Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

That is correct, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. I spoke earlier today in the sitting of the Legislature about how I feel about the way casual and term employees are treated by the government. Some of these people have been there for quite a long time, particularly in Dene K'onia, not so much for the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. Even there, though, there are some very long-serving casual employees. How would casual employees then plan their lives, livelihood and their incomes around this fact that they might just be called in less? What kind of consultation, counselling or planning has taken place with our casual employees to make them understand and aware of how these changes are going to potentially impact them? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In general, because it takes 5.5 PYs to fill one position on a 24/7 operation, what we are talking about is generally one. If there had been in the past, two casuals called in per shift on average, now we are talking about having only one called in on average. I'm afraid I don't know what the average has been or how many are called in on a regular basis, so I don't know what the impact is going to be. But it would certainly be something that we could find out from historical data and ask the warden to advise the casual contingent what the likely impact is going to be.

As Mr. Roland pointed out, with casuals, there is not ever a guarantee of a long-term position, so we don't have the same sort of provisions as we have for full-time staff in terms of layoff.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Now I would like to recognize Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to start off with the comments about the Justice's opening remarks. First and foremost is the new courthouse proposal being built here in Yellowknife. I don't know if that is a good idea or not. I just want to ask the Minister about one of the programs that Justice rolled out in the 13th Assembly. It was the pilot project on-the-land justice program that was introduced and there were a couple of communities. Fort Resolution was one; I think Aklavik was the other. They were designated as communities where they would carry out the pilot project. I know there is something in the area of about $900,000 that was allocated to fund this program. What is the department's direction now so far as funding that program? Is it still ongoing? Is it gone? Has it expanded? Are you going to take some recommendations out of the program? Is there going to be a review of the program? Has it sunsetted? I am not really sure what is happening. As far as I know, there is still on-the-land programming happening in my community. It seems like the program funding just keeps getting cut back every year. I just want to get Justice's input or a status report on what is happening with that program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I suspect that the Member is referring to the correction service Wilderness Camp Program. We have a number of those in operation. They are not specifically tied to those two communities that the Member has mentioned, but the program's budget is a little over $1 million a year. It involves trying to get inmates into on-the-land camps. We have recently concluded a request for a proposal, where we were asking for proposals from potential operators from across the Northwest Territories. We have had a number of proposals come in for operations. We will be taking a look at those.

We have had a couple in operation, particularly for adults in the past little while. The big problem we have had is convincing enough inmates to actually take the program. What we were sort of doing is almost a marketing program in the jails. We have had a little flyer developed. I would be happy to share copies with all of the Members. The staff hand them out to inmates. They are encouraged to consider moving to a wilderness camp. We have also increased the incentive pay for inmates who will go out to wilderness camps, because, I agree with the Member; this is actually a very good way to have people get back into understanding themselves, their cultures and becoming

more productive citizens. We increased the pay. The staff is quite aggressively marketing the programs now to inmates. As I said, we have two in operation in the Northwest Territories right now. We are looking at others. But we need to get more inmates prepared to go into these facilities in order to justify their operation.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. One question I would have with regard to the program is I don't know why the department would be marketing the inmates. Why even give them the option or the choice of either on the land or jail? Why not market the judges who are handing down the sentences and say, you are going out to the bush camp whether you like it or not. It is a done deal right there. I think the justice here in the NWT is starting to cater more to the inmates as opposed to the justice system itself, and always seeking more inmate approval for where they want to go, how they want to be sentenced, how they want to carry out their sentence and all that. I don't think that all of these options should even be put forward on the table to any inmate that is breaking the law. I don't think he should be given an option of where he wants to serve his sentence, how long he wants to serve his sentence for, and where he wants to go, whether out in the bush camp in Aklavik or out in the bush camp in Fort Resolution. I don't think that should be something that they should be even given any input into. That even goes so far as the incentive pay. I am not sure what that incentive pay is for. Is it for the people who are running the camp or the people who are going to the camp? I am sure that if people are being paid to go out on the land, that is a given. They are just going to be there. I know there is no monitoring with a lot of on-the-land programs here. There is no justice official or RCMP officer that goes out and visits these camps on a regular basis. There is nothing like that that ever happens. Basically, these people are just out on a holiday. It is just like going out to a tourist camp. They do a little bit of hunting, lots of fishing, just kick back and relax in the sun until they do their sentencing. They can meet up with other people from the communities while they are out on the land and touch base with them and get their supplies through those avenues. There is no security when they are out on the land. If it is not the way it is should be run and the government supports it, then I can see it just taken right off and getting right out of control. A lot of community justice workers are coming back to me and saying I go out on the land and I see these guys who are supposed to be in jail. They are just enjoying the life of three squares a day and all you have to do is hunt and fish. That is just perfect, as far as I am concerned. I just have a problem with that kind of a justice system or program like that. There has to be more stringent controls put in place and more monitoring, like even getting an RCMP officer out there every other week or something just to make sure that everybody is still intact and there are no alcohol and drugs in these camp setups. Something like that is what I would like to see moving forward. But enough with that, I guess.

