Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the position is in place, it is a new position. It’s been in for just over a year. Anecdotally, we’re getting positive statements on that position and what it is able to accomplish. I will say that there was a blip. Unfortunately, the original person that we had in the position left the Northwest Territories and we had to refill the position, which took a little bit of time. So we don’t truly have a year’s worth of data on the effectiveness of this. Although, we are hearing positive responses and a lot of anecdotal statements that it’s positive and there are good...

In Mr. Moses’ first question he indicated that poverty is a real issue here in the Northwest Territories and poverty has a direct result on crime. We know that poverty is an issue. We know that alcoholism is an issue. We know substance abuse is an issue. This government is doing progressive work to try and deal with those things. One of those things that we’re doing is an Anti-Poverty Strategy, which Mr. Moses talked about. We’re going to continue to do those things as a government and if we can reduce some of these root causes, we should see a reduction in the number of people that are...

Parole is more of a federal inmate reality. Regardless, we still have individuals that are on probation and the length of their probation would be dependent on their initial charge and how long they were sentenced and they would vary from one individual to another. Regardless, every inmate that’s exiting the facility will have gone through the process of having a reintegration plan. Some of them can be very, very simple and others can be far more complex, and they can range in duration from very short to very long, but, once again, it’s tied to the sentence and what kinds of treatments or...

Thank you. I’ll have the department look to see if there’s any mandatory programming in other jurisdictions, but at the end of the day, making a program mandatory does not mean it will be successful. As individuals are suffering with addictions and other issues, they have to be ready for the healing journey, and if you force them to take it, you’re not going to get positive results. We make the programming available, we have really high calibre, high quality case managers who can work with the inmates when they come into the facilities to help them prepare for a healing journey and make the...

It’s a hundred and something. I don’t remember the exact total, but we’ll get it here for you. Can we get back to the Member? It’s $100,000, around that mark. We’ll get the exact figure for the Member and committee.

By way of an example, Madam Chair, the North Slave Correctional Centre provides programming to assist with anger management, including moderate intensity family violence prevention and violence prevention programs. One-on-one counselling is offered through a contract psychologist, the traditional counsellor and liaison officer, the chaplain, and through informal sessions with case managers. As I have indicated, every inmate has a case manager assigned specifically to them. North Slave Correction Centre mental health supports are available through the medical department through referrals to a...

Interesting question. It depends in some cases on the sentence that’s been passed down by the judge whether an inmate takes a specific program or not. But regardless, we have a large number of programs that are available to individuals as they so choose. Our case managers will work with the individual inmates to identify, as I’ve indicated previously, what might be appropriate for that particular inmate. We have a significant number of programs. I mentioned a few earlier, but within our facilities we also facilitate visits with elders and elders programming, traditional arts and crafts, pre...

We want to get as much as we can on-line as possible. We’re even looking at going into the courts and see if we can do some of the fine payments and other things on-line so that people don’t have to come into the courthouse within the registries, as many filings as we can.

There are going to be some challenges. I couldn’t tell you a name of a document that we may not be able to do this on, but we’ve got lawyers in the land titles and legal registries office who are looking at the legality of this and what can and can’t be. I’m happy to bring more information to the Member on some specifics, and...

I can’t say specifically. I need to do a little bit more research myself and talk to the department to figure out what they’ve come to as far as a correlation between what we have in-house and what we would require outside by way of mental health court. I will commit to getting the Member and committee some additional information on that.

Mr. Speaker, to live in poverty in Canada is to live with insufficient and often poor quality food. It is to sleep in poor quality and/or unaffordable housing, in homeless shelters, or on city streets and parks. It means making difficult and painful decisions on a daily basis involving trade-offs, whether to pay the rent or feed the kids, pay the electric bill or go to the dentist, buy a new bus pass or forego socializing with friends. To live in poverty is also to be at greater risk of poor health, family or neighborhood violence, and a shorter lifespan. It is to be unable to participate...