Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We are always on the lookout for any opportunities that can improve the well-being of our people of the Northwest Territories; that includes the inmates as well. We have initiated the on-the-land program in the Sahtu region. It has been successful to date, but at times it has been difficult finding those inmates within the institution because it would have to be on a volunteer basis. We can’t force them to attend these camps. So those are the areas that we continue to struggle with. It is a real challenging task, but we continue to push with other regions, as well, if they...

Those are the discussions that we’ve had with the Members as well, also the organizations: what needs to be amended, depending on what kind of program dollars are being expended to daycare operators and other operators and services that are being provided. Those are the discussions that we’ve had and part of the report that has been referred to has been highlighted as well.

Mr. Speaker, I believe in due time that will happen, whether it be the end of this government or early next government, but we do have that information that we need to share with the standing committee and providing that and possibly delivering a legislative proposal as the next step. I have committed that to the Member already. Mahsi.

I look forward to the Member’s information that he’ll be sharing with us with my department so we can move this file forward. As I’ve stated, we’ve gathered most of the information, but any information that the Member can provide that would be available to us to proceed with this file so we can deal with this matter that’s been before us within our department. I’ll commit to this House that we’ll continue to work on this file with that information.

We’ll definitely verify that. The report may have been given to the Standing Committee on Social Programs because my department deals specifically with the Social Programs committee, but if the Member didn’t receive that, then we can provide that additional information that was shared with the standing committee. Mahsi.

Mahsi. We do collect the information on inmates that pass through our institutional services throughout the Northwest Territories and that gives us a caption on where we should focus. If it’s going to be a reintegration model, we’ve made some changes to our reintegration model as well as the programming and we’ll continue to do that. We feel that reintegration back into the community they should be prepared to walk into a community.

So we have some information on file that we collect over time and based on that we develop programs or make changes to our programming. There is also federal...

Mr. Speaker, it is easy to say tear down the building. We currently house over a couple hundred inmates there as well. I can give you an example of how much it costs to deliver a program, on-the-land program versus North Slave Correction as an example. We have $250 per person at the North Slave Correctional Centre. It is going to cost us almost double, $415, out on-the-land program. We as a department pursued it because we felt it would be in the best interest of the communities to host on-the-land program. It does cost us extra dollars, but we believe in it, so that is what we are pursuing...

Mr. Speaker, we are doing that in other parts of the regions as well. There is a work release in place. The South Slave, Mackenzie, there are different programming that individuals go out on the land, and in Fort Smith and different institutions. They take out the inmates to cut wood for the community. Those are the ongoing initiatives that we continue to support so it keeps the members active in their community or in a community. If it happens to be their community, they are contributing to that community as well.

Mr. Speaker, this is a program that we continue to support in the communities...

Mr. Speaker, the absenteeism is a cross-function of the priorities that have been established through the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, whether it be the student support, the early childhood development, the literacy, the home support. So it does fall within those four categories. Every region that we visited, absenteeism was an issue and is a challenge. We are putting a strategic plan in action that is coming from the general public telling us, the educators, the parents, how we can deal with those issues and those matters at hand. They are giving us solutions from that. We are...

That’s a discussion we need to have. I can’t stand here and say, yes, we’re going to commit dollars. We need to discuss further with the capital planning projects that will be before us. If we need to commit a certain amount of dollars towards the planning studies for the college campus, then we will do that. We need to discuss that further. At that point in time we need to highlight what the priorities are. This is one of the priorities we’ve been working towards, so we will be discussing it further if we need to allocate the funding at that time.