Thank you, Minister Bell. Mr. Yakeleya.

That's for further discussion, Mr. Chair, in terms of we had different points of view and I'm going to leave it at that in terms of the roles of the special constable. Hopefully, we'll have that discussion at another time.

Now, in terms of the RCMP officers, right now we're focusing on a physical presence in the community with a detachment and with housing and all this that support an RCMP officer in the community. Is there any type of thought, and I'm going to leave it with the Minister, in terms of what about the community itself having some kind of law enforcement present? I mean, like Colville Lake, could the band somehow enforce some community laws where members would have some respect for the chief or some elders so other serious crimes could be referred to the detachment in Fort Good Hope or Norman

Wells, but there's got to be some form of law enforcement in the communities? There is some, but we've got to have some sort of a linkage, and I'm not to sure how that would fit into the whole public safety or any other course that we go into, or be impacted. So just sort of a thought right now with the department to alleviate the community members that don't have RCMP. That's a real sore point in my communities and probably other regions that we, in the Northwest Territories, in this day and age, don't have any RCMP members in some of our communities, but we're still adding up on other communities that have RCMP members. It just doesn't make sense in our small communities. It's a crying shame with the amount of resource development happening here in the North. So, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to leave that, though, with the Minister.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we'd be willing to sit down and discuss a wide range of options and hopefully this work this committee is undertaking will do that. But we don't have our own police act and we fall under the RCMP Act federally. I would just say there are some technical challenges and impediments for us to be able to duplicate a police force specifically in small communities. Obviously, there are economies of scale; it's difficult to set up the legislation, the legislative framework and a separate police force. Not to say that it can't be done, but there would be some hurdles and I'd certainly want to sit down and talk to Members about what some potential solutions are. For starters, I can say we're absolutely committed to improving the service delivery in our smaller communities and recognize we need to get police officers on the ground more frequently. We need to improve the level of service in our communities. So as a starting point, that's the approach we are taking. If there are other models and other solutions, that's something that I could talk to Members about and would certainly bring forward to the RCMP if we could find a way that they would be viable. Again, there are some technical hurdles, but I'd certainly be prepared to sit down and discuss what those might be with Members. I don't think we're closing any doors here, Mr. Chairman, and we are looking for a flexible approach and recognize how important it is. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Anything further, Mr. Yakeleya?

Mr. Chairman, in our region we have a lot of activity going on in our community and, for good reasons, Colville Lake decided not to have the exploration happen in their region. Now, next year they're going to continue with the exploration. When you look at the amount of money Colville Lake is pumping into this economy in the Northwest Territories and the amount of money that's going into the oil and gas industry, I just don't see why you can't have the RCMP there. I mean, the economy says yes and when you have that type of economy, you have a lot of things happening, and that's pretty well visible in a community of 134 people and to increase the RCMP presence there. It's not going to slow down. Indications show that our region is going to be busy, I think, as other regions are going to pick up also in terms of oil and gas exploration and diamonds in the southern parts. So I hope we have some discussion in terms of Colville Lake. It's booming and there's a lot of money spent there. I just don't see why we don't have an RCMP there. This year is quiet because they decided not to have any activity, but next year again Petro-Can, and Paramount, and other resource development I think they're going to be working in that area. That's millions into that little community. Why don't we have an RCMP officer? Again, I'm flabbergasted as to the reasons why we don't have members in these small communities that don't have any RCMP officers. In Yellowknife they've got a dog, too; $85,000 for the RCMP dog here and then you've got more members. I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. We're on page 7-19, activity summary, law enforcement, operations expenditure summary, $24.9 million.

Thank you. Page 7-23, activity summary, legal aid services, operations expenditure summary, $4.385 million. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question about the legal aid services. Compensation and benefits are steadily rising. I guess forced growth and stuff, again. I just want to look at fees and payments of $1.2 million. What's that include? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, that's payments to lawyers in the private bar who provide legal aid services. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If this is strictly fees and payments to lawyers, I wonder if the Minister could tell me what the caseload has been for the legal aid services we provide here in the NWT. You did indicate earlier that the Family Law Clinic has seen a decline on the waiting lists. What about the legal aid side of things? Is there an increased workload and, if there is, where is that coming from? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Villeneuve. Minister Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can certainly provide the overall caseload for Members. It's not something I have here right now, but I'll make sure we get that to Members. I've simply laid out the waiting list in terms of civil and family law, but the Member is right that that doesn't give probably an adequate assessment of criminal cases and the drain there on our legal aid resources, but it is increasing. We are finding it more difficult to get members of the private bar who want to undertake and take on legal aid cases. So our model is a bit of a hybrid. We have both staff lawyers and rely on legal aid lawyers from the private bar. There have been incidences where we've had to go to Alberta and find lawyers who have come to the bar here in the Northwest Territories and used them. That's an expensive way to go and not something we want to do. We want to have the ability here to meet the needs, but there are increased pressures and I'll certainly provide that information in terms of workload to the Members.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think my first question under the legal aid umbrella is have we established any type of wait time benchmarks for providing services? I'm talking about obviously you can't speed justice up. I mean, by assuming that we'll put it through the meat grinder and make it go faster, but the fact is real contact, real service is doing something on someone's case. So have we established some type of wait times on that as some type of benchmark so we know that we're providing a fair and reasonable service and if we haven't, why have we not considered something along those lines? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Bell.

Mr. Chairman, obviously with criminal cases there is a need to respond right now and that's what the Legal Services Board does, is make sure that it provides a lawyer as absolutely quickly as it can. There are incidents where the person going to court will decide they want a different lawyer or isn't available to meet. So it can be a two-way street in terms of how quickly a lawyer is provided, but for the most part criminal law cases are dealt with very quickly.

