Thank you, Minister. Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will start off, again, on air charters. I still see and I know the Minister told me last year that the court circuit, when they are travelling to the communities, it is up to the judge whether he is going to hold his aircraft or he could let the plane go for the day or stay in the community. I think, if the Minister could see if he could talk to the judges, I guess, to see if he could stop doing that in holding the aircraft in the communities, because they are tying up a lot of aircraft. I don’t think that is right.

In regards to the next one is the court workers. It is good to see that we still have our court workers in the long term. They are really needed in the

communities because the court circuits, when they do come in, it is good to have the people, innocent until proven guilty, briefed in what is going on and on their case. It is good to see that their contribution under the delivery program is still there for the long term.

Also, the community justice committees that are under-subsidized, they are not getting enough money. I have people in the communities, elders’ committee, that sits on the justice committees that need more funding. We just need to do something about it. We brought this up a couple of times, that we never saw any changes yet. We have to keep pushing towards that. Victims assistance support services needs to be really taken care of in our small communities. When something happens in the communities, people need somewhere to go to receive help. We should be trying to utilize that more. Our elders program which allows the inmates to come in from corrections to come in to help elders in the communities, I think that is a good idea. More funding should be given to that. I see that. I don’t think that is going to be enough money to try to utilize that program in a positive way. I think you get one or two people out and then it has to be utilized more.

With the wilderness camps, the funding that we are providing for the operators to operate I think it is a really good program. My colleague Mr. Menicoche said that we should be utilizing the wilderness camps more for the prisoners. They are just leaving them down in the corrections here.

The office space in Tuktoyaktuk, it is good to see any kind of expenditures from the department in communities. It is always good. Crime prevention, we should be getting RCMP detachment commanders letting members go into the schools under their program if that is possible to more utilize the DARE program in the communities. It’s a really good program. I think in the newspaper last week we have Sergeant Norris back up in Inuvik, which is a good thing. He’s a role model for all students in the community and it’s good to see one of our own policing our own.

I just really want to stress with the Minister that we must get more funding for the community justice programs and the deferral. Deferrals that we could try to work with the people who are going up against court instead of just putting them in the regular court circuit. I think these justice committees are underutilized and underfunded. They have to start getting more funding into them so they can do it properly, like having assistants and being able to get the mail and just the funding needs to be there. I can’t stress more need for that to keep going on.

My last one is the emergency financial assistance funds for victims of crime. I think that should be really looked at again. It’s a pretty low number. Just imagine if we could stop one of those planes from

being held 24 hours, probably could give double that.

I’d like to thank the chair and the Minister for his remarks. I look forward to page by page.

Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. We’ll try to continue to spend more money in the Member’s riding as much as we can. Court circuit of course is at the discretion of the judge. At the same time, there’s got to be a cost effective of how they travel. Sometimes the court is done early so the plane waits on them and then a couple of hours later they fly back as opposed to the plane going back and coming back again. That would almost double or triple the cost. Those are just cost factors that the judges take into consideration.

The court workers, we’ve expanded their role. We’re trying to utilize their service even more at the community level, because they are an asset to our organization in the communities.

The victim support services, I agree we need to do more in those areas. There are initiatives on the way with victim notification services and other areas of support that we’ll continue to put more emphasis on at the community level and regional level.

The wilderness camp, on-the-land program has been brought up on numerous occasions that there should be more resources and funds invested. I can’t agree more. Those are areas that we always push through our shop, Justice, with the communities. We want to see more into the communities and we need to work with the communities and regions on who wants to take advantage of that. We’ll continue to push that venue.

RCMP members go to the schools. I can’t agree more on that as well. We highly encourage that with RCMP “G” Division and we do see them in some schools. It would be nice to see them in all schools over a year period. This will be brought up with the RCMP “G” Division chief superintendent, because we do meet and discuss various issues that are being brought to my attention.

Community justice programming, we are at the final stages of going through the recommendations and review. Obviously any changes that occur will cost additional funds and this is what the Member is referring to, that maybe more additional investment should be geared towards community justice because it is part of the preventive measurement and I agree with that. This will be before us and before the standing committee. I’m looking forward to meeting with the standing committee in due time.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. General comments. Detail?

Okay. So maybe we can bring our attention to page 9-7, Justice, department summary, go past that and get into the whole budget. Page 9-8, Justice, department summary, information item, infrastructure investment summary.

Page 9-9, Justice, department summary, information item, revenue summary.

Page 9-10, Justice, department summary, information item, active position summary.

Page 9-13, Justice, activity summary, services to government, operations expenditure summary. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did want to ask a question here with regard to the money we’re spending for access to information and privacy... I forget the whole title. Protection of privacy. We’ve been receiving a lot of requests, I gather, over the last couple of years relative to residential school investigations and so on, and I understand that there’s an increase in funding for ATIPP. I think if I remember rightly, there is an extra position in this budget. Could I get an explanation as to if that’s correct and why we need to increase. Are we still getting residential school inquiries or is this for another reason that we need to expand our ATIPP staff?

Ms. Schofield.

Thanks for that explanation. I did want to ask as well about the Aboriginal consultation unit. I can’t remember if that’s a new unit or not. If it is a new unit then my question is mute. Could I get a report on how that unit is going or, if it isn’t yet established, when it will be operational?

Minister of Justice.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. This is a new unit. My understanding is it

should be up and running around September, this fall.

Thank you. Just one last question. What is the work going to be of the Aboriginal consultation unit?

Deputy Minister Watters.

Thanks for the explanation. I believe that the GNWT has a consultation framework, so will Justice be working kind of across government either to amend or adjust or help people implement the consultation framework that the government has?

Minister of Justice.