We’ll go back to the summary page 4-2, Municipal and Community Affairs, departmental summary, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $28.002 million.

Does committee agree that we have concluded MACA?

Minister McLeod, on behalf of committee, I’d like to thank the witnesses for coming in for today. If I could please get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please exclude the witnesses, that would be great.

Next on the agenda is the Department of Justice. Minister Lafferty, do you have witnesses that you’d like to bring in today?

Yes, Mr. Chair, I do.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Does committee agree that we allow Mr. Lafferty to bring in his witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, if I could please get you to escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

Thank you. Minister Lafferty, if I could please get you to introduce your witness for the record.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I have Bronwyn Watters, the deputy minister of Justice.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. We’re going to defer page 7-2 until we have completed the detail. Is committee agreed?

We’ll move along to page 7-4, activity summary, community justice and corrections, infrastructure investment summary. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to community justice and corrections, one thing that we’ve been pushing for years from a community perspective is having more say in the judicial process, but more importantly, finding ways instead of incarcerating people in large facilities, to start looking at community-based justice programs and incarcerating people closer to their homes, either on-the-land programs or also working with community justice committees in regard to having community sentencing circles. I’d just like to know where is the community involvement when it comes to community justice, because it seems like we’ve strayed away from the old notion of on-the-land camps by way of offering inmates opportunities to serve out their sentence in wilderness camps and also looking at programs such as the program through the Tl’oondih Healing Society in regard to a transitional justice program for people to transition out of the justice system back into their communities. I’d just like to ask what are we doing in regard to those types of initiatives to include the communities in the justice system.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. This has been an area of interest to the Member and also the Members as well. The community-based programming has been very successful to date in the Sahtu region. It was unfortunate that we lost an elder, but the program still continues. It is open to other regions, as well, if they are interested in pursuing the community-based programming to deal with the corrections offenders.

We are currently finalizing our review of the community justice programming and we felt that we needed to undertake that review to find out which community is not working effectively and probably needs some support, and which community has been very successful. Those are in the final stages and we will be sharing that review with the Members next month, in November. That is the feedback from the communities, the people that are involved.

We definitely want to have the community involved when there are offenders from the communities,

how we deal with those offenders so they can be reintegrated back to the community.

The Sahtu region, again, has been very successful to date. We want to continue that process.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I’m not sure that is capital. It sounds more like O and M, but I will go to the Minister for a response.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to see more money. The Member is referring to millions that should be

going to the communities. I do agree with that. If we can develop preventative measurements, preventive programs, that is what our vision is, I do believe, with the Members and also our department. That is the very reason why we are doing an overall review. With the outcome of the review, of course, it will take some investment to make some changes.

We want to have community members involved as well. We do have coordinators and community justice committees that are in some of the communities that were in place, established, working effectively. Some weren’t. Those are the areas that we will continue to strengthen. I think out of this particular review, we want to strengthen our Community Justice Program, which the Member is referring to. Most definitely we want to see more programming to the communities, because I am a firm believer, also, that prevention is the way to go and try to prevent even the young ones going through the court process creating more criminal records. We need to prevent that from happening.

Mr. Chairman, we do spend millions of dollars in correctional facilities. I notice that we are looking at more money going into correctional facilities. I think that we have to reprofile those dollars to make use of those facilities that are useable.

Like I mentioned, the healing camps. We are also looking at alternative means of having people that basically have minor offences, that they don’t have to serve their time, taking them out of the communities, find a way that they can serve their time in our communities than having all of these expenditures made to fly these people out; court costs, incarceration costs, a cost of $85,000 a year to keep someone in jail. That $85,000 could be invested in our communities to keep those people at the community level, work with the communities to work with these individuals and make the positive choices in their lives and turn their lives around and find solutions at the community level. For $85,000, we probably could do a lot more in our communities than being able to have a person incarcerated in a larger facility such as Hay River and YCI. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, this could be part of other departmental initiative as well. We are currently working with Health and Social Services. As the Member did touch on FASD and FAS, the clientele that we have and we do recognize that there are in a system in Fort Smith. There are certain programs for them as well. But with incarceration of certain individuals does cause costs to our department at the correctional level. One of the focuses will be possibly to divert the funding to the community programming. That is our goal. We continue to work with the judges, the NWT Supreme Court judges, to identify the importance of

having community-based programming. Again, we have been successful in achieving that. We want to do more of that in the regions.

Mr. Chairman, the last issue I would like to talk about is community policing -- my favourite subject -- for Tsiigehtchic. I know this issue has been bounced around this House for a number of years. I would just like to get the Minister to give me an update on what is the status of community policing for Tsiigehtchic. There was an issue around housing in Fort McPherson getting an extra member. I would like to know. Can you give me an update on what is the status of that? When can we see police services in Tsiigehtchic by way of the Fort McPherson detachment?

Mr. Chairman, the policing services have been provided from out of Fort McPherson. I need to get more detailed information as to the specifics of where it is now. I will get that to the Member.

Mr. Chairman, this particular issue has been brought to my federal/provincial/territorial colleagues just last week. I did raise communities without detachments. We do have them in the Northwest Territories. Again, pressuring the federal government of the importance of it. We also talked about First Nations policing policy as well. It is all interrelated to the communities without detachments. We are doing what we can to provide policing services and will continue to do so. We will provide more detailed information to the Member. Mahsi, Mr. Chairman.