Mr. Chairman, again, the communities want to be involved in the justice system. They want to do their part in regards to finding ways to bring down crime rates in our communities and also trying to deal with the biggest affects on incarceration in the Northwest Territories. It is basically alcohol and substance abuse. Most of our communities have taken it on themselves. Two communities I represent, Aklavik went for a plebiscite last year but didn’t quite make it. Again, our communities are trying to do their part by bringing forward plebiscites by saying we don’t want alcohol in our communities. If we do, we want to have some controls in place, but more importantly, we want some means of prohibition to not to be seen to not doing anything, but doing their part also through the hamlet council, the band councils, the community leaders and also enable to work with the Department of Justice, the local RCMP, local detachments to assist them in doing their jobs to improve the quality of life in our communities.
I think that is something that we really have to focus on. Look at the justice system, not from the corrections system and Supreme Court or courtrooms, but look at it from a community perspective outwards and how we can look at justice that flows out of our communities, deal with the problems of crime in our communities and find preventative ways to prevent crime in our communities.
I know we spend millions of dollars in corrections forces. We are spending millions of dollars in regards to incarceration. Is there a possibility of looking at pilot projects with those communities, invest some of those dollars to keep those people who basically may have challenges?
We have a high number of individual inmates in jail with FAS, no fault of their own. It is basically a problem we see throughout our whole system. I would like to ask the Minister and the department, is there a possibility of doing a better job working with communities to find solutions to these problems and reinvest some of those dollars than having people incarcerated, have community-based solutions to bring down our crime rates and prevent crime in our communities. Thank you.