Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The department has put these broad goals and priorities into action by ensuring that resources are reaching communities in the form of community justice committee contributions, legal aid clinic contributions and community service funding to health boards. The funding of outpost camps and the training of community by-law officers to become community constables helps to ensure that the administration of justice is more compatible with community values and traditions.
The department continues to be faced with the reality of chronic overcrowding in our correctional facilities. The expansion and maintenance of these facilities has not kept pace with the growing numbers of offenders who pass through the system, let alone, provide sufficient programs and treatment that would assist in healing offenders and enable a successful re-integration into their communities. The pressures I mention are largely due to demographics but is also due to the changing profile of inmates who increasingly are becoming more difficult to manage. These factors also impact the resource requirements of the RCMP, the legal services board and the court system. All of these traditional areas of justice delivery have reached capacity limits, while at the same time, being forced to deal with budget reductions and restraint initiatives. However, despite fiscal restraint, the department has limited the overcrowding of institutions by providing funding for programs that enable offenders to be placed in outpost camps or in community supervision instead of in a facility. Although this does not fully address the overcrowding issue, it is an example of how the department is finding innovative solutions. The department will continue to seek solutions to this growing problem.
Therefore, due to the pressures outlined above, the 1998-99 main estimates for the Department of Justice do not identify any major resource shift between program areas of the department and no reductions are proposed from the previous year's main estimates.
The recent review of the coroner's office resulted in a recommendation to contract out the position of the chief coroner as well, increase the local coroner's fees from $50 to $150 per case. I am pleased to inform Members that Mr. Percy Kinney, has been hired as the new chief coroner. Mr. Chairman, I would also like to inform Members that coroner's fees have been increased as recommended.
--Applause
This increase is very much deserved and is in recognition of the very difficult and important work that coroners do. Members will note minor changes to the department's 1998-99 resource base due to the government's initiatives in self-government and user pay/user say. That concludes my opening remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.