Thank you. Proceed. Thank you. Mr. Minister, for the record, would you please introduce the witnesses?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me, Mr. Don Cooper, the deputy minister of the Department of Justice, Ms. Nora Sanders, the assistant deputy minister and Kim Schofield, the acting assistant director of finance, for the Department of Justice.

Thank you and welcome to the committee. We are now open for general comments from the Members. Mr. Picco and Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Picco.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and good afternoon. Mr. Chairman, the Department of Justice, like other departments within this government, over the last couple of years have suffered from the deficit reduction strategies of the government. I think two areas of justice have not been on the front burners as much as they should have been.

One of those would be the correction services itself and the lack of space for the inmates. The YCC and BCC are overcrowded. I believe the last figures I saw were that YCC itself was at 115 percent occupancy, and I believe Baffin Correctional Centre was 100 percent or 95 percent or even more. The Department of Justice has to get strong with our federal counterparts to help us in the area of building new correctional facilities. The facilities that we have today were not built for the demand that is in place.

Another concern that I have and has been brought forth to me in conversations in E-mails over the past few weeks is the need for a dedicated remand centre for women. Right now if a woman is taken into custody, there is no dedicated facility for a female. That is not acceptable. We have to look at some type of remand facility for women, a facility that maybe would be dedicated to women. We are seeing more and more people who are being incarcerated who are female and we do not have that ability right now.

I understand that like a lot of things, we have a wish list. There is a serious concern the previous Minister mentioned here in the House that, indeed, the BCC and the YCC had exceeded capacity. We have to do something with it. I know we do not have the funds, but we cannot just throw our hands up in the air and say nothing could be done. I would applaud the Minister on the direction he is taking the department in trying to open up facilities. Alternate facilities like the camps, to hopefully serve a purpose to take people out of the jails. The whole idea in the corrections area is that you incarcerate people for the sake of rehabilitating them, not just to put them in there, do their time and then they get out. The Department of Justice has made some good strides over the last couple of years in trying to facilitate education classes for academic upgrading for the inmates. The recent episode in Iqaluit where we had an untrained psychologist, who is now before the courts, but that was a concern and later. We could find out exactly what type of resource they were going to dedicate to these facilities.

Moving on within the corrections area of the Department of Justice is the concern with the incarceration rates and also the concern with what is actually happening in the facilities. In my riding, where the Baffin correctional centre is located, we have seen quite a drop in the number of aboriginal or Inuit employees in the correctional centre over the past few years. That needs to be addressed. This has been mentioned to me several times by people in the community itself. It may have something to do with the stigma attached to working in those types of facilities or the stress. I do know, for example, last year that Arctic College was offering a training program for wardens and justice people. At the same time the Justice Department was trying to duplicate a similar program and actually paying people $15.00 an hour to take a course. We brought it up in the House with the previous Minister about the contradiction in that. That was a concern. I think the Department of Justice should be coordinating closer in the regions with the college when these types of programs and training opportunities present themselves.

On the camps themselves, I think the camp initiative, as I said earlier, is a good one. We did have a camp in my riding that was cut two years ago because we went to the per diem amount. The problem we have with the per diem amount is because of the referral service between the judiciary side of justice. If there are no inmates or no people referred to the camp, then the camp does not get any money, but the people in the camp, using an outpost camp as an example, they still have to live there. They still have costs and expenses. I have a concern with that and hopefully it would be addressed. I guess that would be the beginning of my opening comments, Mr. Chairman. I would like just a general overview of what we are actually doing in the area of corrections and the needs. I should, actually, point out one other thing, Mr. Chairman, and that is several of our people in the YCC and the BCC should not be in a correctional facility. I think it is obvious to anyone who has been to the facilities or who is involved in justice, know that a lot of people have other problems other than criminal activity. We have major problems with mental illness and because we do not have any type of facility in the Northwest Territories, we end up referring and sending people to correctional facilities when in actuality they probably should be in other facilities. That is something I think the department has acknowledged and hopefully we could address.

Again, I know it all comes down to money but maybe our federal counterparts could help us. I would like to see a dedicated facility somewhere in Nunavut because after division one of the ideas of Nunavut, of course, was to bring people and government closer. To continue to have to send our people 2,000 miles away to Yellowknife or the south is not acceptable. I would like to know if the department has a plan or have they looked at a plan of expanding existing correctional facilities or hopefully building us some type of federal or remand centre somewhere in the Nunavut settlement area? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. In the general comments, traditionally we allow all Members to make opening comments and then, at the end, the Minister will then reply or respond. On the list I have Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you kindly, Mr. Miltenberger. I have Mr. Enuaraq, opening comments. Mr. Enuaraq.

(Translation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we are dealing with justice and the justice issues, when we were dealing with social programs, I will have some concerns to this. I want to say to the social group that they did a good job doing the report as well, Mr. Chairman. I will also want to discuss Mr. Steen's concern that he raised earlier, with regard to the young people who were sent out of his home town to correctional-type facilities. Mr. Steen's concern was the parents were not advised when the young offenders were sent out. I also want to thank the Department of Justice for looking into concerns we have had earlier in the past. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (Translation ends).

