Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know in our little discussion back and forth with the Minister and his staff yesterday, I did make another plea, I guess, to the domestic violence death review committee, and I appreciate the answer that the Minister did give. I know, and standing committee knows, all the hard work that goes into creating an act or creating something of the nature, and appreciating the time that we have left in this government and the big pieces of legislation that we’re trying to do moving forward, I still wanted to put an emphasis on the importance of having such an act in place or even a committee in place. As I mentioned, there are many jurisdictions across Canada that do this and I just wanted, for the record as well as just to create some awareness and education, talk about one of the acts that another jurisdiction has.
The purpose of having a domestic violence death review committee or an act is to establish a multi-disciplinary committee to review the circumstances surrounding deaths that occur as a result of domestic violence and to make the recommendations to help prevent domestic violence deaths. As I said, it doesn’t hold more water than what has been in the news recently. In the news it says that incidents happened and there were repeated, repeated incidents that should have been stopped and caught before. When things like this do come up, it brings out a passion in me and I think that even with the time we could look at doing a feasibility study into creating something and this not be forgotten in the next government.
Under this, the role of the committee, I’m just going to use my time to just explain what the role of the committee is. They would conduct a confidential review of each domestic violence death referred to it by the Minister, making recommendations to the Minister after each review to help prevent future deaths in similar circumstances. I’m sure we can name quite a few of these circumstances in the Northwest Territories that have occurred. Also, creating and maintaining a comprehensive database about the victims and the perpetrators of domestic violence deaths and the circumstances that led up to those deaths. We could put the policies and all the provisions in place and catch these so they wouldn’t happen to any other individuals in the Northwest Territories.
The committee would also be helping identify the presence or absence of systemic problems or risk factors that may have contributed to the death’s review. I can already think of about eight communities that don’t have RCMP and don’t have nurses. I can think of communities that don’t have victim support coordinators. I can think of all the lack of psychologists that we have in some of the small communities and some of the isolated communities. This committee would make recommendations. This committee would also be helping identify transient patterns from the deaths reviewed to make recommendations for effective prevention and intervention strategies.
Just a little bit further in terms of who would be on the committee. It’s not really a question. I’m trying to sell this. I’m trying to talk about the importance of having this and why we need it in place. Members would be appointed by the Minister and the Minister can appoint up to his discretion, but in some jurisdictions it’s six to nine person review committees. One, of course, would be the office of the chief medical examiner, organizations or groups advocating for the prevention of domestic violence, victims services, police services, and organization or sectors specified by the regulations. There is a lot of good groundwork or framework that other jurisdictions are doing. I mean, there wouldn’t be a lot of work to look at creating legislation or looking at the feasibility of having this.
When we hear stories like we did in the news recently, it’s heartbreaking for us, because we make decisions in here, but when it happens in a small community in a region where a lot of people in the Northwest Territories, we’re a small population and it affects us all. I mean, having this in place so we can prevent it, I think, cannot fall off the books, it cannot fall off the batting order. I know we have I don’t know how many months left in this government, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to say why we’re not going to do this and leave it for the next government. I mean, we can still start a feasibility study, we can start that communication with other jurisdictions.
I wanted to take this opportunity. I listened to what the Minister said yesterday. At the initial time I accepted it, but when you read the story and you read comments that are on Facebook, it’s disheartening and I think this government needs to take action and move forward. I mean, the Department of Justice has been doing a really great job in many areas, and I think this one is a very important piece of the puzzle in terms of affecting our high violence rates in the Northwest Territories.
More of a comment. I want to take the opportunity and get it down on the record as an education and awareness piece to all Members of the Legislative Assembly and not just the Minister responsible.