Thank you, Mr. Chair. This $83,000 references a coordinator position for the Community Justice program within the Department of Justice. I feel quite strongly that the explanation the department gave us during our briefing wasn’t quite adequate.

One of the goals of the department is stated as, to increase the capacity and the role of communities to address Justice issues. And I think the department, along with this particular position as well as funding for various and sundry Community Justice projects, is pretty much gutting anything that Community Justice committees can do in our various communities.

Within the last Assembly, there were a number of gains that were made in relation to Community Justice, where programs were set up. This position of a coordinator was established. It was unfortunately never filled. The department has advised us that certainly the funding for Community Justice projects wasn’t fully subscribed to.

I think most of the reason for that lack of subscription to the Community Justice funding was the fact that there wasn’t a coordinator to assist the various communities in the work that they want to do as a Community Justice committee.

My understanding is that where Community Justice committees exist, they’re really quite effective. They do good work within the communities, and I think they’re really a positive influence on justice issues within the communities and difficulties with criminal activities and so on. So I really feel that removing this position at this point, even though it’s vacant, is not going to assist communities who currently don’t have a Community Justice committee; it certainly is going to be of no assistance to them in establishing Community Justice committees.

I think that it’s something that certainly needs to be there. We could perhaps cut some of the project funding, but without a coordinator to manage and to assist communities in their Community Justice activities, I think it’s just not going to succeed.