Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will let the deputy minister answer that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While we do not have any figures with respect to the percentage of cases which require an interpreter, there are far fewer today then there were prior to division.

Most of the resources for interpreting had been traditionally expended in Nunavut, where there are far and away more unilingual aboriginal people then there are in the west.

The department is aware that this is an ongoing issue. Court interpreters require special training. There is a contract that is expiring at the end of this fiscal year. We are entertaining proposals for a new interpreting contractor.

Special attention will be given to issues such as standards for interpreting and training and also the reliability of interpreters in terms of appearing in court when required, which has been an issue in the past.

It is not just aboriginal languages, Mr. Chairman. We have also seen the need for Cantonese interpreters, Somalian interpreters, Korean interpreters as well as French interpreters. It is something the department used to do some years ago, but then the program was transferred to another department.

We are very aware of some of the difficulties that have been encountered in the past. We are intent upon correcting those difficulties.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Department of Justice had a legal interpreters program back in 1988. I understand this responsibility was transferred to Arctic College back in 1995.

When the department had it, they were funded by the Aboriginal Language Funding Agreement with the federal government. There were 248 individuals registered in the program and 52 were certified prior to 1995.

Since the responsibility went over to Arctic College, it was up to the different individuals to apply and get accepted to the Arctic College program. That is where it is at right now. We had some difficulty in trying to track down individual interpreters, since 1998 contractors were hired to survey known interpreters and availability and their training needs.

We created an interpreter database in the summer of 1999. A Northern contracting interpreting firm called The Aboriginal Language Services was contracted to co-ordinate and provide interpreting services to the courts. This is an as and when needed contract with this company.

Interpreters were sometimes hired directly by court staff. What most often occurs is that once the matters are scheduled out of the regional courthouses and matters that are heard before the Justices of the Peace, the interpreters are hired.

Generally, the Aboriginal Language Services here in Yellowknife provides that service. It seems to have worked up to this point in time. The current contract with this company expires at the end of March. There is a request for proposal that is outstanding right now as well, to try and see who is out there that could provide this service.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will have to see, Mr. Chairman, what the proposals are once they come in on the 24th. We will determine that from there. Right now, we would hold the line at what we are familiar with. In fact, the department paid approximately $67,000 to Aboriginal Language Services since July of 1999. With the contract ending at the end of the month, we will use that as the base. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask the deputy minister to respond to that question.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It certainly has been one of the criteria we look at. Other considerations involve allowing camps to be established in areas or regions where there previously were no camps, such as in the Deh Cho, Nahendeh and Sahtu. So those are other factors that we had to take into account.

We have been very careful with all the contracts we have entered into in the past few years to point out with the contractor that this is not a guarantee of sufficient income to constitute one's livelihood. It may or may not, depending upon one's expectations, satisfy a particular contractor in that regard. Due to problems we have encountered in the past with this issue, we have been careful to point that out.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, since taking over this portfolio and looking at this department, the concern that is raised by different inmates about the bush camps and going out on the land rather than being warehoused in Yellowknife or Hay River, is a very big concern of mine as well.

With the rate of pay that is being offered to the different operators, which is insufficiently stated here, I have asked for a review of this whole initiative of this government to re-evaluate this camp and this program to see how we could improve on it.

Hopefully, in the next few months, we will have a very good understanding of this program, including the pool of inmates for the adults and young offenders that are out there. Hopefully, we will have a better understanding of what we are dealing with.

I do not really know how the department was factoring everything in to come up with this program. Certainly with reviewing the current state of this program, and the little bit of time that I have been here, it is clear we have to do a thorough review. Hopefully, with the input of Members here as well as the current operators, we can come up with a very good program.