Mr. Chairman, I cannot give a detailed answer to that, but the rebasing the department received will allow the department to hire more guards and workers for the correctional centres. It will go a distance in relieving that. Whether it would completely remove things like overtime or not, I do not know, but it does greatly help the problem.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I had asked some questions earlier under personnel services, and I know the Minister is committed to trying to increase Inuit involvement at our facility in Nunavut which is the BCC. Could the Minister or the staff, other than the training program that you talked about earlier, where you had two people out of nine, I think the figure was higher? What type of program or commitment is the department working on to increase Inuit employees at the Correctional Centre? When you gave the figure earlier, you said 25 percent, but I believe if you check your numbers on that 25 percent, you will find that indeed, that is everyone at the facility, including washers, janitorial staff and everything. I was thinking about the actual people involved in corrections themselves, wardens and so on. I am sure the Minister remembers a few years ago, we actually had the assistant warden who was an Inuk person. Somehow, that number over at the BCC has gone down very, very low. I have talked, as the Minister has, to some of the people working there and that is a concern. Exactly what will the department be doing about that?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the deputy minister indicated earlier, 25 percent of the BCC staff is under the affirmative action policy. We do have an Inuit employment plan that is required by the Nunavut Act, which would see the department participate in a government-wide effort to get more representative levels of aboriginal people in the workforce and in the Nunavut side, I believe the plan is 50 percent by 1999 and 85 percent down the road. The Nunavut Department of Justice which will be, in many ways, a portion of our current Department of Justice does have Inuit employment plans in the books. As the Minister of Finance and the Premier have indicated many times, the Ministers and the deputy ministers are now responsible for the aboriginal employee's component or the affirmative action component of their hiring process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am familiar of course, with the Inuit employment plans of the government. It is good to have a plan, but if the plan is not being acted on, that would be the concern. At this time, are we going to have Justice over the next couple of days? Could the department furnish to me, in actuality, a breakdown on those numbers, give me the total number of employees at the BCC? How many actual numbers of those people working are actually in the correction side of things like wardens, et cetera? As I understand, indeed, there are a lot working there, but the majority of them are in other menial positions. There are not that many in corrections as wardens, assistant wardens and so on. If I had that information, then maybe we could ask some more questions and get some type of commitment from the Minister and the staff.

I just have a couple of more questions on the personnel area. Following up on my earlier question, with what happened with the psychologist. That was just one incident, but there are other concerns from the BCC staff, where you do not have a staffing person there. I understand there have been some problems of appeals on positions and because there is no staffing or labour officer at BCC, those problems have come forward. Even though the Minister had earlier stated that personnel staffing functions for corrections or for Justice is based in Yellowknife, would you look at putting a person there who would be dedicated for that role. Then, indeed that person could take on to implement the Inuit employment action plan that you have in place and could also be there for the other problems that we talked about, the staffing appeals, labour relations and so on because that has been an ongoing concern. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will be prepared to provide to the House for the Clerk a breakdown of the statistics of our affirmative action employees in all of the facilities which spell out in detail the number of indigenous aboriginal employees, women in management, disabled and others who are under the affirmative action policy. We would be pleased to give that to the House, perhaps by tomorrow.

On the personnel staffing person at the Baffin Correctional Centre or any other centre, as I had told the House a couple times today, the Department of Justice is as cash strapped or in some cases more so than any other department. That is the reason why we were able to justify and be approved of the rebasing which I am sure the department appreciates. It still falls short of what we know is needed in there. If we were to make the decision to put a staffing-type person at BCC for example that would mean taking an equivalent amount of dollars from somewhere else. Now, that decision if made, would of course have an effect somewhere else.

The other thing that is happening at least in Nunavut is that we have division occurring in 400 days. There are plans under the Footprints 2 model for a Department of Justice with details for staffing, et cetera. Members may or may not know the person on my right, Ms. Sanders, will be the deputy minister of Justice for Nunavut.

--Applause

The GNWT is losing a good person, while Nunavut gains one. I should point out again the Interim Commissioner's office does have to be quite involved now and can consult with any of these changes in Nunavut. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the transference of a PY to BCC I do not believe would involve the office of the Interim Commissioner's authority. The mandate of this government goes to March 31, 1999. Maybe I would have an opportunity to discuss some of these matters later with the Minister and with the ADM on the BCC. I would like to follow up with some questions on the other line items within the directorate itself. Mr. Chairman, under the directorate, there are other Justice appointed committees and boards under the directorate. Does that include the Justice committees, for example, the youth justice committees? Is that under the directorate or is that under community policing?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would rather discuss that particular important issue when we get to that activity, but another point on the personnel issue, I think the Member would be pleased to know in the Government of Nunavut the NIC plan calls for a stand alone personnel department to be located in this community.

--Applause

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, my final question in the directorate concerns the labour standards board and labour standards administration. I believe there have been some changes in the Labour Standards Board and labour standards administration. I have had some problems, over the course of the past year, with constituents who have filed labour standards complaints or actually getting information. There is, I believe a toll-free number available, but I think the caseload of the Labour Standards Board staff seems to be quite high because I know that the turn around time on some of their complaints has been quite long and, in some cases, maybe some people were not satisfied with the results. I wonder if the Minister or his staff could, indeed, tell us at this time, have there been decreases in Labour Standards Board staff? Is the phone number still available? Have you looked at advertising or maybe making people more aware of the activities of the Labour Standards Board? One of the problems I had was a unilingual person who had been working for a construction company. Is there a possibility, from the Labour Standards Board, to have Inuktitut speaking people available, or do they franchise that service out somehow? How do they get through? That was the concern I had because I did have a person who was unilingual and had applied or tried to contact him and had some problem. I wonder if there is any mechanism in place at the Labour Standard Board in those areas? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Member has asked a number of questions there. The Labour Standards Board, to the best of my knowledge, or Labour Services has not been reduced. There has been a changeover in staff of the longest standing, serving, civil servant in the Northwest Territories, Eric Smith recently retired, and he has been replaced. I think there has probably been some growing pains with the new personnel there, but there will always be individual cases that proceed a little slower than some others. We are not aware of any real difficulties in labour standards, but if there are individual cases, certainly we welcome them being brought to our attention, and we will address any difficulties that we find. I am not sure if there is another part to the question. With respect to someone who is unilingual Inuktitut speaking, I am not sure if we have someone standing by on the hotline who can converse with that person, but I am sure arrangements could be made for an interpreter to be there in the event that someone did want to talk to Labour Services.

Agreed.