Glen Abernethy

As I indicated, we have pulled off a director position to actually do some analysis and start working with corrections to identify means by which we can help the people be more aware of workplace injury, how people can be more aware of ways to avoid workplace injury. The WSCC has a number of courses and staff within the facilities, and the government as a whole have been taking advantage of these courses. We’ve done some worksite assessments on the sites themselves to see if there’s anything about the sites themselves that are causing or leading more people to be more prone to injury, and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The community justice committees are an incredibly valuable resource that’s available in the communities. We provide funding support to the communities. It is limited but the committees have been very creative with what they are able to accomplish with those dollars.

In addition to dollars to support the committee, they can apply for funding to do special activities like on-the-land programs or whatnot. Many, many communities take advantage of that. We don’t tell communities what to do. These community justice committees come up with ideas based on what they know about...

We’re doing the work; we will come to committee. With committee, we will talk about how to move forward. We will get something done in the Government of the Northwest Territories.

This reduction is across Canada. It’s affecting all jurisdictions. For the specific impact on our programming and what we’re doing here in the Government of the Northwest Territories, I’ll go to Ms. Schofield.

It’s been done with the committee internally. It’s several different departments led by the Department of Justice. We have had an opportunity to look at models in different jurisdictions, learn about those models, get as much information as we can, look at what capacity may exist in the Northwest Territories, where we might have some complications, where we will need to do additional work to make this a reality in-house.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On my right I have Sylvia Haener, deputy minister of the Department of Justice; and Kim Schofield, who is the director of finance with the Department of Justice.

The Member is right; that is pretty much exactly what we’re going for, which is why we’ve engaged a steering committee that does have Aboriginal government representation as well as NGO engagement. We have been, and I have personally been, sending letters to the different Aboriginal governments and organizations of the Northwest Territories seeking additional input. We had Aboriginal governments involved in the working groups as well. I will continue to do that. We know that is critical. We know we have to engage all of our partners.

With respect to industry, our steering committee does have a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; a draft came out in December. It was a rough draft and we’ve taken it out for public consultation and discussion, and we’re seeking feedback and input on that. Much of that has now come in.

On behalf of the steering committee, we’ve got a team of dedicated staff who are actually finalizing a draft. We will have the final product out on March 31st. We will have a draft done before that which, hopefully, we’ll have an opportunity to share and discuss with committee and other stakeholders.

The government will have a continued involvement in the implementation of any action items that come out of the foundation. I won’t commit to a secretariat, but I will commit that the government will maintain being actively engaged. We will work with our partners as we move forward and we’ll continue to monitor the results. Without seeing the final plan, it’s a little hard to say exactly how that’s done. We expect some recommendations on how to monitor it and move forward with it to actually come from the steering committee as part of the action plan.

The first step is to get the foundation document done, which will be March 31st. That will be available for public distribution at that point. The second step is with the steering committee that’s been established that includes members from the Anti-Poverty Coalition as well as Aboriginal governments and other organizations. We’re going to continue to work with them and our working group to actually pull together a response to the framework which will be our action plan which will identify what things the government and other groups need to do to fight and combat poverty here in the Northwest...