Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to continue my questions with the Minister of Justice on policing services in the small communities. Mr. Speaker, I believe that education is an important component to a preventive and proactive approach to the prevention of crimes. I wanted to ask the Minister of Justice what his department is doing in terms of getting into the schools where there aren't any RCMP officers full time and to have that visible approach to the community members, and what type of education programs are they putting into the schools to deter criminal activities? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As RCMP officers visit communities and as they're able to do that more and more with the resources that we've been able to provide them in the last year or two for relief units, they will also spend time in the schools when they visit. It's not just into the community, up and down the streets and then out again. Typically the officers will stop into the band office and talk to people and they'll look for opportunities to interact with people to find out what's going on in the communities. So one of the things that is very common is for them to stop into schools, as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I understand some of these visits are done only after maybe there's an emergency or there's enough public outcry. We haven't seen the RCMP officers in some of our communities. So I'm asking Minister Dent does the RCMP have a specific program that's geared towards educating our children on things that they can do to prevent crime or report crime, because sometimes people do not report them as they should. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The one educational program that the RCMP have is specifically aimed at drugs: the Drug Awareness Reduction Program. That isn't offered in all communities across the Northwest Territories, because of the level of resources. But what RCMP do is try and put a human face on policing by making sure that they are in the schools, that people feel comfortable interacting with the RCMP. They try and make sure that people understand that it's part of their responsibility to report to RCMP when they see problems in the community, but that's also something that's carried on in the school curriculum. It's not just the RCMP, it's also part of the school curriculum. The requirement to be part and parcel of your community is to be a good citizen. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in these small communities that do not have RCMP officers, sometimes it's very hard to get the RCMP on call. That's because of the system. I've heard some complaints before, because of the system or the times that calls are coming in and it just takes too long and sometimes that deters members of the community from calling the RCMP. So it's a real crying shame that in this day and age we're still facing this situation. I support the education in the schools. What constitutes an emergency to get full-time officers in our communities? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member talked about several issues there. First of all, if the Member has specific communities or concerns from specific communities about the difficulty, if there is a problem getting through to the RCMP when there is an issue in the community, I would like him to advise me and I will deal directly with the RCMP on that issue. In terms of the programs in the schools, I appreciate the Member's support for us finding ways to get that into the curriculum. I guess what it would take to get more police into more communities would be a substantial increase in the budget for the Department of Justice, and that would be driven in part by an increase in the crime stats. At this point, the criminal rate in the smaller communities hasn't led us to go forward with the kind of funding that we would need to achieve to fill all those 11 communities with detachments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, want to wish my colleague Sandy a happy birthday, and Robert McLeod.

---Applause

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the communities have the solutions in terms of policing there and especially with education of our children, if the Minister of Justice could make a commitment again to look at a proactive approach to having police presence in those small communities. I want to ask the Minister about putting in some time frames in terms of looking at those communities without RCMP, to look at an action plan to come to those regions and come to those communities and give a commitment to the community that they will have some type of law enforcement that would be satisfactory to them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question this afternoon is for the Honourable Brendan Bell in his capacity as Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development and it stays, I think, within the justice theme this afternoon, Mr. Speaker. We are always looking for alternatives for healthy lifestyle activities, especially for our young people as ways to help them avoid getting into trouble. One of the things that we've been missing here in Yellowknife for a couple of years now, Mr. Speaker, is the provision of lifeguard services at the Long Lake beach. There have been, regrettably, Mr. Speaker, a real boondoggle here between our city bureaucracies and our territorial bureaucracies with the parks division within Mr. Bell's ministry, and I want to see how we're doing this year. Are we going to have three years, Mr. Speaker, when the kids and families of Yellowknife won't have a lifeguard at our beach? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to provide just a little background. We also have a territorial park within the municipality of Hay River that has a beach and it's going on many more than three years without lifeguard services posted as unsupervised, as is the beach at Long Lake. We have had some discussion with the city. This is ongoing. In the summer of 2003 we offered $12,000 to the city in an effort to jointly cost share this program. The city, unfortunately, wasn't able to find lifeguards that year. The following year, the summer of 2004, we upped that to $15,000; again an attempt to cost share. The city insisted that we had to pay the full burden, which they estimated, for the number of hours and days and the level of service that they wanted to provide, at $21,000. That's where the discussion fell apart. Over the fall and winter we continued to discuss this issue. We've broadened it to try to encourage the city to in fact take over the operation of the campground, because we feel that they would be more able to do the job that they want to see happen out there and that's the discussion that's ongoing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we're looking at, it seems, both kind of who is responsible for this place and then who's going to pay for it. Really, Mr. Speaker, the issue comes down to two levels of government that have yet to find a solution to getting something really quite as straightforward as lifeguard services at our beaches, plural. What will the Minister be able to do to break this logjam for this coming summer?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The discussions are ongoing, but we'd offer the $15,000 again. We aren't in the business of providing lifeguards, we don't train lifeguards, we don't have lifeguards, the city does. The city carries liability insurance because they have the pool and lifeguards at the pool. The offer is on the table, but I think the bigger picture here and the larger issue is one of having effective operation and management of the entire park. We simply hire a contractor really, Mr. Speaker, at the park. The city can do that as well. So I'm

hoping they'll be willing to engage in the broader discussion and not just focus on the life guarding issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.