Does committee agree that consideration of the NWT Housing Corporation is completed?

Thank you, committee. I would like to thank the Minister, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Anderson for joining us this evening. Could I please get the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses out of the Chamber? Thank you, committee.

Continuing on, we agreed earlier today to turn out attention to the Department of Justice, page 295 in the main estimates. With that, I will turn it over to the Minister accountable for opening comments, Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the 2015-2016 Main Estimates for the Department of Justice. Overall the department’s estimates propose an increase of $3.8 million, or 3.1 percent, over the 2014-2015 estimates.

These estimates represent the work of the department for the administration of a justice system for the Northwest Territories that is open, accessible and responsive to the needs of the people we serve. We are presenting a budget that continues to be prudent and responsible. Accordingly, we are presenting $809,000 in expenditure reductions and reducing $992,000 through sunsetting programs. Revenue increases have been included at 3 percent, or $422,000, mainly due to securities registration fees administered by the legal registries division.

The largest increase in these budget estimates represents just over $3.7 million in forced growth costs. These include collective bargaining and contractual obligations and nondiscretionary contribution increases for judicial and RCMP pensions.

A total of $374,000 has been included for the expansion of the Integrated Case Management Pilot Project into Inuvik to strengthen government services to be more effective for those who are most vulnerable.

In keeping with the Assembly’s priorities, I would like to highlight $872,000 to fully implement the specialized Wellness Court to assist those in our society who come into conflict with the law through mental health or addictions issues. This second year funding continues the work started in the 2014-2015 year.

The department’s French Operating Plan outlines steps necessary to meet our legal responsibilities and improve the French services available to residents of the Northwest Territories, and $772,000 is included in this budget to continue the implementation of that work.

The department will continue to meet the expectations of this Assembly. We will continue our efforts throughout the coming year to support families when they are in conflict or personal crisis. Through this support, families and individuals will be empowered to work towards successful resolutions allowing them to turn their energies to more constructive and healthier alternatives.

We will continue to provide safe and secure custody of offenders and will provide rehabilitation programs that support reintegration back into communities. We will help youth in trouble with the law to make better choices. We will ensure we are able to support government activities by securing a proper base of legislation and regulations to support and build a strong and sustainable territory for the future.

This concludes my opening remarks. I welcome your comments and questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Do you have witnesses you would like to bring into the Chamber?

I do, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort our witnesses into the House today.

Minister Ramsay, would you be kind enough to introduce your witnesses to the House?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It would be my pleasure. To my right is Ms. Sylvia Haener, deputy minister for the Department of Justice; to my left, Ms. Kim Schofield, director of corporate services with the Department of Justice.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Haener, Ms. Schofield, welcome again to the Chamber. It’s nice to see you guys.

Committee, we are on general comments, Department of Justice. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will have opening comments to the Minister recognizing that this is an operational and maintenance budget. I’m hoping to put another plug in, I know it’s not time for infrastructure but I will still continue with my consistent plea for an RCMP presence more consistently and maybe permanently in the communities without a detachment. For example, Colville Lake. I know the department is working on that with the Fort Good hope detachment and doing their best to make sure the presence is in Fort Good Hope. I’m going to just remind the Minister that I will continue until our Assembly is completed for ways the department can look at this with their deputies and directors. They have ways to look at it rather than coming back with the response no, we can’t do that, no, we can’t do that. I would like to hear some

maybes; maybe we can look at something. That’s more feasible to satisfy the people in Colville Lake. That community now is experiencing the presence of more alcohol abuse and illegal drugs coming into that community. I ask that the staff and the Minister give some consideration for the community of Colville Lake. I know the challenges the Minister has within his department, but perhaps there can be a way. I am looking for some help here.

Now I want to ask the Minister for other ways to look at dealing with justice, especially with inmates who are in our corrections facilities. I did talk earlier to the Minister. There is a lady in San Francisco. Her name is Dr. Mimi Silbert. Mimi Silbert has worked with 16,000 inmates over the past 30 years and she runs a program down in that area. There are no therapists, no professional supports, no guards.

Dr. Silbert has a very impressive record from her research and report. Ninety percent of the inmates that she worked with don’t go back to hard drugs or gangs. A lot of these inmates obtain a high school degree, college degree, a university degree. She has worked with 16,000 inmates. It’s a real unique program. That’s the type of innovation that I’m looking for from this department. It would be wonderful to have her come up and speak to the officials or to community justice like on-the-land programs, community justice, and we can do something. It’s been proven. It’s in a book that I’m reading right now. It talks about Dr. Silbert. It talks about many other people, education with health. The section I’m reading is on justice. She could bring that experience to us, especially in the North here with the Minister.

