Thank you, Mr. Bromley. A motion is on the floor and is being distributed.

A motion is on the floor. A motion has been distributed. The motion is non-debatable. Non-debatable, according to the Clerk. Non-debatable.

---Carried

We will defer further consideration of the Department of Health and Social Services. What is the wish of committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.

I’d like to carry on with the Department of Justice, please.

Is committee agreed?

Ms. Lee, if I could get you to please thank your staff and, Sergeant-at-Arms, if could please get you to escort the witnesses out of the Chamber.

Next step is to go to the Department of Justice. Once the witnesses have left the chamber I’ll go to the Minister for some opening remarks. Mr. Lafferty.

Okay, committee. I think we’re all set to roll. Is committee agreed that we can proceed with the Department of Justice?

I’ll ask the Minister if he would like to give opening remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes. I’m pleased to present the Department of Justice main estimates for the fiscal year 2011-2012.

The 2011-2012 budget was developed to carry on with a number of priority initiatives identified by the 16

th

Assembly. The department’s operations and

maintenance budget of $106.206 million represents an increase of 4.8 percent over the 2010-2011 main estimates. This increase consists primarily of forced growth in supporting the core operations of policing and corrections, and collective bargaining increases. It also reflects modest strategic investments in several areas.

Throughout the life of this government, the department has worked to develop and deliver effective services and programs to the people of the Northwest Territories to build a system of justice

that is open, accessible and responsive to individual and community needs, and to support the administration of our courts. Front-line staff work with individuals and families in times of personal crisis. This could be a youth in trouble with the law, a victim who has been assaulted, parents who need help working through separation or divorce, people who need lawyers, or an offender who needs the right supports to make better choices once released from jail. We also recognize the absolute necessity of working with other social program departments to support the Assembly’s vision of “strong individuals, families and communities sharing the benefits and responsibilities of a unified, environmentally sustainable and prosperous Northwest Territories.”

Mr. Chair, the justice portfolio is a challenging one, but it is also very rewarding. Our programs address important issues facing families and our communities. During the 16

th

Assembly, I received

input from standing committees that helped us all make the best possible decisions to meet the needs of NWT residents. Some decisions have been very difficult, and the current fiscal reality requires that we continue to use our resources wisely so that we can continue to deliver our core programs and services.

Mr. Chair, our focus is on meeting the needs of our residents. The department provides an array of core programs and services mandated by federal and territorial statutes. Justice has made it a priority to ensure these programs and services have the appropriate funding to provide effective and efficient programs. That is why we see an increase in forced growth funding in the amount of $8.9 million, which includes $1.7 million in collective bargaining increases and a further $1.7 million for increased RCMP human resource costs and for radio replacements for the RCMP. This budget also includes a total of $4.7 million for corrections to fund additional probation and facility positions so that there are greater supports for offenders as they work towards their rehabilitation.

In addition to managing our core operational costs, Justice also proposes investments in a number of areas that support the strategic themes of Building Our Future, Managing This Land and Refocusing Government. For example:

•

$150,000 is proposed to create an office of the children’s lawyer to give a greater, more effective voice to children in legal proceedings;

•

$100,000 is identified for the development of a comprehensive long-term Community Safety Strategy, an initiative that includes working with communities on local issues and strengths so that community-based approaches are identified and implemented;

•

$118,000 is proposed to fund a FASD

consultant position to provide knowledge,

expertise and best practices research to the department, front-line workers, community partners and key stakeholders on how to best provide supports and services to those with FASD and other cognitive disorders;

•

$109,000 is identified to enhance advice and support to GNWT departments and other public bodies on matters relating to privacy of, and access to, information; and

•

$350,000 is proposed to establish a two-

person consultation unit that will provide GNWT staff with training and access to policy and legal advice regarding effective consultation with Aboriginal governments.

Mr. Chair, these investments represent ways in which Justice is working to fulfil its mandate, further its goal of developing an open, accessible, responsive system of justice, and advance the overall strategic initiatives, priorities and goals of the 16

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Assembly. I look forward to our remaining

months in office to continue our work with Members to make a difference to the people we serve.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. With that, I’d like to ask the Minister if he will be bringing in witnesses.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Is the committee agreed that the Minister can bring in his witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, escort the witnesses in.

Mr. Lafferty, for the record, could you introduce your witnesses?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have with me to my left Bronwyn Watters, deputy minister of Justice. To my right is Kim Schofield, director of finance for the Justice department.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Welcome, witnesses. General comments on the Department of Justice. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to provide a few opening comments on the Department of Justice.

First off, I really do appreciate all the good work that the department does do. I know I’ve been critical in the past on, you know, especially the area of rehabilitation and programming. I want to make sure that we are providing the best rehabilitation services and programs. I look forward to seeing, you know, we talked a little bit earlier today about an action plan being developed out of the 18 recommendations contained in the review of the programs back in 2008. I really think there’s a lot of good recommendations there. All 18 of them are good in their own right but there are some of them

that I think we need to act on much sooner than later.