I just want to talk a little about these services to the government that the department provides with legislative drafting and whatnot. I am just looking at the activity summaries from past years. It looks like the contract services have gone up and compensation benefits have also gone up. How many services do this department's own lawyers provide so far as legislative drafting? I know this was a discussion item in one of the committee meetings where a lot of this legislative drafting is contracted out; the majority of it is, anyway. Many of the lawyers in the GNWT don't even provide a service to the GNWT. A lot of them are actually more of a disservice. More of them are on stress leave, sick leave and all kinds of leave. I guess the lawyers know what is good and what is not. I just think there has to be more accountability in that department as far as legislation goes and everything like that, a legal counsel to the GNWT departments. I think the legal counsel should be a given for everything that this government...Any program or initiative that it decides to undertake or direction or implementation of a policy that it wants to implement, legal counsel should be a given. I don't even know why the government has to ask its own lawyers for legal counsel on anything. They say we always have to go back and get legal counsel to look at this. That should all be a given. That is part of the homework and the whole government process of rolling out any initiative or program. We have to have your legal opinion already nailed down. I think it is always cumbersome for any department to carry out any kind of initiative or direction without proper legal counsel.

Other than that, I think the courthouse thing is just going to...I don't know what business plan that was put in, made how many years ago, was in the books. But if it has been in the books for a few years, I can't see holding it off for another year or two being a real hindrance to this government's or the department's vision or mandate anyway. I just couldn't support it because, as far as I'm concerned, it is just opening the door to make it easier to shut down all the other court registries, court buildings and VP offices in all the other regions and just bring it all here to Yellowknife. Like my friend from Hay River South was saying, you can just make it all here in Yellowknife, and you can justify it because that is the way it looks like it is going. To me, it doesn't look good for the department. I know you are not going to get any support from the people of the NWT. If that courthouse even breaks ground, you would have a lot of public outcry on why that has come about. There has been no consultation whatsoever, as far as I am concerned. Maybe the Minister can give me some of the insight into some of these issues. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The on-the-land program that the Member asks about, a judge can't sentence an offender to go to this kind of program. It has to be a situation where the offender chooses. They can only go if they are already ready for a temporary absence. They have to be approved for temporary absence from a secure facility to be sent to one of these facilities. Basically, they have to have concluded one-sixth of their sentence and be judged to be a good security risk before they can be sent out to them, because they're not prisons. There are no fences and inmates are using firearms and so on. You basically have to be ready for full release before you're allowed to go out on these things.

The whole purpose is to have elders work with the inmates and have inmates reintegrate into their traditional lifestyle. That's the basic premise to an on-the-land program. It isn't the sort of situation where you would want an RCMP officer showing up to police what's going on. This is supposed to be something that's driven by elders and respect for the land.

The programs are generally pretty successful with the guys who agree to take the programming, but it's not easy. This isn't like a tourist lodge, and we haven't had people jumping up and down to go out to them. That's why we're trying to market it, because we think it's a good idea. We think it's good to get people out on the land. We're prepared to increase the amount of money that we pay the inmates, not the operators. We increased the funding for the operators this fiscal year and now we're looking at increasing the incentive pay that we pay the inmates for attending this kind of programming. In fact, if they work for one of the operators and provide services over and above what is typically expected, they may even be paid more by the operators.

So it is an opportunity for the inmates to, when they finish their term, actually have a little bit of change in their pocket so they have more options, too. They're not just out on the street with nothing in their hands, which could lead to a lot of problems.

The Member asked questions about the legislative drafting. I want to make it clear that most of the drafting of legislation is done by our government lawyers in-house. We have four. If we wanted to do it all in-house, we'd have to increase the staff. As the Member will be aware, when you have legislative proposals that go through the system, sometimes we get hit with five or six bills that need to be drafted. So we have a real demand. But then there may be a couple of months that go by and we don't have that sort of thing coming up for awhile. If we were going to staff up to deal with all the peaks then we'd have a lot of lawyers sitting around doing nothing when we have those valleys. It's more cost-effective for us to contract out some of the drafting. But I want to make it very clear that we don't do that much. Most of the drafting is actually done in-house.

And we don't charge for legal counsel. So if a department needs advice, all they have to do is ask for it. The legal counsel is given. But we don't send a lawyer along with everybody in government when they're talking about things; we wait for people to ask for the advice. As soon as it's asked for, though, it's responded to. So that's the way the requests for legal advice are handled.

In terms of the courthouse, we have space issues and security issues that we have to address. We're finding more and more often that we don't have the space for the courts to operate in Yellowknife. We had to rent out and fit up some premises this last year for about $350,000 for just one trial. We had to rent space in a hotel in Yellowknife a couple of weeks ago for another court case. We know there is another case coming up this year that we are going to have to rent more space for because we can't accommodate it within the space we have in the courthouse. The issue is one of not having the space right now and we're going to wind up paying more and more for rental space around town and still not really deal with the issue. So eventually we have to start dealing with it. If we're already at that point right now, we're talking about not having a courthouse in place, if we start this year, until 2010. By 2010 it would be an impossible situation if we didn't start the process now. So that's the reason we've advanced it at this point. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Next I have Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have a few different areas to comment on, but I would perhaps switch the format here and see if I could put them out one at a time and see if the Minister would engage in how much ground we could cover in the 10 minutes allotted here. I'm going to be repeating a number of areas, but I do want to get a couple things on the record here.

