Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, you know, I appreciate that the Premier is trying to kind of keep us on the topic of the Justice department itself I guess. I mean, I'm really just looking for an acknowledgement, I guess, that, you know, that there's a lot more to this problem than what the justice system can do, right. So we're talking about -- yeah, when I speak to wholistic solutions, I was kind of hoping for a bit more there. But if the Premier wants to elaborate, he can, or we can kind of pursue this issue with other departments.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you. And I don't want to speak too much about other departments. I don't want to get anything wrong before they appear in front of committee. But one of the main initiatives that I can speak to, because it is in one of my departments, is integrated service delivery. And that is one of the approaches that I hope will begin to address some of these issues. Really, at the end of day, that is the way to stop people from falling through the cracks and deliver the services they need across government. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to see that this department is taking an active role as identified in the business plan to address our drug trade issues. And I'm also glad that some other responsibilities are with the Minister and the Premier so when they're making trips to Ottawa to solicit for more money, I think we can all -- we can encourage our leader to emphasize the need for additional policing resources. And then when we get to the -- when we get to the fact of homelessness, now we've got the Minister and the Premier responsible for that department also or that initiative. So it works in harmony with our Premier's responsibility looking forward and making trips to Ottawa to initiate discussions on resource supports. And the outcomes for the reason for this trip could be said that -- take the Sahtu for example. I think I brought this up here.

The Sahtu in the last three years have seen 448 medevacs in our area. Now, let's just hypothetically say half of that or 50 percent of that is drug related. I know of some people that end up going to the hospital here because I visit them to see if they need anything. So there's a measurable there for the need for more resources. Now, we're targeting the policing by allowing a portion of those resources to go to First Nation policing. So if it's a good model, let's go to Ottawa and get more resources and say we want to minimize these medevacs down to a hundred. It just seems like, you know, the transfer of problems went from this department over to the health department. Now we got more clients over there, and we only got 44 percent of our jail capacity filled. So that's kind of like one way of looking at that. So it's more of a suggestion that we need to emphasize to Ottawa more resources are needed because this is a huge problem here in this drug world. Thank you.

I'm going to go to the Minister.

Sure, thank you. And like I said, we've been adding RCMP officers every year since I've been Minister. I have to check the stats, but I would say this budget shows the largest increase in RCMP officers in my time. In particular, the First Nation and Inuit Police Program has seen a significant increase. We used to have four officers under that program. That is a program that is cost shared differently. Generally, we pay 70 percent of the costs for RCMP, and the federal government pays the other 30 percent. With the First Nation and Inuit Policing Program, the federal government pays 52 percent and so we have been able to get that number from four, and we have an agreement to get that up to -- I believe it's 23 -- 22. And so there's -- in 2023 -- as of 2023, we had nine. And then there was an additional nine, and then an additional four this year. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go back to the Member from Sahtu. Is there any further questions?

No further questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I want to go to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, so the increases to RCMP that the Premier's been speaking about, can he just give us a breakdown of where these new officers are -- or how many -- let's start -- I'll do it in smaller checks. How many new officers are being created in this budget? Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you. There are 13 this year. That includes the four under the First Nation and Inuit Policing Program, and those are located in Fort Resolution, K'atlodeeche -- that will be based in Hay River, Tuktoyaktuk and Whati. The crime reduction unit will be based in Yellowknife, but it is a territorial asset, and it's employed territorially. That would include six, seven staff. Six RCMP. And then we have an increase in the emergency response team. I believe that's two full-time positions in Yellowknife. And then we have an increase of one position in Fort Providence detachment. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from from YK North. Sorry, Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the -- so I've spoken about that I think that this is a worthwhile investment, and I think it speaks to a broader issue of inter -- of cross-border drug trafficking that's coming into the territories. As the question's been raised and someone answered, but does -- in the Premier's discussions with both -- with the RCMP and with his department, like, what is -- what trends are they seeing around drug trafficking and increased rates of criminality and, in particular, violence and homicide in the last -- since the pandemic? Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, there were 318 drug violations. In 2022, there were 468. And so that's a significant increase. There are statistics that are released yearly about the police-reported crime. And those show that between 2021 and 2022, there was an 80 percent increase in robberies, which are often things associated with drugs. In the past year, there what's been over a hundred percent increase in the number of drug seizures for the amount of drugs seized. So there's a significant increase that we're seeing. But also a significant response to that increase that we hope is commensurate. And we are working with the RCMP to help get more information out, more stats out on things like this, because we want the public to be aware of what the situation is and what work is being done to address it. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go back to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is kind of more of an opinion-based question, but I think it's relevant. But, like, is the Premier of the opinion that, like the -- not the root -- the root cause is obviously public health issues, obviously drugs and addictions that we've been struggling with for some time. But we're seeing this additional level of organized crime who are bringing more drugs into the communities, who are exploiting things like public housing, right, by capturing public housing clients and using their public housing units to deal drugs in small communities. So how would he tackle that problem without increasing policing resources? Like, what are the other options to deal with organized crime? Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you. So I mean, I could answer as the Minister of Justice. It sounds like it might be a much more broad question than that, but there are things like legislation like the SCAN legislation which I guess in Alberta is actually the sheriffs use that legislation quite often. I just saw a story about the sheriffs in Calgary closing down a drug house in Calgary. But, you know, ultimately, it's a public health issue and we need to move towards integrating our services, making them easy to access, and ensuring that they are appropriate. At the end of the day, the solutions are community driven. We can have all the government programs we want, if someone doesn't want to seek them out, someone doesn't want to take advantage of them, then it doesn't really matter. Every time I've seen communities overcome some of these significant issues, these drug crime issues, it's always been community driven. And so what we need is champions. We need champions in the community. We need people to be role models. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And for the record, that was not a trick question. I was sincerely trying to -- because I can't see another solution to this that's not -- that won't take a significant amount of time, and we need some short to medium-term solutions to the organized crime element of this problem while we continue to invest in those long-term foundational changes in resources that our most vulnerable citizens need.

When it comes to the provision of those integrated services, how are the police going to be used -- or policing services going to be used to complement that, specifically around the models that have been successfully used in metro areas where they embed social workers with community policing units, things like that. Is that something we're contemplating with our contracted -- or policing agreement and the integrated case management model? Thank you.