Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For that detail, we’ll go to the deputy minister.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Ms. Haener.

Thank you, Ms. Haener. Mr. Bromley.

Thanks for that information and I’m glad there’s some flexibility there. I think we do want to take advantage of those opportunities when we can.

With respect to grants and contributions, I see one of the items here is YWCA of Yellowknife. They are provided funding as their role as designate under the Protection Against Family Violence Act. This is sort of representative. I see the budget hasn’t changed and I have brought this up a number of times and I know a number of people have. It is a serious concern of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. To that end, Mr. Chair, I would like to move a motion, if I may.

Go ahead, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Just give us a second and we’ll circulate that motion.

The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Bromley.

I don’t have any desire to go on about this. I think it’s a very straightforward issue, and it’s been noted annually at budget time for a number of years. I know probably all Members have heard from our non-government organizations and the difficulties they have in meeting forced growth when they’re expected to deliver often essential government services without the resources to maintain their capacity, and at the same time, of course, they see government departments very substantially increasing their budgets for forced growth reasons. I think we need to start recognizing that they live in the real world, too, and we need to adjust for the inflation and forced-growth costs that they have to meet to provide those services.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion.

Question has been called. Motion defeated.

---Defeated

Committee, we’re on 9-17. I have Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few concerns along the lines that Mr. Moses brought up earlier, is the sentencing that many of the people get, whether it’s through drug trafficking or bootlegging. I know some of the community programs through the local justice programming, they’re looking at ways to deal with, I’m not sure whether it’s these issues, but I think we need to look at a different direction, and I think that we need to increase jail times. These are pretty serious things that are affecting our territory.

If you look at other jurisdictions, whether it’s Alaska or further down south, they don’t tolerate these sorts of actions. First, second time offence, some places look at 10 years. I think people will learn once they get charged like this. Right now a person gets charged, they might get a couple hundred dollar fine. That’s nothing for them. They make that amount of money in a short amount of time and they just keep carrying on with what they’re doing.

I know up in this jurisdiction I believe it’s classified as Aboriginal law or somewhere along those lines, but it doesn’t matter what jurisdiction you’re in, drug trafficking is drug trafficking, and I believe that we should be having the same sort of legislation and laws as every other jurisdiction in the country. As we move further down the road I think that we need to seriously look at that avenue.

The other thing that I wanted to bring up was through the jail system, I know that last year I saw, it was like a request that went out to the communities in the newspaper, and I wanted to get an update on that. It was sort of an on-the-land programming that’s through the justice system. I know it was for the Beaufort-Delta region. I’d just like to get an update on that. As far as I know, there’s nothing there at the moment.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister Ramsay.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Continuing with questions on 9-17, I have Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Community Safety Plan, I was just wondering if there was an update on how many of our communities across the Northwest Territories have a safety plan, and also looking at the recommendations from the report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations about trying to include some type of safe houses in some of the small communities that would protect some of our people that are in need. Maybe I could just get a little update on that and what kind of support is being put in place for those community safety plans.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’re currently piloting that Community Safety Strategy in three communities in the Northwest Territories and we will be evaluating how that goes and looking to ensure that if it’s successful then getting it into as many other communities across the territory as we can. It’s still in its early stages but we hope to see it expand past the three that are being piloted.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Committee, we’re on 9-17, Justice, activity summary, community justice and policing, operations expenditure summary, $4.900 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Page 9-18, Justice, activity summary, community justice and policing, grants and

contributions, contributions, $2.331 million. Does committee agree?