David Ramsay

Does that mean there will be full coverage at that facility over the weekend?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t want to cover a lot of the ground. I agree with what my colleagues Mr. Bromley and Mr. Abernethy are saying.

I’ve been here for just over four years, and I’ve seen the North Slave Correctional Centre go into the new building. I’ve had many discussions with the former Minister about the new approach to corrections: how it was going to be holistic, more healing, and how they were going to do some good things there.

I share the concerns of my colleagues that the program delivery officers are being taken out of the sexual offender and family violence programming...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve had a great deal of discussion on the program delivery officers at North Slave Correctional Centre. I won’t go over everything again, but suffice it to say, I believe there’s some question on this side of the House whether or not the frequency and the reliability of programming at that centre is going to be impacted as a result of these two program delivery officers being let go. I also wanted to say again for the record, I believe decisions like this fly in the face of the government’s overall goal of having safer communities. Without programming, quality...

My fear is that if there is no coverage on the weekends, inmates are going to want to go to the hospital. If they need to go to the hospital, they are going to go to the hospital, and when they go to the hospital, there is going to have to be a guard or two guards with them when they go. Vacant position or not, I think we need to have coverage at that facility on the weekends.

Mr. Chairman, I guess the other thing I wanted to talk about was the reduction in the nursing position at North Slave Correctional Centre. There is not going to be any coverage on the weekends, I’m to understand, because of this reduction.

I’m wondering if the department has done any work on trying to figure out what it’s going to cost. We’ve all been to the emergency room at Stanton. It can take six to eight hours to get in to see a doctor there. If that’s going to take a corrections guard out of that facility with an inmate to go to the hospital on the weekends to see a doctor, a nurse...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to make a statement regarding the budget process and affected employees. I still am not clear on where Cabinet got the direction or the brainwave to send out notification letters to employees without first properly consulting Regular Members. We’ve talked of this before: it took them three weeks — and I’d like to know what happened in that three-week period — where Regular Members were left out there answering phone calls from constituents without any knowledge of the notification letters and where they were going. This was also months before the actual...

Mr. Chairman, before we go to the vote on this, I did want to close out the discussion. I think what you see in this motion runs through this entire discussion that we’re having on the ’08–09 budget. It’s no fault of the Justice Minister; it’s no fault of the departmental staff. The reductions that are proposed to take place have not been well thought out, have not been well planned, have not been well communicated, and that is the fundamental issue that I have. Some of the other Regular Members share those concerns, Mr. Chairman.

It’s all nice and good for the Minister to say that there is a...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that this committee strongly recommends that government take immediate action to reinstate funding in the amount of $45,000 for the proposed reduction of two program delivery officers at North Slave Correctional Centre under the Department of Justice, under the Community Justice and Corrections Activity.

Mr. Chairman, I’d like to thank the Minister for that and would encourage him to keep the dialogue going with the UNW and the other unions to ensure that grievances are dealt with in a timely fashion.

I’d like to ask the Minister: are there guidelines in place for dealing with grievances? Is there a policy where you would deem two years an excessive length of time for folks to wait to get a grievance dealt with? Should we set up at least some guidelines or some standards that we judge ourselves by? Are there any in place already?

Mr. Chairman, just because an employee accesses stress leave or other leave doesn’t necessarily make them a bad employee, and I wouldn’t want anybody to think that. I think in many cases it’s bad management, and it’s the employee feeling victimized in the workplace or harassed or intimidated or whatever you want. There are many reasons employees seek stress leave and extended medical leave.

I also wanted to ask the Minister…. If that type of analysis hasn’t been done, I think that’d be something worth providing to Members of this House — which departments have more employees who have accessed...