Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t have any questions, but I do want to make a few comments to this bill.
It is a long time coming, both the amount of time it took to get from department to committee and then the time committee spent on it, although it was compressed. I know we had a lot of hours in a short period of time.
This bill, as I stated earlier today, is very much an improvement over the current bill. I look forward to seeing how it is going to work. In terms of the concerns that we heard in our public hearings and in our travels, I think most of them have been addressed by committee. We didn’t agree with all of the concerns that we were presented with, but certainly in our deliberations we took a great deal of time. If we were going to sort of put aside somebody’s concern, we took a great deal of time to understand why we were doing that and whether or not it was the right decision and if that concern could be addressed elsewhere. I feel quite comfortable with the changes that we have made to the bill, based on the concerns that we were presented with and I don’t think that the ones that we did not accept, I don’t think they have had a huge impact on the success of the bill, on the future success.
One of the things – and Mr. Dolynny mentioned it already – that I am really quite concerned about is the assisted community treatment program and the provisions in the act for that. I support the principle, absolutely, but I am extremely concerned that without the programs and services at a local level and, as I think we stated in the report, without increases in those local programs and services, it is basically going to be assisted community treatment in Yellowknife and maybe in a couple of the regional centres.
The Minister has referenced, and I think it was referenced elsewhere, that there is going to be an addition of three PYs. Those PYs are all going to be at headquarters. Maybe that is okay for the first year, while you are developing regulations and while the act is not in force, but if there is not a significant change in the provision of programs and services at the local level, assisted community treatment won’t work, in my estimation. I echo Mr. Dolynny’s comments. You are going to have to find more money somewhere or else, and money for people somewhere in order for it to work.
One of the major concerns that committee had, and many people who made submissions also had, right from the start, it was really interesting. It was a huge topic at the very first public hearing, and that was the lack of reference to any sort of culture in the act. We have added enough provisions in the act that I feel quite comfortable that those who made submissions about culture would read the act, or would understand it now, that the act does allow for a cultural component. It is so much of the way that people live in the Northwest Territories is based on their culture or their spirituality or their religion, whatever it happens to be. We have allowed for that to come to how the act is going to operate.
I am extremely pleased that the Minister has publically now stated that there will be a development of a strategy for youth and adolescents. It was something that at committee we felt strongly was required and there was a period of time that we were not sure whether or not that was going to be happening, and I’m really pleased that is going to be developed because I think it’s also going to add to the success of the act.
My last comment has to do with the recommendations that are in the report. They aren’t recommendations specifically to the bill, but they are recommendations, as I see it, to the way the bill is going to operate, to the way the programs and services are going to operate. I would ask, we’ve had a couple of reports in the last couple of years where the response from government to a report has not responded publicly to recommendations that don’t affect the act specifically. So I would ask the Minister to inform his future Minister that any response to this standing committee report should include, publicly, a response to the recommendations that are in this report because they are key to making the act work from an operational perspective. So that’s all I have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.