When you have a record like that, that shows that you don’t need any guards or therapists or professional support, and she has a program that maybe could be used in the Northwest Territories. Why not try something like this maybe in our region where maybe we aren’t getting a very good uptake or there are some reasons that we can’t do justice and healing on the land?

Fort Good Hope has been asking for an on-the-land program. There are barriers. Why don’t we look at this and have Dr. Silbert come to the North and work with us? That type of goal, direction, thinking, that could happen.

I’m making a public plea right now with the Minister in looking at how do we work with inmates that shouldn’t be in there. I’m very happy to hear that the Wellness Court is coming into force. We supported it. Thank you to the Minister and the staff to get that all set up, because a lot of people who are in those facilities could maybe benefit from the Wellness Court. I heard that in my region.

The Minister made a statement in the House earlier about illegal bootlegging that’s going on in the communities. That’s a lot of money if you look at $60 for a bottle. How many bottles, 51 bottles on one of his notes there? That’s about $3,000. So when they say they don’t have money, I say no, you have money. It’s there. It’s just that you don’t have money for… Your priorities are not quite all fit in line. There’s something not right here, so we need to change that. I’m looking to see how the Minister is working to increase it and tell people that by these seizures of liquor, it’s quick, easy money, but it’s competition against the government. You need to know that you’re breaking the law. On top of that, you’re contributing constantly to a serious health or danger in the

community. We have lots of people in our region and we need to really think about this. It’s more important to get the people to really think about this issue here.

The last point I want to state is the community of law enforcement. Can we look at auxiliary police in our communities for the young people? I know some people in some of my communities had looked at being an RCMP member. It’s volunteering. I don’t know how it will work in the small communities, doing minor law enforcement or tagging along with the regular members. It might be something to look at in order to bring some hope to our young people.

We have to do a whole bunch of things because of what we’re experiencing now with the funding with our government, looking at with Justice, the courts, on-the-land programs, a whole wide range of services that the department is providing in our communities. I guess I want to look at that and see if there is any type of possible justice conference that can be looked at in the regions. I would really consider strongly to suggest to the Minister that we invite Dr. Mimi Silbert up and look at this and take advantage of her 30 years of experience working with 16,000 inmates. Ninety percent do not go back to drugs or gangs. A lot of them have college or education degrees. Let’s learn from her experience. Can we use that here in both of our centres here? I would suggest that they have some discussion. I look forward to her maybe coming into our region. We want to do on-the-land program. We need those types of people.

Thank you to the Minister for the hard work your staff are doing and being open. Thanks to the RCMP members who are working in our small communities. We have to say thank you because we don’t say thank you enough. Sometimes we get on too fast. They have a job to do and it’s our responsibility as public to uphold our bargain here. I want to say that in all goodness of my heart. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. As agreed upon earlier with convention, we are going to through three Members’ opening comments or general comments and then we’ll ask the Minister to reply. With that, I have Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to use the occasion to get an update as to the Aboriginal wellness coordinator that I was asking back in October of last year. As I understand it, at the time this position hadn’t been filled and we were using a person that I thought at one time we were trying to encourage to apply for the job and they were doing it. I would like an update as to where that may be at this particular time with that position. Has it been staffed and when had it been staffed?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Did you want that reply now?

It doesn’t matter to me. I just want the answer.

Thank you. As, again, we agreed upon earlier, we are going to do three Members here with general comments and we’ll ask the Minister to do three Members at a time, so are you finished with your general comments?

Yes.

Thank you. With that, we will go to Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have a couple of comments here. First and foremost I would like to comment on the Wellness Court. It’s been a long time coming and I’m glad that we are getting there. When we reviewed business plans, Members expressed some concerns about the resources which may or may not be available for the Wellness Court. We had concerns about whether or not the services and the programs were going to be available to make the program succeed. I think there was going to be an update ready for us somewhere around this time, so I guess I would like to know from the Minister and from the staff if there is an update that they can give us on the Wellness Court. How is it proceeding? How are things going in terms of access to services and success in that area?

Also, when we discussed the department we talked a fair bit about IT systems, supporting the Justice department. I guess I would like to know which systems currently are needing replacement and/or upgrading and what the department is doing about it. Are they going to be dealt with in this budget year, or is it going to be over the next couple of years? I understand there’s more than one system that needs some help.

We talked about community justice systems when we reviewed the business plans and I want to stress that I think there needs to be, and I believe committee said as much, but we need to stress that there needs to be more emphasis and/or funding put into community justice committees. They have proven to be quite successful, I think the department would agree, but they don’t get, I don’t think, as much funding as they should. I think having a community justice committee in every community is the optimum. I don’t know if we do or not, I can’t remember. So I would appreciate being given the info on that. We need to give them funding in order for them to get training and to do the job that we want them to do, which is only going to make our communities better and safer.