Services in the area of mental health I think is a big one. We have to take a serious look at how we deal with folks that are incarcerated that have cognitive disorders of some type and treat them accordingly. I find it really hard to believe we’ve gone two and a half years since that program review was done without a clinical psychologist at our largest corrections facility. I continue to be amazed at how that happens. Considering the increases in violent crime, considering the repeat offenders, considering the rate of incarceration in our Territory being the highest in the country, why we don’t have a clinical psychologist on staff boggles my mind. If you look at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre where they have an inmate population of I think it’s 51 or 60, somewhere in that neighbourhood, they have a clinical psychologist on staff there. I think they should, I’m not saying they shouldn’t, but they should. Then you look at North Slave Correctional Centre with an inmate population sometimes getting close to 200, I think currently it’s probably running about 165 inmates, without one. We really... Again, I think the Minister knows that. He’s also committed to trying to address that need at that facility. I wish him well on that.

Seeing as we have Justice here, I just wanted to make a few comments, too, about some of the things I’ve been saying. I understand the role of the judiciary. Some of the remarks I’ve made are in no way to disparage the good work of the courts. The judges, the lawyers in our Territory, I think they do a great job for us. I’ve talked about light sentences and when I talk about light sentences I think that’s just part of the equation. I’ve been standing up here trying to provide the department with some suggestions on how we can improve things. I understand sentences are not the only component of how we deal with inmates, their rehabilitation, and the issue of public safety at the end of the day is paramount. I think that’s really important and we can’t underestimate that. We do make the laws here. The judges enforce those laws. That’s our role. I understand my role completely. When I might have made reference to how our Minister could influence things, when I make reference to influencing things, I’m making reference to our Minister of Justice working with his federal counterpart in Ottawa on how we can get tough on crime. That is going to be a concerted effort by politicians who make the laws in this country to get tough on crime. I’m a firm believer that jail isn’t the answer for everybody and those folks who can be rehabilitated, we should have every opportunity to rehabilitate them.

What I’m talking about is the repeat violent offenders that we have in our Territory and the fact that I don’t understand why if somebody has 15, 16

or even 20 violent offences against people, an application is not made by the Crown to go after them under the dangerous offender clause or status. To me if we don’t do that, we’re not protecting society. I know there’s so much that goes into that application to look at dangerous offender status. I’ve read through it myself and I just don’t understand how many times it takes. That’s the only thing I’m trying to get at. How many times does somebody have to hurt somebody else, inflict pain and suffering on somebody else, not just the victim but their families, and continually be institutionalized, not get rehabilitated and get back out and the cycle just continues to repeat itself.

Of course, as I’ve mentioned many times, there are root causes to all of this and I think the government really needs to continue to chip away at what ails and plagues our communities, like addictions and poverty, homelessness, all these things. We’re not going to solve all of this overnight, but certainly the numbers could be getting better and I think we have to start measuring. That’s another one of the recommendations that’s contained in your program review a few years back. We should be measuring ourselves off of something. When a government comes in in year one, violent crime at the end of the four years should go down. Suicide rates should go down. High school graduations should go up. I mean, those are things that a government should and can be measuring itself by, and I don’t think we do that often enough.

I think we continue to just throw money at things and not really have a plan or a way to measure the success or the failure of what we’re doing. That’s something I always had a concern with, because, as I mentioned, we spend close to $700 million as a government between the three departments, Justice, ECE and Health and Social Services, and really, are things getting much better. Well, arguably, they’re not. I think we need to be moving in the right direction.

I attended a briefing with the Minister and staff and I caught the tail end of it this morning. I wanted to say I appreciate the work that the Minister and the staff are putting into the area of family courts and mediation services for people going through family breakup. I think a lot of good work is being done in that area. I continue to say that equal-shared parenting is the way to go. The default has to be to equal-shared parenting. Both parents have to have a role in the child’s upbringing. I look forward to us moving towards that and continuing to work on getting towards that.

The issue of family breakup, too, I think we underestimate. The feeling it gives people especially in a small community where there might not be all the services that there is available for folks going through a family breakup in Yellowknife or Hay River. If you’re out in a small community and

your family is breaking up, you have absolutely nowhere to turn sometimes. Maybe some family members, maybe not. Maybe you don’t have any family there, but that takes an undue toll on families in small communities when families do break up. I think any services we can get into the smaller communities in dealing with family breakup and mediation and helping people through what oftentimes is one of the most difficult times in a person’s life is when they break up and you have children involved. It’s a very emotional, stressful time in a person’s life so people need all the help they can get.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Minister’s time and I do know that he and his staff are moving us in the right direction. It might not be as fast as I’d like to see us moving but, again, I think it’s in the right direction and I know the department’s heart is in the right place and I know that they’re trying to do the right things there and I wish them well. Thank you.

