Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Justice in follow-up to my Member’s statement from earlier today where I was talking about the Yellowknife Social Issues Committee. On March 22, 2011, the two departments that were active members of this committee co-signed a letter to the mayor indicating that they’re no longer going to be able to be active members. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, I understand the reason for this is we don’t want to put our employees in a position where they will be experiencing conflicts of interest. So the department responded, took these members off, but said we will make members available upon request of the committee, which is certainly an option and it may work, but as I indicated in my statement, I believe there is a better option. That would be to have individuals from those departments continue to sit on that committee on a regular basis as non-voting advisors. That would be great because we would be able to hear what they have to say and we’d be able to provide information in a real timely manner. It would be proactive rather than reactive.
I’d like to ask the Minister of Justice today if he’d commit to reconsidering their position and approaching the city to see if we could have a member from the Department of Justice sit on that committee on an ongoing basis to be this advisor that could be our liaison between the city and Justice on social issues in our community.