How many reported incidents to the RCMP of spousal assault were there in the last two years?

Perhaps the Minister could take us back a bit and perhaps explain again to this Assembly and to the public why he was and is such a strong advocate of zero tolerance for violence.

What I understand the Minister to say is that the Minister, from his own personal experience through things that he has seen and witnessed through his life, has tremendous empathy for the victims of violence. He has sympathy and empathy for young children who are terrorized and brutalized by loutish deviants. He has empathy and sympathy for women who are beaten by their cowardly spouses, husbands or boyfriends. I take it that the major driving force behind the Minister's strong belief in zero tolerance for violence is that sympathy for the victims of violence. We are stopping violence, to stop it being inflicted on those victims. So when the Minister talks about the needs and the rights of people who are in the correctional institutions, no one disagrees. We are talking about shifting part of our responsibility in a real way to the most innocent people in our society. I support many things that the Minister has done. I think he has been a fine Minister of Justice. But I think the Minister has missed the point here. The point is not a point about who is trying to manage the budget, but about how necessary the funds are for the correctional institute system. The point is not whether or not you can pull $300,000 out of the Yellowknife police detachment, that has nothing to do with anything. The point is that we, as a government, have made a commitment to victims. We have said that we think victims should deserve a goodly portion of our support.

And up until now -- it is not a matter of diminishing federal dollars or diminishing territorial dollars -- we haven't done very much. We are talking about $300,000 out of $6.9 million. All we are talking about here is an extra $300,000. It really is two or three of your staff, your Iqaluit centre that has 25 staff and when we were there, it had five inmates.

We are not talking about totally disrupting the corrections system. I heard the Minister, in response to something that Mr. Dent said, say that there is a philosophical debate that must take place as to whether or not society has a responsibility for victims. I think the Minister, much to his credit, has strongly demonstrated that he believes that society does have a responsibility to victims.

I, for one, have applauded the Minister for some of the courageous steps he has taken in this area. So, we are not in disagreement here. I don't think that we are in any kind of a philosophical battle. What we are looking at is, is there a bureaucratic way to find some funds for victims. That is all that we are looking at.

I don't want to have an argument with the Minister. I am not here to argue with the Minister about his beliefs. I know his beliefs are strongly held and strongly felt. But the committee, and I am sure other Members of the Legislative Assembly, would like to have a specific commitment from the Minister in this budget for victims. I don't think that is too much to ask. We have given you full support in your endeavours in the whole area of zero tolerance. I don't think that the Minister has to be uptight or upset with any Members. I think the Minister can say yes, I agree. It is a very small amount that we are asking for in the big picture and if any group in society deserve it, it's victims. We are just asking the Minister to come up with a mechanism to do that. We suggested one, which I think can work. But if it can't work, by all means, give us a definitive mechanism. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I am sorry that it has to come to this, where the Minister is feeling that he is forced to stand on his budget. I want to echo that a lot of what Mr. Ballantyne said is that there has been a lot of great initiatives that come from this Minister and this department, and there is a lot of support in this side of the House for what is being done. The Minister is right, Members of this committee do feel very strongly about this issue. I have a sense that we are very close to resolving it.

Mr. Chairman, I don't know why this debate is necessary this afternoon. We have almost a $17 million budget for this department, $300,000 -- if my math is correct -- is way less than half of one per cent of this total budget. It is less than one per cent of the budget that we are proposing to spend on law enforcement, which is almost $29 million. It's is considerably less than one per cent of the budget we are proposing to spend on community justice and corrections, which is almost $22 million.

Mr. Chairman, I seem to hear the Minister saying, I am not quite sure how we will do it, I want to talk to my colleague in Education, I want to talk to the Minister of Finance, I want to talk to the Minister, perhaps, of Health and Social Services. Go ahead, we don't care how you do it. And we don't care how you resolve it. As Mr. Ballantyne said, the suggestion about taking it out of corrections seemed the obvious one to the Standing Committee on Finance because we were noting the growth in PYs in the corrections area.

Mr. Chairman, I don't know if things have changed since I was in Cabinet, but I believe that a Minister who believes in an issue, as this Minister obviously does, and who has clear support from the Standing Committee on Finance, all the Minister needs to say is, I will do it, it will be done, you have my commitment, we will find $300,000 additional money for victims' services. Whether you take it by cutting out turkeys for inmates at Christmas or by recovering it from the social envelope committee funds, the $3 million that I fully appreciate has yet to be allocated within the Cabinet, or indeed whether it is taken out of a midnight shift at the corrections facility in Iqaluit.

This committee is not concerned about how it is done. I think all the Minister needs to do is to make a commitment here that it will be done and that you will find a way, even if the way is not before this committee today. I thought that with the notice given on this issue from the Standing Committee on Finance, that by today we would have an answer about how it could be done. I know that it is not easy, I know there are all kinds of pressures on the Minister. But clearly the proportion of money that we are spending on police and on jails -- and we haven't mentioned courts or legal aid today but I could add those big numbers, too -- is staggering beside what we are spending on victims. The committee wants it rebalanced, the Minister agrees, the role is there. All I think we need is a commitment that it will be done, and that we can get on and approve the budget and deal with the other matters before this committee. I think the Minister has the authority to direct his deputy to do it, find a way. And the finance director has to sweat additional blood and tears and find a way. This happens all the time. I guess I'm challenging the Minister here on the floor of this Assembly. Tell us it will be done. Whisper to your deputy minister. Do it and get on with the business of approving your budget. I'm sure you'll find a way, especially after all the fuss we've made this afternoon. Let's fix it up and carry on with approving this department. I don't think it's necessary to delay the approval of this department for even a week. Just make the commitment and this will all go away and we wish you well. Thank you.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of Members here have spoken about recommendation 5, I believe it is. There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of concerns directed at the Minister. I would like to suggest that the Minister take the time to meet with his staff and also with other Members of the envelope committee to see if he can do something about this recommendation, the $300,000 for the victims' assistance task.