Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, Mr. Speaker, in order to convert this product you will have to take some training in regards to how modular homes are constructed. We have talked to ATCO in regards to that; I've talk to Winalta Homes out of Edmonton. They are willing to take our students and put them through that factory so they can get a feel for how you do build modular homes. It's not much different than stick built homes, but again, the opportunity is there.

Right now they are looking for 70 people in the plant, just a job opportunity. Again, we are working through our human resource strategy on what type of training these people are going to need, where they should take that training, and exactly how we're going to be able to do the conversions in the communities. So there are certain components that we have to fulfill to be able to carry out the final conversions in our communities: identify the people, give them the experience they're going to need on the product we're going to use, and also give them the tools they're going need to do the job, and do the conversions in our communities. So there are steps that we're taking and it's going to come by way of our human resource development plan that I mentioned.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it makes perfect sense to me that if northerners watch these units going together, they're going to know how to do whatever they need to do to partially take them apart to convert them to a housing unit. However, I have one question about that, and it doesn't mean that the same people who go down there to train are necessarily going to be the ones doing the conversion on the other end. Are they going to get recognized apprenticeship training hours and credentials through this program? I want tradespeople coming back from there, not somebody who knows how to convert a trailer. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, one of the important components of the whole idea of building houses in the Northwest Territories is we have to do a better job of finding the people, giving them the training they're going to need, and making sure they have the tickets to do the job. One of the ways that we're doing that is to develop a human resource strategy that we can develop around the 500 houses we're going to build and also the Novel. So it has to come together in regards to how we develop that human resource for the Northwest Territories, but also using the projects that we are going to be delivering over the next number of years. So we are working that into the project, and again, for people to get that training, they have to go somewhere. Like I mentioned, we are working with ATCO and CMHC. CMHC has made it clear, any dollars they invest there has to be a strong human resource component to those federal dollars that are going to be expended. So there are jobs created, especially in aboriginal communities where we have high unemployment so that is a very important component of where we're going with this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my final question is, does the human resources strategy include apprenticeship training for the trades? I mean, if these people are going to be down in Calgary, SAIT is right there, we all understand how apprenticeships work, you work so many hours, you take so many hours of theory. Will the human resource strategy include apprentices sponsored by these employers to produce tradespeople? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, it will include that because that's a very important

component of us building our human resources in the North.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Oral questions. Written questions. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my written question is to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

1. Can the Minister outline when his department will have an accurate population count of the caribou in the North?
2. When will the Minister provide an explanation of the impacts of the wolf population due to increasing their harvest quota?
3. Can the Minister's department provide an explanation on the consultation process either in the future or present to implement the measures of the caribou quota with the trappers, hunters and harvesters in the communities? What types of surveying measures are aboriginal driven?
4. When, if at all, will the department gather the regional harvesters of caribou use to strategize future management measures for all wildlife?
5. What provisions in the Wildlife Act uphold the land claims and treaty obligations negotiated in these modern day treaty agreements?
6. Where will the department implement, partially or fully, the traditional knowledge policy, developed from elders, into future plans for not only caribou, but all wildlife issues?

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Written questions. Returns to written questions. Petitions. Tabling of documents. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Public Utilities Board of the NWT 2005 Annual Report. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Tabling of documents. Notices of motion. Notices of motion for the first reading of bills. First reading of bills. Second reading of bills. Consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Bill 18, Committee Reports 5, 6 and 7, with Mr. Ramsay in the chair.

I will call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Committee wishes to consider the Department of Justice.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. We will entertain the Department of Justice after a short recess. Thank you.

---SHORT RECESS

Minister Bell, for the record, could you please introduce your witnesses?

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me today is Don Cooper, deputy minister of the Department of Justice; Kim Schofield, director of finance, Department of Justice.

Thank you, Minister Bell. The next thing is general comments, but before we go to general comments, I would like to maybe lay out a proposal of how we can make the best use of our time in Committee of the Whole and perhaps even expedite things in the process.

In Committee of the Whole, when we are considering the budget, as everyone knows, there are Minister's comments, the committee comments, general comments and then detail. Under general comments, people take that opportunity to either speak for the whole 10 minutes and make general comments, or they use it as a Q and A with the Minister. I think the intent of general comments is as the title indicates. It is to make general comments on the department's budget, similar to the opening comments that the Minister makes.

I would like to try to draw a distinction between general comments and questions. So I would ask Members to try and hold their questions for the detail. It might involve going to your book, and taking your stickies, and going page by page, and making a note to yourself of the things you want to question on those pages.

I understand that when Members make general comments, they may say something to which the Minister would like to respond. I would ask Ministers to try not to respond unless you need to clarify something that's been said, for the record. Otherwise, I would ask you to receive the general comments as general comments and save the responses to the questions when you are actually posed with questions from the Member on the detail pages.

So if I could just liken it to one thing, we make Member's statements and then we ask questions subsequent. I would like the general comments to be like a statement and then I would like the detail to be the questions. Let's try it and see how it goes. General comments. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would be pleased to provide this new way of making a presentation to the Minister of Justice. Particularly in my riding that I represent, Nahendeh, a lot of the services in the Justice department provided to the six communities that I represent has an impact on the way people do

business, especially with justice and the court services. They have always expressed concern about the workload of the court circuits and recently, last year, the court circuit was extended to about once every six months. Even though I am not really getting an outcry of justice not being provided because of justice being delayed, it is having an impact on people getting some of their legal concerns out of the way, Madam Chair.