Legal aid was an issue for us; it has been for the last several years. I’d like to know from the Minister, from the department, where we are at in terms of wait times for people to get service from a legal aid lawyer. It was an extremely long wait time, probably a wait list as well, but the wait time was quite long, not too bad in Yellowknife, but extremely long outside of the capital. I’d like to know where that wait time is right now. I hope it has gone down. Can I get an indication of how long clients have to wait to get a lawyer outside of the capital and the regional centres?

I think that’s it. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We’ll turn our attention over to Minister Ramsay to reply to both Mr. Yakeleya, Mr. Hawkins and Ms. Bisaro. Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d be pleased to respond to the three Members that provided some opening comments.

Starting with Mr. Yakeleya and looking at the RCMP detachments, I want to let Mr. Yakeleya know that our community justice and policing folks met with the chief and SAO from Colville Lake in December of ’14. We are also just coming off a meeting that was held in January with the community again. We’re in the process now of compiling a report from the information we received from the community leaders in Colville Lake. So

we will be working towards a community safety plan for the community of Colville Lake as well.

I have mentioned in the House before that under the new funding arrangement the Government of the Northwest Territories is responsible for 70 percent of the capital costs for new detachments in the Northwest Territories, and that’s something that is going to become an issue if we want to try to put detachments in communities across the territory that don’t currently have detachments. We’re looking at a refurbishment in Inuvik, a big expenditure in Inuvik, and also in Behchoko as well. We’re happy to get into communities. I’ve had the opportunity to travel into some communities to discuss with the leadership in the communities about community safety plans, policing plans and how it is that we can work with the RCMP and work with community leaders around the territory to make communities safer. I’m happy to do that and I will extend an offer to the Member if there are communities, and I know Colville Lake was mentioned here today, if they want to see me in person. If we can get up to the community I’d be more than happy to do that and talk about community safety when I get into the community.

I want to thank the Member for bringing up Mimi Silbert and her experience dealing with inmates and what she could possibly bring to the table. The department has a strong track record of a demonstrated willingness to look at things differently and try new things. I think if we could make contact with her and discuss perhaps an opportunity to come here and try something different, we’d be willing to explore that. So I want to thank the Member for bringing that up today.

On the issue with bootlegging, I had a statement today talking about a number of communities where we’ve had some large seizures in and we’re very pleased to see the work of the RCMP paying dividends and seizing alcohol. We have to continue to get the message out that it’s okay if you see illegal activity taking place in your community, it’s okay to call the authorities, it’s okay to tell somebody about it. That’s the only way we’re going to stop bootleggers and drug dealers from ravaging our communities. I think calling Crime Stoppers, calling the RCMP, it’s okay to do that. We’ve seen far too many tragedies here in the Northwest Territories that involve alcohol and young people and we just have to make that call. I want to impress upon people that it is okay to call the authorities and let them know that there’s illegal activity taking place in your community and that’s how the RCMP were helped in getting those seizures done. It was the help of the public. Again, I want to thank the public that helped the RCMP get that booze out of our communities.

It was mentioned about continuing to educate our communities, our people about alcohol. Anything we can do to work with the Department of Finance on efforts to get that message out we will continue to do that. I know the Member also wanted to thank the RCMP and I agree with you, I don’t think we thank the RCMP enough for the work that they do on behalf of our residents and ourselves each and every day in all of our communities. So I will certainly pass your comments on to the RCMP.

On Mr. Hawkins’ question, we did have some success in finally filling the position, it’s a transfer assignment, an Aboriginal person that was working at the North Slave Correctional Centre is now in that position. That happened some time before Christmas, I don’t have the exact date. So that position now is filled and it was filled internally.

To Ms. Bisaro, the wellness court, we will compile, I’ve got a raft of material. We’ll get something together. I did make a promise to Members to get you an update on what has happened, how it has happened and the success that wellness court has had to date. I will compile that information and I’d be happy to share that with Members at the earliest opportunity. It might take us a little while to put it all together, but you will get it. I’d like to say by the end of this month you’ll have all that information.

As far as which systems need to be updated, I think it’s the fax, the comms (sic). They both need some work. We are currently trying to get some kind of update as to the scope of the work that’s going to be required to update those systems. So that’s work that’s currently ongoing.

We don’t have a community justice committee in every community, but I appreciate the Member’s comments. Where we have them we need to resource them to the best of our abilities.

On the legal aid office, most cases outside of family law are dealt with immediately as required, but the wait times for family law have inched up over the six-month mark. We were at around seven months. Our hope is, and we’ve got some new lawyers on staff, that those times will come back down under six months, but seven months is far too long, and I’ve impressed upon the department the importance of seeing that come back down. So we are working on that and hopefully with the new lawyers we’ll have a handle on that in the very near future. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Moses.

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.