Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As Minister of Justice, I think I have to be very careful on getting involved in the Criminal Code side of things or sentencing. From my perspective and the department’s perspective, it’s very important that we look at opportunities to divert people away from the mainstream court system. Oftentimes, having communities deal with sentencing and issues at the community level is far more effective than locking somebody up in an institution, and we have had some success there. We made a presentation to the standing committee this morning on wellness courts, and that’s something that we’re very excited to see move forward to try to get to some of the root causes of
why people end up in court in the first place, and that’s mental health and addiction issues, and that’s something that we’re hoping is going to be very beneficial to residents here in the Northwest Territories once we get that wellness court up and running.
As far as on-the-land programming goes, I think I may have mentioned this in my response to the opening comments from committee, was that we had an RFP that went out late last year. We did not have any successful proponents on that RFP, but we still are very much interested in seeing on-the-land programming and looking for interested parties in the territory that may want to look at that opportunity. We’re going to regroup at the department. We’re not sure whether we want to go back out to another RFP or if we get some folks that are interested and just talking to them and sorting out how best we can deliver that type of programming on the land. That’s something we’re still very much interested in and something we’re going to continue to work on and pursue.