Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, along with Mr. Jacobson, represent the two communities in the Beaufort-Delta that have had legal aid workers put on notice that their jobs are at risk. Yet for a saving of $90,000 for four positions, which adds up to less than $25,000 per person, I can’t see the justification why these are particular areas of concern.
Just lately, in regard to supplementary appropriation items that came before us in the last day of this House, there were major capital expenditure cost overruns in travel in the Department of Justice for charters in and out of airports. Charters go into communities, and they sit at the airport until a court party decides it’s time to go. There’s a major cost savings there if you simply stop using that practice and allow those charters to be used only when they need to go into a community and when they need to come out, and not hold the aircraft at that airport. You could have saved this $90,000 on probably one court tour of the Beaufort region.
I can’t see how you can justify taking four people’s livelihoods out of our communities. These people have been trained for that particular job. These people service other communities in the regions; they go up to Tuk; they go to Fort Good Hope; they go to other communities outside of Fort McPherson and Tuk. Yet nowhere in your report did you make mention of that but to say, Well, there are 60 cases at McPherson and eight court parties. A large number of clients I know up in Fort McPherson drive to Inuvik to go to court because they’re told the court party will not be in the community for a while, and that’s in order….
The bottom line of justice is the right to have justice that’s fair to one and fair to all. More importantly, you’re innocent until proven guilty and have the ability to, basically, see a lawyer. In most cases in a community, the court party pops into town, the person’s on a list of people who are going to get called, and you get 20 minutes with a lawyer before you go into that courtroom. Is that justice? I don’t think so. Yet these individuals, in order to acquire a lawyer…. You need to be able to get some fees to pay for a lawyer to begin with and be able to have access to a lawyer in those communities. Somebody mentioned there are two lawyers in Inuvik.
In order for our communities to get to a lawyer, they either have to call Yellowknife, go to Yellowknife, talk to a lawyer at a…. Yet the whole idea of justice in the Northwest Territories is the whole concept of being fair, that you’re innocent until proven guilty
and you have your day in court. The system that’s there to save $90,000 I think is totally pathetic.
Again, I’d like to ask the Minister: have you looked at other areas for savings before you made the decision to save $90,000 for four people’s jobs, by looking at the cost of forced growth items in the Department of Justice, such as charters?