Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Paradoxes of Budget-Cutting Exercises for the Department of Justice
In the 2005–2006 Main Estimates, the Department of Justice proposed the elimination of court registries in Hay River and Inuvik. At the time, the department argued that the volume of work did not justify the positions or costs to keep the court registries facilities open in these two communities. The previous Standing Committee on Social Programs, in conjunction with the other Regular Members of the Assembly, successfully argued that there was a cost to making sure that justice was available and geographically accessible to all residents of the NWT, and the elimination of the court registries in Hay River and Inuvik was staved off.
Three fiscal years later the volume of work is such that the Department of Justice has asked for ten new positions in court services, of which the communities of Hay River and Inuvik will be getting two court officers each. Judging from the budget-cutting proposals put forward by the Department of Justice in this Main Estimate, it is obvious to Members that there is a trend in the department to put forward simple solutions involving the closure of facilities or the elimination of services to achieve the bulk of required cost savings rather than having to examine overall program-delivery efficiencies.
While this may make it easy to achieve the cost-cutting targets, it is obvious that without any long-term systematic approach to budget reduction exercises, any cost savings that are realized may result in increased costs to the department in future years. The Standing Committee on Social Programs will be looking for evidence of such an approach when we review the 2009–2012 business plans in September.
The South Slave Drug Interdiction Task Force
Communities south of Great Slave Lake have proposed the formation of a task force to interdict
drugs that are brought into the Northwest Territories on our highway system. As this is the primary method of transportation for drug dealers and is an opportunity to curtail the availability of drugs in communities that are farther north, the Standing Committee on Social Programs will be willing to support such an approach. We look forward to discussing this with the Minister during the review the 2009–2012 business plan.