty trying to assist the people who have been victimized as a result of these criminals breaking the law.
If the Minister is finding it difficult in acquiring this type of funding, and I know he's referred to the social envelope committee, that we may have to -- and I know that legal services is done by the board -- start looking at fairly rigid guidelines to expend funding through legal aid services because it doesn't seem right that here we are, as a government, assisting people that do fairly significant damage to individuals as a result of their criminal activities and we can find a method to assist them but the people who are victimized, we have a hard time supporting them. It just doesn't appear that it's justice.
I've always supported the victims' assistance program and have given them support wherever I can. I certainly would really support the idea, even if this funding was to be looked for within the legal services area. That's one area that I would like to suggest to the Minister that he can look at. He may even want to look at tightening up the parameters for support that legal services is providing to criminals who break the law, even though I recognize that he has implications of the Charter to deal with.
On the other side of the item in addition to the victims' assistance program, Mr. Chairman, I did want to make a couple of other comments. Basically, on law enforcement and the overall justice budget. I know the RCMP have basically reached an agreement signed between the government and the Solicitor General of Canada. I also know that funding is somewhat limited and the demands are increasing. We always seem to have an increase in individuals that are partaking in criminal activity. I want to commend the Minister and the Justice department for looking at other initiatives such as possibly funding aboriginal justice type programs that they are attempting to create in the communities. I think that it's really starting to allow the people in the communities to know that cooperatively we can attempt to address many of these crimes that are happening in the communities. You're also closing the gap with respect to the communication problem that seemed to prevail over the years; the attitude problems that people encountered with regard to addressing some of the problems that they had with the overall law enforcement.
I also wanted to commend the department for this particular initiative because I think in future years, this initiative will hopefully reflect less activity in the crime area. But I certainly would like to take the time to urge the Minister to find, somewhere in his department, the financial support for the victims' assistance program that I believe is badly needed in the communities. It should be a program available to every resident of the Northwest Territories. It is a program that should also be expanded across the territories in an equitable manner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.