Thank you, committee. With that, committee, we’ll go to the Minister of Justice to see if he has any witnesses he’d like to bring into the House.

I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Is committee agreed?

Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses into the House, please.

Minister Abernethy, if you can introduce your witnesses to the Chamber.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right is Sylvia Haener. She’s the deputy minister of the Department of Justice. On my left is Kim Schofield, the director of finance, same department.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Ms. Schofield, Ms. Haener, welcome to the Chamber. Committee, again we’re on Justice and I’ll start with general comments. Are we prepared to go into detail? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one comment, and I just want to say that I’m very glad to see that we are moving forward, finally, on the facilities replacement for the Territorial Female Correctional Centre in Fort Smith. It’s been something which is probably three years overdue, so I’m very glad to see that we are moving towards construction beginning in this next capital fiscal year. That’s it. Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I’ll take that as a comment. Committee, are we prepared to go into detail.

Thank you, committee. We are going to defer 7-2 and will return to it in a second. Page 7-4, Justice, activity summary, court services, infrastructure investment

summary, infrastructure investments, $460,000. Does committee agree?

Page 7-7, Justice, activity summary, corrections, infrastructure investment summary, infrastructure investments, $3.628 million. Does committee agree? Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask the Minister and I need to get a sense and a much compelling way as to the fencing that we are going to be spending within the Justice here. It’s quite a considerable amount of money, as our communities have been looking for daycare centres, daycare homes, and other necessary, essentially needed infrastructure in our communities, and we are continuing to spend money in this area. There may be regulations. There actually may be laws that might put us in a liability situation if we don’t do anything; however, I’ve had a bitter pill to swallow just as we were talking about daycare facilities in our small communities, daycare homes, infrastructure for helping the people who want to help themselves and having that type of discussion in the Sahtu. I can name many other worthwhile, essential, critical infrastructure that we need, and we’re going to put some huge dollars into fencing to, I don’t know if it’s to keep them in or to keep them from getting out of our correctional facility. Again, I haven’t had the discussion with the Minister on this, so I’m looking forward to a brief, concise and compelling argument why this should go forward, and I just need to get my head around this as to the exact number of dollars that we’re talking about to do this project here at the North Slave Correctional Centre on the fencing. If I could ask the Minister to persuade me.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The irony is not lost on me that today I’m sitting here defending this fence when six years ago I was sitting almost in exactly the same seat you are throwing this, actually, exact line out of the budget. At that time six years ago what I wanted to know, and what committee wanted to know, was what has changed in the facility. The facility was originally designed for territorial inmates two years less a day, at a certain security level. At that time we were asking, why does it need a fence when it was originally designed without one. Those are questions I asked before I supported putting this in the budget or bringing it forward, and I wanted to make sure that I had solid answers before I did that.

There are a couple reasons that we need a fence at that facility, which wasn’t in the original design of that facility. One of the things is when that facility was designed, there were no residential lots directly adjacent to that building, and I’m happy to show

you a map of our site where the fences are going to be, but it also identifies the entire residential subdivision that is going out there, and it is basically going right along the building. To get that lease, the builder had to get a promise to put in an honour fence, which will go along the property line, but it’s not a very tall fence compared to what we need in that facility. The fact that that housing unit is there has changed some of the requirements of the building.

The other one and, honestly, more significant, is when that building was constructed, as I indicated, it was mostly designed to be a facility, a correctional facility to house territorial inmates two years less a day. Programs were designed in that way. There was a certain security level on inmates who fall into that category. Since that time the facility has, in a sense, changed the types of inmates that we have in there, given that most, not most, a significant number of inmates that are in there now are actually on remand, and many of them are a significantly higher security risk. As a result of that, we’ve had conversations with Corrections Canada, who have come in and done an analysis of our facility. They’ve done an analysis of our yard, where we do programming, and it was their recommendation, based on the types of inmates and the fact that there is that residential lot beside, that we need to put in a security fence so that we can continue to provide programming to some of the remand inmates as opposed to our territorial two years less a day.

Those are the reasons that we need to put in that facility. In retrospect, I wish we had approved it six years ago because it was a whole lot cheaper at the time.

