Thank you, Mr. Minister. Welcome, witnesses. General comments? Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in looking at the Minster's opening remarks, it is nice to see that we are going to be moving ahead with the female young offenders' facility in Inuvik. It has been a number of years since this was discussed. Work has been ongoing and there has been much said about what this facility will really mean, not just in the form of standard facilities where you just take someone in and you just put them in a facility for a certain amount of time. There has been much said about this and about the fact that there will be a lot of work done with the young offenders who go there and the programming that will be there to try to prevent them from becoming repeat offenders. Hopefully, we will see that.

The ability of parents, hopefully, and family members to become involved because they will now be much closer to their homes. Right now, the only other place is southern Northwest Territories. So with that, I will look forward to seeing the process. I will ask more questions in that area under detail.

One other area is in policing services and the demand that is placed on communities, for example, in the Beaufort Delta region. As we see the development increasing and a lot more people going in and out of the area, hopefully -- I know there has not been a lot of problems because of the increased work, but the concern is, for example, next year if this work shows good information, that we could see three or four times the increase that we have seen even in this year. So there will be a high demand put on all our infrastructures, people and resources. Hopefully that has been taken into consideration as we go through this budget process and look into the possibility of the future year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Minister, do you want to respond to that?

Thank you, Mr. Minister. General comments. We are dealing with the Department of Justice, main estimates, page 7-9, services to government, budget summary, operations expense, total operations expense, $7,613,000. Agreed?

Services to government, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $70,000. Agreed?

Contributions, total contributions, $3,000. Agreed?

Total grants and contributions, $73,000. Agreed?

Law enforcement, budget summary, operations expense, total operations expense, $19,198,000. Agreed?

Information item, law enforcement. Agreed?

Public legal services, budget summary, operations expense, total operations expense, $3,344,000. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wonder if the Minister could indicate, given the concern raised in the committee report, especially with regard to the funding levels of this particular activity, what the backlogs are with family law and other areas of backlog. Thank you.

Mr. Minister.

Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are some significant questions arising around public legal services. Justice delayed is justice denied. The inadequate budget.

The question to the Minister was what were the backlogs in terms of cases under family law, civil law, criminal law? Mr. Chairman, we have all seen copies of the letter, at least one letter from a lawyer indicating the problems. I have talked to other lawyers and they are prepared to withdraw their services because of cuts to the fee schedule and such, which is already, as they have told us, quite low by lawyers' standards. There have been some schedules which were arbitrarily cut.

This is an activity within the Department of Justice that is in trouble. It is well and good to be spending $30 million on new jails and that kind of stuff. We are contemplating palatial estates for the judges when we do not have adequate funds for the people who need it the most, the people at the bottom end who are least able to look after their own rights and look after their own freedoms.

Under the Canadian Constitution, this particular activity is supposed to be there to protect them. What we are seeing are people being backlogged and court cases being stacked up because there are insufficient funds. Of all the things in Justice, this is probably one area that is most problematic, that has caught the eye of the committee. I think it is important.

If there are significant backlogs and people are being denied justice and access to legal services because there is no money, then it is very problematic. I agree with the Minister that we probably do need a thorough review of how we provide these services. If it has not been looked at for ten years, then it is probably long overdue and shame on the federal government for abrogating their responsibility with justice and legal aid.

In this case, we cannot stand by and just blame the federal government. There are too many of our constituents, too many of our people who are not getting access to very critical legal services. Could the Minister indicate what the backlogs are, just so everybody can appreciate the gravity of the situation? Could he also speak to the latest instructions to cut certain parts of the billing available to lawyers who are giving legal aid? Thank you.

The Minister responsible for Justice, Mr. Antoine.