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.