The backlog and the time lag comes in terms of family law matters. There is a priority caseload and there are criteria. So a case is assessed and depending on the facts in that case, that will determine how high a priority. I think the bottom line is that we could set some benchmarks in terms of guarantees, but we know that we are absolutely strapped to be able to find enough lawyers in the private bar who will take on this kind of work. We have had vacancies in terms of staff lawyers. I am happy to say that we just filled two vacancies and we have people coming online in the next couple of months. That's a very positive sign. Without the resources, I would suggest that some sort of guarantee that we can't live up to wouldn't be that effective. So we are striving to improve, get that wait list down as much as we can, and we think we can make some headway now that we have filled some positions and we have the addition of this Family Law Clinic in Yellowknife. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Minister's answer. If someone was waiting to go to court and they weren't seen in a reasonable time or they couldn't get a lawyer to serve them, the challenge then becomes are we being fairly served by the law. I wouldn't want to think that somebody who qualifies for legal aid who can't be served through the justice system...I underscore the fact that we are only talking about family law. I appreciate the Minister always mentioning criminal law, but that's not my main concern here in this particular case.

I think rights, to one degree or another, being denied. We are allowing, in some cases, caustic situations to go on. I don't want that to happen when it comes to child custody matters or maybe some divorce matters that truly need to be settled. What about maintenance matters where parents struggle to make ends meet? It's the concern of those specific areas. We have difficult situations that we need clear rules and guidelines for the folks to make sure that someone is able to feed their kids or to be able to afford rent somewhere. I see it where we are allowing them to be in a situation that we could do something about.

I was told a few weeks ago, directly by a lawyer, that they don't see it as an affordable way to practice or to run their practice, because it was expressed to me that the tariffs don't allow them to make any money. So if they can make $250 an hour or more, $300 or $350, whatever the case is they charge, it's difficult to then convince them with a carrot by saying we will pay you $125. I only say that because I can't remember that exact tariff, but it's in that range.

So it almost becomes a moral issue when they want to help the system. It's difficult to encourage that. We have an ethical duty. We tell them the system will be there for them and it causes me serious difficulty to say the system can only run because we only have so many lawyers. I respect that because that is just the fact, but I am worried about the underlying guarantees. I feel like we betrayed them. The system allows them to be qualified and I fear that one day we will have a horrible scenario where one of these custody cases crossed the line when it shouldn't have. No fault of the government, I believe, but the fact is we weren't able to provide a service. It all comes back to clarity was never established, maintenance orders may not have come into place, somebody acted because of the stressful situation that maybe we needed something to be established; established by court, that is.

When I said in my opening comments, I said let's think new. Let's think innovative. Let's reach beyond what we normally go for. Would the Minister consider options about opening up discussions with the Yukon territory and maybe the Nunavut territory? Maybe there is a way we can start marrying our family law practices because we seem to keep coming into difficulties when they talk about relationships between lawyers in the sense of conflicts, too many files in the same office and the difficulty and the benefits that would be created by creating a new law office in Yellowknife where we would be getting a certain amount of files on one side of the case out of that office and we don't have to worry about conflicts.

I am going to ask some similar questions when it comes to Justice and if we have some shortage. The Justice Minister may want to lead in that area to see if it's considered reasonable. It's time to be innovative with our abilities. I don't see the Yukon, from my perspective, that out of touch with what we do here. Now I recognize that you would have to qualify for the bar, and that's not the issue. I also see the fact that the Nunavut law system essentially was a mirroring of ours. I don't see it as a major stretch. Could we look at maybe making or opening some kind of discussion up to help some of these family law cases? Maybe a pan-territorial perspective. I don't know if it would be easy and I wouldn't want to give that impression that I had this little epiphany the other day and it could be solved tomorrow, but the fact is that's how things get done. Somebody comes along with something new and innovative. Maybe it's time for us to figure out new ways of doing business. Does the Minister have any comments on a new way of doing business? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a number of questions there. The first one on some kind of pan-territorial model, right now one of the realities is that Nunavut is hard pressed to have enough lawyers to deal with their own needs at home, so we haven't been really able to tap into Nunavut to help us meet our needs.

In terms of connections and flights, Alberta is our easiest marriage and that's where we are seeing most of our support come from. NWT lawyers essentially pass the Alberta bar, Yukon deals with British Columbia. So there's a closer connection we have to Alberta in this regard and that's where we have been trying to go to help beef up our provision of legal aid services compared to the Yukon.

I would agree that we have an obligation to ensure that people are able to get service in a timely manner. I think the Member probably knows, but, for the record, I should indicate files are assigned to lawyers for legal aid on the basis of application date, except that there are priorities given to certain clients. In cases where there are child welfare matters, or in cases where there are people who have had to leave their homes because of violence, and others who may be facing an imminent court date, those cases are given priority. I want to assure Members that we recognize that that has to be a priority. We are supportive of that and that's how the Legal Services Board operates.

The issue of attractiveness of legal aid cases to lawyers, there are several factors, we believe, that make some of these cases less attractive, but one of the things that has come up now, despite the fact that we now have the second highest legal aid tariff in the country behind Nunavut, we recognize and have been petitioned by the Legal Services Board to look at increasing that tariff to make it more attractive and to see if we can't get more people from the private bar taking on these cases. That is something that is under consideration and I will report back to the House in future and talk about that. It's on our radar. It's something we are going to talk about dealing with, but it isn't the only matter. Obviously, it takes a certain individual. They have to be dedicated. They have to really want to work in this area of law. You can imagine, as the Member has indicated, it can be a difficult field to work in. We know it's not going to be the only answer to get more people involved, but we are looking at a number of potential solutions and we are dealing with the local bar to talk about how we might be more successful in getting people to take on this kind of caseload. Thank you.