Thank you, Mr. Minister. I have Mr. Pokiak next. No? Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to speak to the Yellowknife courthouse for just a minute too, since most of the Members have touched on that. I think there is a business case and an argument to be made for the fact that Yellowknife may need a new courthouse and that we've been in leased space and there are issues of security and there are issues of access and interview rooms and accommodating people. I haven't read the report in-depth. I think there's an argument to be made for owing a standalone court services building in Yellowknife, as opposed to leasing something and spending a lot of money modifying it over the years. But the price tag of an anticipated $41 million, I don't know who came up or dreamt up the plan for this building, but just to put in on an order of magnitude with other buildings in Yellowknife that would cost around the same amount of money, I think the Stanton Territorial Hospital probably cost -- mind you, a few years ago, but not that long ago -- maybe in the neighbourhood of $50 million. I think the new Inuvik hospital cost around $50 million, more recently constructed than the Stanton hospital. We know what the North Slave Correctional Centre cost: almost $50 million. But when the Minister says that we're not building a monument and we're going to bring our old furniture over and that's going to save a lot of money, I'm sorry. A $41 million building is an astronomically expensive building. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it right and do it once and make it what we what we want to make, but make no mistake. The building that we're sitting in tonight was about a $26 million building 10 years ago, and there's nothing but the best of everything in this building, and we didn't have to move the furniture from the old facility.

Sometimes I just wished that we could put things in the context of looking at what people do deal with in the smaller communities. Yellowknife is the capital; let's give Yellowknife its due. Half of the population of the Northwest Territories lives here. But you know sometimes I just wished that we could put something like this in the context of you have to go to the communities; you just have to go to the small communities and drive down the streets, and look at the people's houses, and look at their schools that are cracking, and look at the nursing station, and look at the brown patch in Nahanni Butte where the kids play soccer. I mean, sometimes you just have to put this in the context of the range of what we're dealing with here. Just imagine this. You have somebody in a small community, they're living in a homeownership unit, something they've been struggling to maintain on their own, they have a brush with the law, now a big system kicks into place. We've taken away the regional community justice coordinators so we can give them back that little pittance of whatever it is, $267,000, back to the community and say we're doing you a favour. So now this person comes in contact with our justice system. So we'll put them on a jet with an RCMP escort, we'll fly them to Yellowknife, we'll accommodate them in a $50 million jail, and then we'll usher them over to the $40 million courthouse done up sparing no expense. I wish somebody could view this from another planet and just see how this could look. Try to imagine it. We bring them to the big city here, we take them into a building probably like nothing they've ever seen before, with all things shiny and bright and glass and beautiful woodwork, and sit them up in front of a guy with a gavel and say welcome to the justice system. But, you know, I guess at the end of the day they get to off to that nice prison facility and we'll put them in a cage and we'll lock the door, and maybe we'll do a little programming with them and hopefully send them back to their community in better shape.

There's just something about the contradiction of the way we do stuff that makes me sick. When the Minister talks about oh, yes, we killed the five positions for community justice coordinators in the communities. Probably one of very few jobs in some of these communities. But we did that because we're going to give those communities back that money so they can do something about community justice in their communities. But we're going to build a $40 million courthouse in Yellowknife. There's something wrong with this picture, Mr. Chairman.

This is not a utilitarian kind of building we're talking about here, let's be honest. This is elaborate. It is a monument. Sure, we know we're proud in the Northwest Territories and we have nice infrastructure and nice facilities in our capital and why would you want to build anything less. But I don't know; $41 million. I'd like to ask the Minister who came up with that plan that designed that number. Where did that number come from? Is that a Class A estimate? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Groenewegen may characterize it as us driving more people to the court, but, you know, I don't believe that. I think that the way we're giving more money

to community justice committees will, in fact, keep people out of the courts. They need the resources. That's right, they need the resources to be able to do it. It's amazing how much work these committees are doing right now, and some of them have been having trouble finding enough resources to keep on doing what they're doing and then increase their workload. We still have the resources available to help communities that get into trouble. We have the justice committees up and running in 30 in the Northwest Territories already. This isn't something that we need to get established in those communities; they are running, they are doing the job. Some of them are doing it so well that they're running out of money, and they needed more money to get the job done. So we found the way to reduce expenditures and get more money into the communities' hands. So, in fact, this should reduce the numbers of people who appear in front of the courts because it is diverting them outside the courts.

Mrs. Groenewegen asked about where the estimate came from. It was provided to the department by DPW, based on their work with the program plan. In other words, what sort of space is needed over the next 40 years, and how do we make sure that we build a facility that will accommodate it. So at this point, because there are no plans in place, this is a Class D estimate based on square foot cost.

