David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are transparent; of course, the Contracts Over $5,000 Report is tabled in the House. Members have a chance to go through that book, and if there are specific questions regarding any of those contracts in the report, Members can ask questions about those specific contracts. Sole-source contracts are just another tool that is available to government to allow us to do our jobs and carry out the work of the various departments.

I can’t, again, speak to specific contracts unless the Member asks a specific question to a specific contract. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, there are 10 new positions in total. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Currently, the board has 15 positions for staff lawyers and the wait time is 60 days. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The total for adults is 188. The total for youth is five.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the 475, it’s through the main estimates and for the other information the Member wants, we’ll detail that in our response to the Member. Thank you.

Again, I respect the Member, but we’re trying our best to staff and be ready for April 1st when we get the new responsibilities. We’ve also got $11 million that we’ve got set aside for shortfalls in our operation. If we need to look at increasing resources and getting a staff complement more than what we have put in place today, that’s money that will be available to us as we go forward. Certainly, we are going to be ready. The Department of Justice will be ready. It’s not a soft spot. It’s something we feel strongly about, that we can deliver services to government, to the departments that...

Just to clarify, Madam Chair, no, the deputy minister had mentioned how the integrated case management was working with the wellness court to the Member previously, and I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’re in the third year of the five-year plan and there is an evaluation built into the program as well. Of course, we would hope that at the end of five years the funding would be able to be renewed in some way, shape or form. Thank you.

I think each individual’s circumstances may, in fact, be different than the next person, but we could be potentially talking to Education, Culture and Employment about opportunities to bridge the two. Again, I think it’s very important that people have opportunities on a year-round basis. If there is that opportunity to work with ECE to talk about training opportunities and how we can get the trappers that are trapping that want to be employed in the oil and gas sector as things continue to move along in the Sahtu, again, that’s something that we’re very much interested in doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was for the legal divisions for support to devolution.