Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I should probably go back to Mr. Menicoche because I haven't been offered the occasion to respond for a number of Members. I can't disagree with Mr. Menicoche that the RCMP in his region have a big area to cover with the six communities, and I certainly heard the Members yesterday talking about the need for more police services in communities that don't have any services right now. As the information that I have with me here indicates, there are eight RCMP positions in Fort Simpson and four in Fort Liard. I don't know if any of them are vacant at the moment, but that's the approved contingent, according to the notes that I have with me in the House.
The Member has called for us, along with other Members, to increase the number of communities that have detachments of RCMP, and I've committed to discussing with the RCMP what approaches there might be in working with the RCMP to get some pricing. We're hoping that there are going to be some alternatives that we can talk about, because the RCMP are saying that we can't open a new detachment with just two members; it has to take three to get the safety issue dealt with. So we're talking about a significant increase in numbers. But there may be some other options that we can examine, and the Member suggested perhaps longer stays in communities as one option. Perhaps increasing the numbers of RCMP in the relief units so we could increase the number of visits and so on. It's an issue I'm going to have to deal with the RCMP and Members on to try and come to some resolution.
Mr. Menicoche also talked about the concern about support or liaison with the RCMP, between the RCMP and community justice committees. One of the purposes for us funding the part-time coordinator in every community was to provide just that facility. If communities find that their committee is not working, we still have some resources available through the department and a resource person available to help communities get things back on track. We haven't given up all the resources and we do still maintain some ability to improve or to work with communities to make sure their community justice committees are supported.
The Member also talked about the Protection Against Family Violence Act. I want to make it perfectly clear to everybody: that act is not in force. The Protection Against Family Violence Act is not in force as of today. It will come into force on April 1st and only on April 1st because, at this point, we do not have the designates trained so the act can actually be put into place. That's one of the reasons that you haven't seen public advertising about it. We don't want to confuse people to make them think that it's available when it's not. The whole program is set to kick off by April 1st, with a public relations campaign that will make sure that people in communities are aware that now this act is available to them. The designates will receive their training next week and there will be further training that is undertaken and then, beginning in April, we will have people who will travel to the communities to make sure there is greater awareness and to further train people who might be involved in application of the Protection Against Family Violence Act.
Mr. Pokiak brought up the issue of the Family Law Clinic and wondered about the level of standing. I'm pleased to announce that as of today we are fully staffed in the family law area. We have five lawyers practicing through the Legal Services Board, four in Yellowknife and one in Inuvik. Family law; sorry, I'm corrected. The question was whether or not they have enough space. As far as I'm aware, I've heard nothing from the Legal Services Board to indicate that the space is not adequate.
I understand or have heard that the Member has, in the past, expressed his concern about the expenditure of money that's proposed for a new courthouse, and I just want to assure the Member that this is an issue that's been...I have letters going back almost 10 years from judges that have pointed out the concerns about the space being inadequate, that there are security issues and that they don't feel it's something that can be withstood. The problem we face is that Public Works has, on more than two occasions now, in consultation with other experts, told us that there is no reasonable way to renovate the facility we have. So either one way or the other, we are looking at new space. The advice we have received is that this is the most economic way to deal with it.
Mr. Pokiak also talked about wilderness camps and the issue of liability insurance being too costly for new camps to get set up. Part of the problem is that in terms of operation, the revenue source or the revenue stream for anybody who sets up a new camp is difficult, because we can't force people to go to a camp. They have to want to go. We can make the offer, but they have to be ready for a temporary release from prison. So unless they are in that position and then request to go to a camp, we can't get them to go. So it's difficult for operators to know just what sort of revenue stream they could get. If there was a
better uptake on the numbers going into camps, then it would be easier for operators to know whether or not they could afford liability insurance.
I think it's more of a revenue issue. General liability insurance is actually covered by the department for the operator. So it's really an issue of the level of revenue.
Mrs. Groenewegen raised a number of issues around the proposed closures in her community. Like Mr. Yakeleya asked how the department budget could go up and still have reductions, the department was, like all departments, every department has to go through the reduction exercise. We would bring forward the reductions for consideration by FMB. So we proposed them there. Then they came off of the department's budgets before any new initiatives were included. For instance, one of the new initiatives that we had included $1.489 million for additional RCMP. So in spite of the reductions to the budgets in some areas, we did get increases for forced growth and some new initiatives like adding RCMP to the budget. So that is where you would see that there might be an increase to the budget, even though we had to go through reductions.
The issue around the cuts to Hay River was an issue where I can't disagree with the Member that it was a huge number of cuts to one community in comparison to what other communities were seeing through the reduction exercise. It was a situation where in Justice, when we looked at what we could do to reduce expenditures and have the least impact on the service delivery, it was unfortunate that most of the reductions came up in that community. It wasn't something that we were particularly pleased about. It was an issue that we were tasked, at the direction of Members, with finding $20 million in reductions. So we brought those to the table.
The Member has raised the issue of the review by the Audit Bureau and whether or not that supports the figures I have been using in the House. I guess we will have to take different positions on that review as well. The way I read the review, it says the methodology and underlying assumptions were reasonable, the assumptions that lead to us figuring out what the reductions would be. It does say that if we had laid off the 5.5 people, that the reductions of $400,000 would have been realized, but because we chose to try to deal with the reductions in a humane manner by not laying people off, but by waiting for positions to be reduced through attrition, the Audit Bureau says we will not achieve the full level of savings in the first year. It does indicate that the level of savings will be achieved. In fact, it says in their report the level of savings will probably be in the area of $500,000 a year as those positions are eliminated.
Mr. Hawkins talked about legal and, again, we are fully staffed as of today.
Mr. Yakeleya, too, raised the issue of wilderness camps and he says there is a difficulty getting them started in the region and more people should be put in these facilities. I don't disagree with the Member. I think we should be able to get more people into these facilities, but we can't. We can't tell people they have to go to them. We can't say you need to go out on the land. For them to go out on the land, they have to be finished their sentence, ready for temporary absence, approved for a temporary absence and then they have to agree that they want to go out to an on-the-land camp. So they can't go initially. When they are first sentenced to custody, you can't immediately send them to a camp. The only way that would happen is through a diversion, if they were to divert through a community justice committee, there might be an opportunity to look at a community solution like that. Before they would be approved for a camp program, they would have to do at least one-sixth of their sentence in a facility. Then they would be judged as ready for the TA.
So it's not a question of the department not being supportive of facilities in the regions. The problem is we have more spaces right now available for inmates to go to on-the-land camps than we can fill. If more of them are made available, it would just mean that each of the operators will be getting less money because we pay by the number of spaces that are taken up in the programs.
So one of the things we have started to do is promote the camps. We are looking to provide incentives to inmates. We are increasing the incentives for them to attend the camps. We are starting to promote them much more actively in the facilities and we are hoping to drive up the usage. If we can do that, I think there would be a good argument to see more camps developed in more regions, so that's what we are going to try to do, but we have to build up the demand before we can increase the supply. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.