As you know, we are unique in the North compared to other jurisdictions. We are one of the jurisdictions that provide court circuits to the most isolated communities, as opposed to southern jurisdictions. It does cost us money to travel to these communities.

We do work with the judicial system where the court circuit, most of the time, uses scheduled services. As you know, some small, isolated communities do not have scheduled services. At times they have to fly in with chartered planes. The judiciary court schedule is based on the needs of the communities. That’s where the cost would come in, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chairman, would the Minister of Justice be willing to provide the details of that charter scheduling stuff he talked about? It doesn’t sound like it would be that difficult, seeing how he said they typically take sched flights.

I’d like to know the details on how often they charter, how that works with timing, such as what days they flew in and flew out. I want to see that in comparison to the normal scheduled flights and how many tickets would have been considered at that time.

I will say that yes, probably in some cases, if you’re sending a plane full of people in and out, it probably makes sense. If we’re sending a full plane in and only fill three seats and make the plane sit there for four or six or eight hours so we can fly them back out as opposed to making people sit there, maybe they could spend a night in the community — a little economic development, such as eating in a restaurant there assuming they have one, or renting from the local bed-and-breakfast. Those are the things to be talking about. That’s the detail I want to see. Line the two up against each other.

Mr. Chair, we can certainly provide more detailed information on the court circuits in the communities. There are communities that at times the judges would have to spend a night. But most times they don’t have accommodation or restaurants, as the Member indicated. We are working to the best of our ability with what we have, chartering to a community or on a regularly scheduled flight. Yes, certainly we can provide that information.

First, I’ll say thank you to the Justice Minister who will supply me with that detailed information. May I encourage him not to just stop at the detail I’ve offered. If he thinks something’s relevant to highlight, please do.

The other point I want to make is that if these communities are good enough for MLAs to stay in, I certainly hope that judges are not too good to be there too.

I too have questions in regard to the expenditure of $493,000. I’d like to know the total cost of that transportation of the court circuit in the fiscal year.

Mr. Chairman, we’ll get that information to the Member as well.

We do have to realize the importance the courts play in our communities. We also have to ensure that we do control the costs of travelling in the North but also realizing the communities should be able to host a lot of these parties. I know that in the community of Fort McPherson, for instance, we do have a hotel there. I think wherever possible, if they can stay an extra couple of days or a day in a community where there are hotels, meals can be arranged if they make every effort to do so.

Talking to people, especially at the airport, and talking to court workers, they do hold a lot of aircraft, which is very expensive. They fly in, do their court business, fly back to Inuvik, spend a night in Inuvik and fly back to their community the next day. I think that has to stop. If anything, they should make every effort to stay in those communities overnight until they conclude all their business and then move on.

I’d like to ask the Minister if he can get those details of the communities they’ve stayed in, how long they stayed in those communities, and exactly how many days they’ve spent overnight in communities in regard to this travel cost.

Mr. Chairman, in fact, we can provide that number. I can give a quick update here, but we can provide an attachment to give the days spent in communities. The original amount budgeted for the

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07-‘08 fiscal year was

$1,058,000. The court’s scheduled sitting days, as they are defined in 2006-2007, were 273, and in 2007 the sitting days scheduled — you need the total amount here — were 400. I’ll give you the actual amount. That was Yellowknife at 273. But the total communities, a grand total: 319 for

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06,

469 for

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07. And we’ll provide the attachment on the

actual days that courts regularly sat so far.

I’d like to ask the Premier if he can provide the information that he’s read out to the committee so we also have a chance to review it. And also in consideration of the budget process we’re going through in the next couple of months, we would have the opportunity to read it before that process takes place.

Mr. Chairman, we’ll be able to provide the information on these scheduled sitting days in total for all communities, along with what Minister Lafferty is committed to providing as well.

Justice, Operations Expenditures, Courts, not previously authorized: $1,729,000.

Justice, Operations Expenditures, Courts,

$1,729,000 approved.

I’d just like to ask the Minister: are there any other funds, either by way of new funding that will be available to communities for Community Justice Programs, by way of programs established, Justice Strategy funds? We do have Justice committees and other committees, and a lot of them are struggling with the existing funding arrangements we have. I think it would be good if we can see if there are any other federal program dollars available for Justice.

Mr. Chairman, the information that I can provide is the $145,000 as required for this is coming out of expenditures supported by the federal contribution funding agreement under the Aboriginal Justice Strategy Fund for this fiscal year of

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07-08. There are negotiations ongoing in trying

to renew that agreement.

All right, we’re on page 15, Justice continued, Operations Expenditures, Community Justice and Corrections, not previously authorized: $214,000. Agreed?

Justice continued, Operations Expenditures,

Community Justice and Corrections, $214,000 approved.

Total Department, not previously authorized: $2,764,000.

Total Department, $2,764,000 approved.

Okay, we’re moving along to page 16, Education, Culture and Employment, Operations Expenditures, Directorate and Administration, not previously authorized: $677,000.

Education, Culture and Employment,

Operations Expenditures, Directorate and Administration, $677,000 approved.

Education and Culture, not previously authorized: $569,000.

I just have a question for the Minister on the insurance for the fire at Chief Albert Wright School. I am curious why insurance costs don’t cover this $451,000 plus the previous $188,000 for cleanup.

The practice is that as we self-insure, we have deductible limit. We would pay for this work to be done up to the maximum amount, then insurance would kick in. Even if insurance were to kick in, we would have to make the expenditure, and then we would get the return on the insurance file at a later time.

So this would be one of the expenditures that could be reimbursed?

The total of the amount we had to pay out this fiscal year might be included in our self-financing portion, which would be our deductible. We’d get that information if this would be something we could get reimbursed or if we’re still under our own deductible limit where we have to pay our own costs at this stage.

When we’re done, I’d like to go back to page 14, but I know we haven’t finished the page.

Seeking the committee’s approval to move back to page 14. Is there agreement?