Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to acknowledge the department for the two programs that they’re putting into place here, the Integrated Case Management Pilot Project and seeing that the department is taking the initiative to get our departments to work together, rather than in silos, to integrate our people back into society and become, hopefully, stand-up citizens so they get jobs and work, and Mr. Yakeleya was making some references to that earlier. It’s better late than never. I think coming to the game with that now, I think we are going to start seeing some improvements in how our people that were incarcerated get back into the community.
I think it’s going to be something that’s going to have to be ongoing in terms of review, not on an annual basis, like a monthly basis just to see how people are being integrated. Obviously, something like counselling or probation where you have to follow up on some of these previous offenders to make sure that the program is actually working as well as the specialized Wellness Courts. I know that it’s something that committee has worked strongly with the department for. I know that we have had a member of the committee go to the Yukon to see how that’s working. Seeing the progress that we’ve made in that area I think is great.
When we went through the briefing during the business planning session, it was noted that we are still second highest in the country in terms of violent crime. I think that we need to take a stronger stance in that area. I understand there was a men’s violence pilot program. I don’t need a full update today, but maybe even just a written
commitment on how that program is going, what’s the uptake, what’s the update, and if that could be sent to the standing committee just to see how that’s working.
Something that was brought to our standing committee was treatment down south. One of the provisions for one of the treatment centres that we have a contract with is they don’t take anybody with violent or sexual convictions unless they’ve gone through a program, some type of program that deals with violent sexual assault training. In that case, anybody who has been incarcerated for a violent crime or a sexual assault but needs the treatment and is ready to go to treatment and ready to take those steps, there is no avenue for them to get in. If we have a training program here in the Northwest Territories, I think that’s something that might fall under a combination between the Department of Health and maybe Justice to get that in place. After residential school and all the work that the TRC has put in, it has opened up a lot of people in terms of speaking about it and ready to take that next step in healing. I thank Mr. Yakeleya for bringing that to our attention in looking at taking the steps to deal with that.
Last session I asked the Minister on questions of proceeds of crime legislation. The back and forth dialogue was great in the sense that the Minister did mention that we were taking some of these things that we have taken over and used it to give to victims or give to communities or give to prevention programs like the Not Us! campaign. I think that has to be almost a standard practice, especially where we may see some good headway in the Sahtu in terms of the bootlegging bust and the drug busts, and in Resolution as the Minister had made in the Member’s statement earlier today. I was lucky enough to join the Minister at attending an opening for the victim services coordinators last month, or maybe the month before, and the work that they’re doing. It is a pretty stressful job. Most communities only have 0.5 positions. So when they are dealing with victims, as the Minister knows, victims need a lot of support. They have gone through traumatizing events. In some cases, they want to drop the charges because it is too much stress on them when they’re looking at proceeding with crime or charges. I think that we have to find a way that we can support our victim services coordinators in the communities. I think we’ll see more charges in the court system and people would not beat the charges if somebody didn’t show up to a court case because they didn’t have the support to go and make a statement. It’s just sad because it becomes repeated in domestic violence and I think that’s something that we need to stay on. I think the statistics in the business planning showed that charges in spousal assaults were down in the last year, but like I said, in some cases we don’t have the support for the victim service coordinators to help victims go right to the end with the charges.
Ms. Bisaro spoke to the community justice committees and I appreciate the answer that the Minister had given. Mr. Yakeleya talked a little bit about the community safety strategies. Maybe if we can get an update on how many communities have those strategies in place and how our government is supporting getting those strategies up and running and supported.
The Minister knows that I’m a big supporter of the coroner report recommendations. At times I do have meetings with the chief coroner of the NWT and talk about recommendations, talk about support that we can move forward on. I think the last one
of the meetings we previously had with the coroner, there was some really good dialogue back and forth.
Out of that dialogue, actually, I made a recommendation in terms of domestic violence death review committee, which couldn’t hold more water or light than it is today just because of what happened and what was presented in the news. As I mentioned, these domestic violence death review committees would have something like a physician, a nurse, an RCMP, a community person working on giving recommendations to government on how we proceed with any of these kind of issues that are resulting in domestic violence before they even have to, unfortunately, go before a death review committee, which we don’t have in place right now but there are many jurisdictions across Canada that have that in place and they give really sound recommendations to government so this is preventable and we stop it before it happens. I think that’s something that I will continue to fight for and try to support until the end of this 17th Legislative Assembly.
One thing that I’m pretty concerned about, Members have talked about it, and in the life of this government even our Minister of Health had mentioned that we might not see it. Hopefully we will get a discussion paper to work on it. In fact, that is the Mental Health Act. We are currently using the old Mental Health Act right now. As a result, we are still continuing to have people fall through the cracks. I think we need a very strong educational and awareness component to the Mental Health Act for all those points of introduction into the system for people that have mental health illness, such as emergency rooms, hospitals, the RCMP incarcerations, counselling services and identify those points of contact for people with mental illness and make sure that the people that are providing the service have a strong idea of what the Mental Health Act is and the powers that they have to use to give the right information or the right services to these individuals.
The two news reports that were out last year that caught attention in the media were the inmates that were out on the loose and one actually that was out on an inmate work release permit and then he was gone for… I don’t know; I think they caught him in a couple of days, real quick. But it would have been very unfortunate if he was in for some type of violent nature or some kind of other convictions, that the victim be notified when a person goes out on a work release permit. Obviously, it happened twice last year. I’m pretty sure the Minister and the correctional facilities have taken stronger standards in how they do that program. I think any one that has been incarcerated for any type of crime, that the victim be notified. It should be standard practice that the victim be notified that this person is going out to work. Should something happen if they are working in the city and somebody walks around the corner and the victim sees the perpetrator, it could have a devastating effect on them. I think there has to be a stronger standard, a stronger provision in place when inmates are able to go out and work in the communities.
That’s about it. I know it’s a long list. Chairing of the Social Programs committee is a good opportunity to understand the department before us and a lot of other concerns other Members have brought forth. So, thank you.