What happens is every time there is a delay or a...I was going to say stay of proceedings, but it's more of a deferral. Every time an item gets deferred for constituents and clients of legal aid, it means another six weeks that people have to wait. In some cases, you do need that time because it really is difficult to get a legal aid lawyer, but aside from that, I don't know if the department has undertaken a review of how much the impact the six week-circus has had...I beg your pardon, six-week circuit has had at all because it has been in effect for about a year. I know it impacts how our JPs do business in our communities and our JPs are mostly volunteers. They have full-time day jobs and I am hearing that because of the length between court proceedings, that a lot of the workload is being delegated from the Territorial Court to the JPs and the JPs are actually holding trial.

I think the concern is they are holding more and more trials and they have day jobs. What is happening, Madam Chair, is court proceedings are going late into the evenings during justice of the peace days. I think Fort Simpson has it, it used to be once every two weeks, but I am not sure if they increased their rotations just for the JPs alone; I am not sure. It has an impact on the person providing the service. I don't know what is needed, if we need to provide more services.

The main thing is our department should have a look at how to best provide these services just to ensure there isn't a delay in providing services to our communities.

I touched on legal aid earlier, too. It's quite often the case in the communities and the regions that when the client is up there in front of the judge and the judge says where is your lawyer, and they say they having difficulty getting a lawyer, that really is the case. It's not that that person is intending to abuse the system and get things deferred so he's out of the courts longer. I don't believe that's the case at all. There really is difficulty getting a lawyer. In Yellowknife, constituents or people can just phone around and make appointments, actually go and see which lawyer is best suited for their particular case. That's just not the case in the smaller communities. Often you have day jobs. You are leaving messages for lawyers and lawyers are in court here. Just to touch base, that first phone call, may take weeks and that is not even getting the lawyer retained. Therein lies the other problem. You have to make the initial contact, so that our legal aid system can catch up with them, too.

So there is a little bit of gap in terms of the legal aid system. That still needs massaging and work. Quite often when that person is phoning around for a lawyer and discussing his particular case, that's not the one that shows up in the community. I know that, again, we are going to have a real good look at how we improve that service, as well.

I don't know if it's up to us to tell lawyers to be more sensitive to people in the regions and try to be more responsive to them, but even though it's legal aid, a service provided by our government, I don't know how much of a percentage of the workload each lawyer contributes to the government or to legal aid services as opposed to how much money it would make on an individual basis. I don't know if that's a barrier at all, Madam Chair, if legal aid provides less of a fee to that lawyer. That's something I really think we should also pay attention to, Madam Chair.

I know the parameters of legal aid services change a bit where we are able to take more cases that involve personal issues such as divorces, helping people with adoptions and that kind of area. That's something that I am very supportive of, but I think there's a little bit of...I don't know how much of an uptake of lawyers we have for those particular cases. It seems that even though we are providing that service, it's a bit of a barrier to some people. Some people think that it's not available. I don't know if it's a case of more public education getting the news out there that this is a service that we provide. Often in the small communities, Members and constituents are really frustrated that I have this personal problem and it's a huge thing and I don't know how to do it, but they don't know that we have the programs and services available to provide assistance to them; childcare for adoptions, or even divorces. That's something we are going to have to publicize a lot more, Madam Chair. Perhaps I will end my comments there. I notice I am getting to the end of my allotted time. I would gladly get back on the list, Madam Chair, if you will. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. General comments. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank the Minister for being with us this afternoon and his staff, as well. I don't have much in terms of general comments, more questions than anything.

This is more of a government-wide thing and I know that it's not the Minister's doing so much, but when it comes to reductions, I have heard other Members speak about this during our budget process here, and the fact that the government was forced to cut $30 million, $10 million this year, from its budget without any type of input by Regular Members. The $200,000 that is coming out of community policing that gets back to the bigger picture. AOC should have been informed of the reductions and had some input on the reductions. I know Mr. Yakeleya was speaking about reductions on aboriginal wellness in Health having been reduced. We just did not have a chance to have any input whatsoever on reductions. The same holds true with the Department of Justice. Social Programs or any other Regular Member, for that matter, didn't have any input on where these reductions were going to come from. Now after the dust has settled, we are left trying to defend or support reductions. I think there is a better way to do it, and that would be to consult Regular Members early on in the reduction process, so we have some kind of idea what's going on and what we are going to be faced with, so there are no surprises.

Having said that, I will give the Minister a heads up on this; I do have questions with regard to legal aid services, the new legal aid Family Law Clinic that was opened in Yellowknife. I would really like to see if it has decreased the amount of time clients have to wait to get their cases settled. I don't know what type of performance measurement indicators we might have in place to see the

wait times reduced to get some closure on family law issues.

The other thing I wanted to talk about today, under the new format -- I won't ask questions right now -- I will have a number of questions. I know the Minister mentioned the delay that's happening with the human resource report in the corrections services. I have a number of questions there about why the delays are taking place, what the status of some of the recommendations are. Some of them were pretty important recommendations and I wouldn't want to see them delayed much more.

The actual human resource plan was initially supposed to be completed in March of last year. It's been pushed to March 31st of this year and I am just wondering if that target will be met. There are a number of things, and I will have questions for the Minister on that at the appropriate time during detail.

A good news story is I haven't heard many issues coming out of the corrections services as I have had in the past. So things are getting, it would seem, better there. There have been a number of changes that have happened, but it's important that the plan is followed up on and followed through. I will have questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. General comments. We are having some difficulty with the timer here, so I am just going to be timing it manually. I will give you some kind of a signal when you are getting close to 10 minutes. We will try to get that sorted out. Next for general comments, I have Mr. Braden.