Certainly, if we were a writer, I guess, and more willing, we would have, but you were on our side, so we really couldn’t move this here now that you’re on the other side there and moving this infrastructure budget for next year. I’d like to, I guess, just make some points here. Maybe the Minister, then, can help me here.

We have facilities that are used for this type of situation in the North here. So is that going to happen to all our facilities when people then start wanting to build around our facilities, that we’ve got to put up security fences, or next year or another couple years, five years, will there be another fence saying, well, we’ve got to do this Fort Smith or Hay River or here for security fences for the reasons that you stated to me in this House here?

I imagine that Corrections Canada made a lot of recommendations. Maybe this one popped out because of the residential lots that will be going next to the jail. Who knew that six years ago? Where is the responsibility to the developer who’s developing these residential lots, knowing that they’re building next to a territorial inmate

corrections facility? Now, where is the responsibility of the residential developer saying, well, because we’re going to build here and for the appeasement of people to get these houses, this is what we’re going to do. We’ll put the fence up. That may be more of a disincentive for people to say, well, I’m going to pay a little more because I’m going to now have to pay for a share of the costs of the fence. Hey, let’s ask the Department of Justice. Let’s put their arguments here as to why they can put that fence up for us and they can spend $2 million and let them do it. Then we don’t have to and it cuts our costs down for potential residents in that area, still knowing that they’re going to live next to a correctional facility. That, in itself, they have their own reasons for that.

For myself, I’m not too sure. I’m not convinced by the Minister. I know what you’re saying. I’m not yet convinced of this money here on the fencing. Again, I said fencing. Look at child care, daycare homes in our small communities. Look at health centres. Look at putting in RCMP in Colville Lake, Tsiigehtchic or Wrigley. We know the amount of money for infrastructure, but we always seems to have no money. That’s what I’ve been hearing from Justice. We want to have the basic essential services such as a health nurse in our community. We need to accommodate them with having RCMP in our communities, which means infrastructure, but we don’t seem to put that as a priority at this time, because you’re defending a huge amount of money going into the crushing facility here. Any time you have a facility that houses inmates, there is always a high risk because the inmates do not respect the law, respect people. They go through a process. I keep having a hard time to harmonize myself with the Minister to say, yes, this is a good thing, we’re spending good money. At the same time, we’ve been asking for RCMP in Colville Lake, Tsiigehtchic and other small communities with a nurse and we don’t get it. I don’t get it. The Minister has shown me over time, and I thank him, for what it costs to put an RCMP infrastructure facility in the small communities, yet we are going to forego this and put money into fencing off to keep the high-risk offenders from escaping or so they can go into the program. Again, I’m not having a warm feeling over here to that rationale. Again, the Minister made some good points; however, I just don’t buy it right now.

Mr. Chair, at this point, we don’t actually anticipate having to do these types of fences at other facilities in the Northwest Territories because they pretty much already exist. If you go to Hay River and you look at the facility we have there, there is a large fence that is available, but the inmates there are also significantly lower-risk inmates. The one in Fort Smith has one as well. The female facility, we will likely have to put an area with a bit of a fence, a

security fence, because we will likely have female inmates on remand in that facility unless we end up sending them to other institutions. But it comes back to security is the bottom line.

Just going back one step first, when the developer came forward and wanted to develop that property out there, the development permit required them to put in an honour fence. They are responsible for paying for the honour fence. It is their dime, not our dime. That will follow the property line. But it’s not a security fence; it’s more of an honour fence between the property holders of our facility. So we’re really happy that they’re doing that.

What we’re talking about is a security fence on a facility that has changed its security rating. We house a significant number of higher-risk inmates. The Member will remember that we completed some Aboriginal spiritual healing program area on the site of the North Slave Correctional Facility. That was actually done at the same time that we turned down the fence six years ago. The intention of the programming space was to allow as many offenders as possible to access these facilities and get healing where possible, but without the fence, the high-risk offenders in that facility who were in remand can’t utilize any of those facilities because we can’t allow them out of the building into our program area.