If you were to build this kind of building today, I have no doubt that you'd be talking about $50 million or $60 million, if not more, given the size of it and what we're seeing in per square foot costs in the North right now. So if you're talking about $41 million for a building, you're not talking about something that is comparable to this. You are talking about something that will fulfil the need, but, hopefully, as Mrs. Groenewegen said, something that will fulfil the need for a number of years and not something we have to add onto in a mere 10 years. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister speaks to the value of the community justice committees and nobody is arguing with that, but I am saying in order to give them a lousy, measly $250,000, isn't it a shame that we had to take five positions out of small communities to take away the regional justice coordinators in the communities in order to find that $250,000 in a $1 billion budget. That's the part I find sad. No doubt those people are struggling and hats off to them if they are willing to work like that to try to divert their own people from having to deal with the justice system and the very expensive price tag on incarcerating people. Good on them, bad on us that we had to take away the five regional coordinators jobs in order to find the money for it. Where are our priorities? We can't afford housing for teachers and nurses in the communities, so that people can teach our kids in the school and nurses can take care of our people in the nursing stations, but we can find $41 million to build a courthouse so we can send people off to jail. You have to look at it in the big picture, Mr. Chairman.

I am trying to be reflective of how people are going to perceive this and how people see this when they look at what we are doing as a government. It's the small things that matter in the communities.

Having said that, I have been through the courthouse building here which we are leasing. I respect the issues that are raised by the judiciary with respect to the serviceability of the way things are laid out and how that compares to other people of other stature would be expected to fulfil their duties. So, Mr. Chairman, just before my time is up, I have one more question. How many positions are vacant, system-wide, within Justice at this time?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Schofield tells me that the last time that a report was run, we reported nine vacant positions and because of the need to keep positions for affected employees with layoffs and because the people aren't available until April 1st or 15th or whenever they are formally laid off, none of the positions will be filled until we know whether or not the affected employees are going to take them.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few comments with regard to the policing situation in Sachs Harbour. Yesterday, the Minister responded to Mr. Menicoche's comments that it's going to require three personnel to open up a new detachment, not two as previously mentioned. Having said that, I wonder how that is going to affect the small communities? Labour standards says they requested a two-person detachment and now they are looking at three-person detachments. How is the department going to respond to that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I said earlier today, It's my intention to work with the RCMP to develop a phased approach to responding to the communities that do not have RCMP and then work with my colleagues to see how we might address that. I can't say that specifically it's going to impact this way or that way because it really does depend on what the costs turn out to be for each community and then how my colleagues agree to move forward to address those costs.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a follow-up. The communities that don't have an RCMP presence right now, can the Minister let the House know what happens in case there's a death in the community and there is no RCMP precedence and you have to fly two-and-a-half or three hours before you can get there? Who is liable for this? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If it was a wrongful death and somebody caused the death, then the person who caused it would be responsible. That would be where the liability lies.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If there is a requirement in communities for RCMP presence, doesn't the department feel responsible if something happens in cases like that if they can't afford to have RCMP present in the community? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I have told this House, I think it would be nice if we could have detachments in every community. Certainly it's something that I would like to see, but, to this point, the government hasn't been able to afford to proceed that way.

For instance, in Sachs, as I said this afternoon, I think there's a strong argument to be made for sovereignty as well, making sure that Canada has some way of flying the flag. I think it's important to have RCMP in communities, not only for community safety but for a range of reasons. We would certainly like to be able to do it, but I don't think that we would be liable in a situation where we know that there isn't an RCMP and we are doing what we can to provide the coverage that we can. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I said earlier today, I understand the issue of the concern about the security in communities and there's no question that that presents an issue in communities. There is no question that the issue of security can't be dealt with in the same way in a smaller community. There are some mitigating factors and one of them is there's always RCMP involved when court is being held in a community. That isn't always the case in the courts in places like Yellowknife or Hay River where you have a courthouse. Typically there it's a sheriff and that's not the same level of security as the RCMP provide.

The other issue is that in Yellowknife, the court sits 267 days a year. In most communities, smaller communities, that would be a dozen or less days a year. It makes it that much more difficult to make the expenditure when the numbers of days of sittings are so small. In terms of dealing with the security issue, there tends to be more and more serious violent crime happening in and around the North Slave region. We don't tend to see the same sort or type of criminals in the smaller communities, thank goodness. It certainly would be an issue if we did start to, because that might cause us some problems with the regional administration of justice. I think that it's not a good news story for Yellowknife; it's a good news story for the smaller communities that we aren't seeing that same level of violent crime in the smaller communities that we are starting to see here in the capital. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.