Thank you for that characterization of that being one small part in one small place. That one small part and that one small change is costing my community 5.5 indeterminate positions and probably nine casual positions in the process. If the Minister thinks that is a small impact on a small community, well, then I guess I have my work cut out for me here to talk about this, because that is a huge impact. It may be a small change in the overall operations of Justice and part of this government, but it is a huge impact on the community of Hay River.
Mr. Chair, I am just going to talk for a few minutes about the references made by several of my colleagues to the complement of staffing of RCMP in communities. It ties in with my concern. That is whether we are talking about Hay River or any other community south of the lake; we have talked about the somewhat unquantifiable costs of transporting remand inmates from communities to Yellowknife. I think that this will impact on the presence of RCMP officers in communities. Now, granted, a lot of the small communities need more policing services. I would say that Hay River has needed more policing services. Through this new initiative investment, we will be realizing some of that increase. But I don't think that it is a wise and prudent use of our RCMP manpower to be using that for transporting prisoners around, remand inmates, any more than we absolutely have to. If it takes them right out of the community, it poses a problem. It is not like it is just one other thing on their daily schedule of activities to do in the community. It actually removes them from the community. That is why it is so important that we think about this very carefully when we think about how we want to deploy our RCMP, because human resources are scarce in that area.
Hay River, I will speak for, cannot afford to have our RCMP members on the road transporting prisoners back and forth not just once, but in some cases, up to five times for reappearances when they need to come back to their communities where the witnesses and lawyers are. I would like to ask the Minister if he can elaborate a little bit on who is responsible for the transport of prisoners. Is it always the RCMP? Is it sometimes corrections officers? The way the schedule is set up; does it require that the RCMP is out of the community overnight? Do they have to be paid overtime? Are there per diems? Are there hotel costs? I want him to elaborate on that, because I don't think it is the highest and best use of our RCMP resources, to be out of the communities transporting inmates. Thank you.