Thank you, Mr. Enuaraq. General comments, Mr. Evaloarjuk. Qujannamiik.

Thank you, Mr. Evaloarjuk. General comments from Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. General comments. Mr. Krutko.

I thank you kindly, Mr. Krutko. General comments from the Members of the committee dealing with Justice. Are there any further general comments? Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Naturally I agree with the recommendations and questions that have been raised in the report of the Standing Committee on Social Programs as I am a Member of that committee. I also wanted to comment briefly on some of the other areas I am interested in and have been outlined in the report.

The first area I wanted to touch on was corrections. It has been recognized for a long time now, Mr. Chairman, that our corrections facilities are dramatically overcrowded. One of the things that happens because of that is the lack of space for programs. If you just look at the name of the facilities, Mr. Chairman, they are called correction facilities. The reason for that is because we are supposed to be correcting people, hopefully in the way they think and the way they act so they can re-enter society as contributing members and not to consistently go back and forth in a revolving door. The lack of adequate space affects that. I know we are not walking with $100 bills hanging out of our pockets to contribute to the capital budget, but this should be seriously looked at, Mr. Chairman.

I also wanted to comment that some months back, this committee had wanted to try to initiate the repatriation of federal inmates back to the north. It seemed as though, at that time, that the department almost took a hands-off approach which is unfortunate because to date, I do not think anything has really happened in that area to bring federal inmates back north who are in the south. There is an act whereby the federal government will pay to house federal inmates in the north. One of my areas of concern is that I do not think anything concrete is actually happening in this area. I would like the Minister to indicate what has been done since the fall to repatriate or to facilitate the repatriation of federal inmates to the north?

Another area I wanted to touch on is the legal aid area. For some time, the Social Programs Committee has been advocating the use of more lawyers in the legal aid offices so that there are more consistent services being provided and that people do not have to look around for various lawyers. Hopefully, that would also speed up the process in some of their situations. There was a report done by the legal services board, and in that report there was a recommendation that a separate legal aid lawyer to deal strictly with family law should be hired. Of course, this is something that we had recommended some time back. I would like to know what has been done in this area, Mr. Chairman.

Under the coroner's office, there have been arrangements made for a new chief coroner on a contract basis. Hopefully, that person will get things back in order. The other area of concern I have under the coroner's office is the fact that there is a serious lack of space in the communities, facilities that people can use to prepare and store bodies while they are waiting for burial or for removal. This poses a potential health problem. The department should be seriously looking at this as well in order to try to rectify this problem or at least to alleviate it. Under violent offenders, this is an area, Mr. Chairman, that has to be looked at because right now there does not seem to be a way to deal with violent offenders who pose a threat to the community, people who consistently go into jail, come out and cause harm to their neighbours, relatives, friends and then land back in jail. The only way to deal with that is for the Crown's office to apply for and to get a person labelled as a dangerous offender. They are imprisoned indefinitely which means basically you throw them in jail and throw away the key. I do not think that is the answer. This department has to look at this. We have a lot of small communities, and when people come back to their communities and are a threat to their neighbours, there has to be a way to deal with that other than just locking them up forever.

The other area of concern I have is the community justice. I have talked to community people. Although this is a grand idea, and I fully support it, there does not seem to be enough money in the area and certainly not enough training. Once again, I acknowledge that we do not have too much extra money to be putting into all these areas of concern, however, I think we should be trying to find creative ways of utilizing our dollars and to perhaps collaborate with the federal government in order to make these dollars go a little bit further. In the area of training, for some time I have been advocating the development of a law program and a law program would go a long way to helping people working in the community justice area, as well as perhaps, coroners, justices of the peace, court workers and simply, people working within the court system. I know that the college is looking at developing such a program. I would encourage the department to work with the college and with the community that they have struck in order to actually ensure that a program is developed and implemented. This might mean putting in a few dollars, Mr. Chairman, because researching and developing a course takes dollars.

Continuing in the area of training, the Minister Responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs has indicated she is willing to take a lead role in developing a community development course, certificate and diploma course. One of those courses would likely be a community justice course, so again I would ask the Minister and his department to collaborate with the Minister Responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs in developing a course that is relevant to the Department of Justice and that, of course, would mean contributing some dollars for research and development as well as manpower. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Erasmus. Any further general comments from the floor. If not, I will ask the Minister to respond to a number of questions and comments from the Members. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Members for their comments and their suggestions and it is clear that many of the MLAs take the issue of justice very seriously and have put thought into ways of improving the system. What I would suggest is that rather than I trying to make comments on portions of everybody's comments, if we could get the specific questions and we could try to answer them that way. Thank you.

Thank you. That will have to be through the details of the budget. Committee agree?

Agreed.

Thank you. Directorate, page 7-6, operations and maintenance, total operations and maintenance, $3.801 million. Mr. Krutko.

Initially I have told the Members that the Minister will respond after each and every Member has made a general comment, but in the end, when I asked the Minister to respond, he indicated that rather than trying to respond to every question that he will reply or respond when the question is posed. I have asked the Members if they wish to go through the detail now and the Minister will respond when asked. Members agreed at that time. Right? Agreed? Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some Members did agree, but some Members disagreed as well.