To the number of police we are able to staff in the Northwest Territories and specifically to the police in the smallest communities, they too should have a police presence. It's something that's certainly very desirable. Is it warranted? I know that in previous discussions of this nature the department has come back and often said, well, you know, given the volume of crime or the kind of things that an RCMP officer would be called to attend to in the community, it has been very difficult to justify. But the presence of police in small communities means so much more than being able to act for or when offences occur. There's so much more about community building and sovereignty. So I am certainly a fan of trying to increase the number of officers we have in small communities.

There's been a call to put together a business plan that would see what the commitment is that would be required for the Northwest Territories to do this. I'm under no illusions that it would be a huge bill of tens of millions of dollars to try and do it all at once, but maybe there is a way that we could, in a planned and more strategic way over perhaps a period of several years, we could achieve this.

The news that the Minister provided about the federal government having to supply 30 percent of the staffing dollars, I guess here's where I'd put a question out. Would that include the cost of overheads and building and operating police barracks and offices in the smaller communities? Where would the revenue come for that, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Certainly I've already committed in the House that I will be working on that sort of capital plan, that sort of business plan that the Member has talked about. I've already started a discussion with the deputy and directed him to start some work at moving this forward. The Member makes a good point. I talked earlier about Tsiigehtchic and it being on the highway, so that would be a good opportunity for us to perhaps examine whether or not there wasn't some justification for making sure that not only was there some RCMP there, but if there isn't, a lot of business for them may be they could spend some time on the highways. Highway patrol, intersect some of the people coming up with drugs.

The Member talked about sovereignty. Clearly, I know, Mr. Chairman, this will be an area that's dear to your heart. I think Sachs Harbour is a good example of where we need to make sure that we're flying the flag.

I think there are a number of cases where we can make that sort of argument, as well as the one that the Member talks about in terms of community development, community safety. I am prepared to advance that and come back to the House with some numbers. The process is likely to wind up being one that will wind out over a number of years. I can't see us being prepared to

necessarily jump in right off the bat or in a one-year deal with it. It may be too much of a shock to the Finance Minister to propose that. We'll make sure that we sort of try and move things along on a basis that we can sell.

The specific question the Member asked was in terms of the other resources. The federal government would pay for the full cost of the capital and I guess we'd have to talk to them about when and how they would proceed with the building of a detachment, if that's what is required. We couldn't necessarily just arbitrarily do that with them, but we could work with them on that. Once the building is built, our contract then, we pay for the use of the infrastructure at $107 a square metre or 70 percent of $107 per square metre. So it's costed out in the operation contract at that price and we pay 70 percent. But we would have to negotiate with them the building of the facility, because they pay 100 percent of the capital cost.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you. The scenario there was better than I might have imagined. I can only say that I do look forward to the business plan. Related to that, Mr. Chairman, are the ample signals, the very clear and loud signals that we're getting about the anticipated increase in crime and the need for policing caused by super-development, the huge developments that we're on the cusp of. The proponents for the Mackenzie Valley pipeline at a workshop in Inuvik in December made no bones about it that with the level of activity, the number of workers concentrated over a relatively short period of time, that there will be the need for additional policing. With this hopefully a reality in our near future, Mr. Chairman, will it also be included in the business plan for additional policing services that the Minister has talked about? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm not sure that any response to the pipeline construction process would be included in the next business plan we look at, because we know the timing is such that it wouldn't be the right time to necessarily have it there. I've started the discussion with the RCMP and we will continue to monitor it and we'll look for when the right opportunity is to respond. The RCMP are aware that we have the concern and have agreed that they will start to examine what would be an appropriate response and discuss that with us in the not-too-distant future.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Mr. Chairman, also on a related line, and I think our colleague Ms. Lee spoke to it as well, is the very large question across Canada of growing crime related to substance abuse. We were, of course, all witness to a horrible event in Alberta a few days ago, so there is quite a level of sensitivity about this. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice for Canada, Anne McLellan, went into what I found a very interesting and appropriate kind of discussion over the weekend to urge, I guess in a ministerial way, our justice community to take a tougher stand when convicting people of drug-related offences, and reflecting as much as they can, the protocols that exist between the political and judicial arms of our government, Mr. Chairman, but also trying to send a message that society has, I think, a greater tolerance now for a tougher stand on this and certainly a lower tolerance for the explosive growth in what is seen to be the availability, the ease, and the consistency of illegal substances. My question here, Mr. Chairman, is to what extent can Mr. Dent, as our Minister of Justice, consider sending that kind of a signal to the judiciary? Because it is certainly one that I feel is very much warranted. Thank you.