Since there’s quite a bit there, I will allow the Minister to respond to Mr. Ramsay.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Most of the discussion that the Member addressed I agree with. The 18 recommendations that are being brought forward, the implementation should be sooner than later. I agree with him. Those are the areas that we are pursuing and we will follow through with those recommendations.

The clinical psychologist, we’ve dealt with that in the House. As I stated in the House, we will have a trained individual within a month or so from now and we’re looking forward to that individual coming on board as a fully fledged clinical psychologist. That’s in the works.

The life sentence versus the heavier sentence. This is a national issue, Mr. Chair, but what we can do at our end and what we had done is also focusing a lot on the preventive measurement. Currently we’re finalizing the review of the Community Justice Program because one of the focuses we want to elaborate or enhance more is preventive measurement. These are the areas that we continue to stress, we continue to heavily invest in, because we firmly believe that if we prevent things from happening, then lack of dealing with sentencing in the long run.

Also just enhancing our rehabilitation programs. Over and over that has been brought up and definitely those are the areas that we need to increase our focus on. We will continue, as we’ve done in the past, to push the federal government to be tough on crime. Mr. Chair, for the repeat violent offenders, this is an area that it’s a serious issue at the national stage even with our Northwest Territories Department of Justice. We will do what we can with our Crown, as well, here in the

Northwest Territories, even at the federal level too. We’re not going to stop here. We’ll continue pressuring our colleagues at the federal level.

Another area that was touched on was that violent crime should go down. I totally agree with that statement and even the statement that was made by Judge Vertes on Northbeat that it is our responsibility. The Northwest Territories politicians and the general public need to do their part. It’s not just our department or the GNWT, but as whole. Government of the Northwest Territories, Aboriginal governments, the general public at large, we have to do this together.

The programs on the family breakup, we did a presentation this morning to the standing committee. We’ve highlighted various programs. That’s just the beginning of what we offer but we’ll continue to develop more programs along the way. Again, this is part of supporting those individuals that may be in a breakup situation. There is a mediation program. There are different programs that we offer, but we’ll continue to explore on how we can enhance those programs, Mr. Chair. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Next I have Mr. Menicoche and Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I just want to begin with the community of Wrigley. I think we spoke with the Minister about this before and in the House, is that striving towards a full-time detachment in the community of Wrigley is still a goal of our government and it’s something I support and the community supports. So as we work towards getting a full-time detachment, I’d just like to ask the Minister once again to raise it with his federal colleagues. It’s still a priority of our GNWT and I understood that it may still be in the federal capital plan but a couple years down the road. Any way we can advance that will sure go a long ways.

I think one of the opportunities, too, is that when they’re talking about the socio-economic fund for the pipeline. I think some of it was actually supposed to be used for those services and in health and justice, so a huge opportunity to mention it to the federal counterparts or else if they start up the… I forget the name of the pipeline coordinating group that’s going to oversee how that money is distributed throughout the Northwest Territories. I think another huge opportunity to advance a capital project such as that. It will only enhance the programs and services in the community and it’s hoped at that time, too, that that pipeline fund will be used for nursing in our communities as well.

I just wanted to mention to the Minister a new subject there that was brought to my attention that two former constituents actually applied on a job in corrections, I think it was a case worker position or something like that. They are Aboriginals,

experienced. In fact, there were three Aboriginals that applied for that position, Mr. Chairman. I do want to say that, yes, I spoke in the House about how strong my support was for our policy of hiring Aboriginals, our Affirmative Action Policy, and the person that got hired is not even Aboriginal, nor even from the North, Mr. Chairman, so I was really taken aback by that situation.

There is a reason we have an Affirmative Action Policy. That is exactly it. We want to keep jobs for Northerners and I know that the Minister of Justice is a firm believer in it as well. How could the situation like this happen? I am not too sure, but I think the focus for me as MLA is that if I don’t say anything about what happened, then I am actually agreeing to it.

At this point, it is a concern that this happened in Yellowknife, but people are watching. Other departments are watching. If they get away with it here, they will get away with it in other areas. That has to stop now, especially for the fact that we are not a representative workforce and all MLAs throughout this whole budget session raised it time and time again, yet here we are raising an Affirmative Action Policy and they are not hiring a P1 Cabinet, so that is a really strange kind of behaviour. If you are saying one thing and you are doing another, that is not very consistent. In our government, we have to be consistent, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to raise that issue at this point.

Also, I will just raise the issue that one of my colleagues, Mr. Yakeleya, has raised about corrections and on-the-land programs. That is something I certainly would like to see pursued. It is probably not in the budget now, but sometime in the future we are going to have to work towards that. When we did have it, it did work well. I certainly would like to see it in the communities, if at all possible, and opportunities for regional communities to at least try that, Mr. Chairman.

With that, I will just close those comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Lafferty.