If we want our remand offenders, the high-risk remand offenders to utilize these programming spaces, we need the security fence. This is a direction that was also given and confirmed by Corrections Canada as well. Without it, programming is limited for some of our offenders, plus, on top of that, we now have the development beside us which did not exist before, and there was not any belief that that was going to end up in that place, that location, at that time.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Committee, we are on 7-7, Justice, activity summary. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you. I want to continue on with the Minister’s interesting topic that we are discussing. It’s a huge infrastructure for the facility and talking about the remand inmates that are in there. These are the inmates that are still waiting for court trial, so we don’t know if they are guilty or not guilty. They are still going through the court process. For that reason, they are limited to certain programs anyhow, as I understand. I have talked to some guys who are on remand who are in there and they do a lot of sitting. They don’t have much programming there, because they don’t know if they are going to be convicted or not convicted. So there is limited programming.

I understand what the Minister is saying. I’m hoping that he would do other programming for these people that are sitting there waiting for a court trial, to do some more work so they can better

themselves. I get that. I actually do. That’s what we have. I certainly get it that the developer and the residents that are building their lots close to the land where the correctional centre is, are putting up an honour fence. I’m not too sure what I know about the honour fence. I don’t even know what an honour fence is. I know what an honourable gentleman’s agreement is, but what is an honour fence? Is it something that we can build on? Do we have to put a whole new security fence up? I’m looking at what type of collaboration we could have there with the residents.

The Minister stated very clearly that security is the bottom line of this discussion here. I do get it, for everybody’s own piece of mind to go to sleep at night that this is what we put in place. I do get it. I guess at this time when I’m asking for key, essential infrastructure in our smaller communities, that when I hear that there are limited funds, we don’t have much left, that something like this pops up into the infrastructure, it’s a lot of dollars that could go towards other key infrastructures in the Department of Justice in our communities. I was hoping that maybe the Minister would one day say yes, we do have money for an RCMP in our nine or 10 communities that don’t have RCMP members stationed in their communities, but we have money for this project here.

I’m not too sure how to speak to this. I’m just very disappointed in this coming forward at this time with other needs in our communities such as an RCMP in Colville Lake, Tsiigehtchic, so then we can get health nurses in those communities.

There are have and have-not communities in the Northwest Territories. Our communities are treated differently and they are not equal. There are different classes of people living in our communities. Good for you if you are living in a community with 2,000 or 3,000 people, but not too good for you if you are living under 200 or under 500, because you’re not going to receive some of essential basic services that this government is responsible for, but yet you can put a fence around a jail here that will keep inmates from escaping, keeping them in there so they can have more programming for them, which I’m all for it, but we need to do first things first.

I’m going to leave it at that. I think the Minister knows my feelings and my disappointment on him not bringing forward RCMP infrastructure money. That should have been done a long time ago. Maybe if we had that, more inmates could go into the centre. This is a priority, the safety of our community and the protection of our people. They are more concentrating on the jail than a community such as Colville Lake by not having an RCMP infrastructure there, or other communities without RCMP. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

Just for clarity, RCMP infrastructure funding is covered under a completely different budget supported by Public Safety Canada. They are the ones who, through the 20-year contract, are responsible for the capital, and obviously we continue to let them know what capital is important, including capital and facilities for RCMP.

Coming back to this one, it would be impossible to build upon the honour fence that the contractor of the housing development is building. That’s going to be more of a standard chain-link fence with some barrier in it so we can’t see through it. It’s about breaking sight lines. Then there needs to be a gap between the honour fence and our actual security fence so we can monitor to make sure that people are not bringing contraband over the honour fence and throwing it into the yard and whatnot. So the budget is not just about a fence. The budget is about cameras and other things to monitor and keep the area secure.

I think the Member actually hit on one of the reasons that this fence is actually important. There are remand inmates who are eligible to take these Aboriginal spiritual healing programs because there is no requirement for admission of guilt to take these programs, but if you are on remand for a serious crime, right now we can’t help you. You can’t go outside the building that exists and you can’t go use the sweat lodges and some of the other things we have built on the property because the security isn’t there. This will allow those inmates, maybe some of those that you visited with, to go out and utilize these Aboriginal spiritual healing programs that don’t require admissions of guilt. They are about healing, they are about personal growth, and now those inmates may be able to utilize those facilities. It actually creates more opportunity for these individuals, and the nice thing about it is there is no need for admission of guilt to access some of these programs, but you’re still a security risk at a higher level and we can’t take you out to those facilities right now. When this fence is done, we will be able to.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Yakeleya, anything more to offer on this activity?

No.