Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Erasmus. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Erasmus. Mr. Ng.

Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Erasmus. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question to the Minister is with regard to the statistics on the number of individuals who you categorized as high risk, low risk and in between. Do you have statistics on those individuals who were sentenced to serve their time in YCC from the Mackenzie Delta?

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Krutko.

At the appropriate time, I would like to have a copy of that. My question is similar to the question raised by Mr. Erasmus with regard to finding alternatives to save this government some costs. Perhaps we can find ways to use the process of monitoring people and also the new initiatives such as sentencing by community justice committees. I do believe that we have to find new arrangements to deal with the clients who, many times -especially in the community systems -- may be charged with a minor offence, yet the court costs and the costs of the individuals being sent to Yellowknife or wherever, it seems that in the past it hasn't been taken into consideration. You basically went to court, the judge would ask you how you plead, usually you had a lawyer who was generally not from the community who had only talked to you for 15 minutes before you went into the room. You would have a choice to plead guilty or not guilty. A lot of people would plead guilty just to get it over with. Then it blemishes their record because once you're found guilty, you were sent away from home.

Hopefully with these new justice committees and also with new initiatives, through the ideas which have been put forward by my colleague from Yellowknife, Mr. Erasmus, about finding a system of monitoring; I think we have to seriously look at that. For the costs that we are paying, especially in this envelope with one of our highest costs -the costs of incarceration -- we have to find ways of cutting. If we're talking about cutting in this Justice portfolio, I believe that's one area we have to seriously look at. We need to assist the communities and the regions to deal with the whole question of justice sentencing and also look at other avenues to assist individuals once they have been sentenced to do their time, and to assist them to get back into the system in relation to what the community also wants. Now we're finding the process of involving the communities, but we have to allow them to take on more responsibilities. You mentioned the community empowerment program.

With regard to the amount of resources that are there, I know we are having some financial problems, but that's an area we have to seriously consider. Any ideas that are out there, we should seriously look at. Will the Minister allow communities, through their justice committees, to take on more authority? He mentioned community transfers and empowering communities by community wellness. How far are you willing to go? Are you willing to just allow them to deal with the sentence, or are you willing to look at sentencing and also monitoring? The resources have to be there to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With regard to allowing communities authority for how people would serve their sentence and to assist them; especially in a lot of the smaller communities, you have a lot of cases of assault, family disputes, or incidents that seem to keep recurring. If there's a possibility of having an avenue there where the individual community justice committees could sentence a person to take a particular treatment program as part of their sentence.

I'll use your other favourite subject, the Tl'oondih Healing Society; say there is an opportunity for a family to try to resolve this issue because it might deal with family violence. Because a particular individual was charged with assault, instead of sending the individual to YCC to serve his time, send him to the camp to be dealt with in a more productive manner with regard to dealing with the problem. That may be a way of resolving the whole concept of the violence question and also assisting the family to deal with the problem that they've probably never had the opportunity to deal with. Instead of just sending the individual to incarceration and serving his time in jail, he will be serving his time in the sense of the word, but he will also be getting treatment. Is that part of the process that you can look at as a possibility for the community justice committees to take into consideration when they do sentence people?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ng.