Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on October 22nd , many, many Hay River
residents gathered in the community hall to participate in a public meeting to discuss the loss of Constable Christopher Worden and the effect that this loss has had on our community. This meeting was organized by the Town of Hay River. Yesterday in the House I tabled the transcript of that meeting so that the comments and
questions raised by Hay River residents would be acknowledged and on the public record.
Today I’d like to highlight some of the questions and concerns that the people of my community raised in the hopes that we could find resolution to them. One of them was the number of RCMP staff in Hay River.
Records would indicate that 25 years ago there were 15 officers in Hay River. Today there’s only 12. Why over 25 years, with the population having grown and the pressures on our members increased, why would we have less members today filling the full complement of staffing at all times?
Today I just read in The Hub that there’s another member being transferred to Lutselk’e. I’m sure that’s very good for Lutselk’e, but that’s probably not good for Hay River because it takes time to replace people. So we have not enough RCMP presence on our streets and in our community.
There’s issues about coverage for RCMP members that want to take time off, go on vacation, go on course, go to court duty. There are problems covering that and many times our dedicated members are back working on their days off, trying to catch up with their workload and their files.
We need a call centre in Hay River established. Again, going back years, we always had somebody on call 24 hours a day in Hay River who knew the people and who knew the community. Today we go through the Yellowknife call centre. Constituents raised that as an issue.
Of course, the issue, in light of the tragedy, is the issue of members responding to calls on their own and being on duty by themselves, policy and procedure that is set in place by this government with regard to housing and the presence of people who are involved in criminal and illegal activities in housing units, the issue of more funding for youth programs and crime prevention, things like Neighbourhood Watch, Big Brother/Big Sister programs, Block Parents, the relationship with southern RCMP forces to prevent northern trafficking.
The people of Hay River wanted to know at that meeting what they can do to help. We need more programs like the Eyes and Ears Program, attention to Crime Stoppers and TIPS. The issue of a municipal curfew was raised.
Mr. Speaker, I’m running out of time and there were many more issues that I will be bringing to the attention of this Legislature.
Hay River wants to be involved, but we also want answers. When there’s a crisis, it’s easy afterwards to settle back to the routine of our daily lives, but for the sake of the memory of Constable Worden, I hope that will never be the case. Thank you.
---Applause