Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to speak about something which does not directly affect my constituency, but I have listened to the questions and the statements of Members from small communities for far too long, and today I’m going to jump in on the issue of nurses and RCMP in small communities.
Hay River has the good fortune of a well-staffed RCMP detachment and a well-staffed health authority, so we don’t face the challenges of small communities, but I understand the concerns that exist when you do not have these services in the community.
When we look at other jurisdictions in Canada like Ontario and Quebec, they have provincial police forces. The RCMP is not under contract to everyone. I don’t know why we cannot get creative here in the Northwest Territories, why we cannot pick respected people out of communities and train them, maybe through some kind of a partnership agreement with the RCMP, send them to Depot, deputize them as special constables or community constables and have them there. Yes, when the RCMP do go to visit in the community, they could work with them.
But I know that in British Columbia, for example, there is a First Nations police training institute, so obviously there are First Nations, as well, that have reserves and so on that have some form of policing there that is not part of the RCMP.
I just think we need to get more creative. When we say we can’t have a nurse in the community because there’s no RCMP presence there, we have school teachers in the communities and there’s no RCMP presence there. I mean, what’s the difference? Furthermore, if you want to take it a step further, we can’t have a nurse in the
community because there’s no RCMP but we have everybody else who lives in the community without an RCMP presence. I mean, what is that? Some kind of a double standard that we have here?
I think that this government could get a lot more serious about having some kind of a policing presence, whether it is a police force or something that our government creates. We have Canadian Rangers from almost all of the communities. That’s an organization that’s well trained, well equipped. That’s volunteers, in that instance, but there’s another organization that possesses some of the skills already that RCMP needs when it comes to search and rescue and the ability to be on the land.
So, I’m sorry, I no longer buy this theory. I understand that because of RCMP rules we may not be able to have detachments in every community, but we can have a police presence of some kind and we need to get way more creative about figuring that out.