Julie Green

Thanks to the Minister for his response. A second concern I have is about the staff time, the time that is that staff will be spending on compliance processes versus time they will spend with their eyes on their clients. I can understand that this approach is somewhat a reaction to the report from the Office of the Auditor General and to step up compliance, but can the Minister assure us that, despite the focus on process, time with clients will actually improve?

Thank you. The Director of Corrections wanted to retain the ultimate authority over discipline in the correctional facility, which we understand. What we have here is an independent adjudication process. It will receive oversight by the Director of Corrections, but the key phrase here is that the director "may confirm, quash, or reduce" the periods of separate confinement, but he cannot or she cannot increase it. So this is a way to meet the needs of both the independence of the adjudicators and the need for the correctional facility to retain the ultimate authority over separate confinement...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I welcome the release this week of the Child and Family Services Quality Improvement Plan. This plan responds to the Office of the Auditor General's report last year about the ways in which government continued to fail kids in care despite a 2014 Office of the Auditor General report that identified many of the same problems.

The plan stresses how improving outcomes for the 1,000 children in care in the Northwest Territories must be achieved, specifically by complying with the policies and legislation that govern their care. Some highlights of the plan for me come from the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to add to the Minister's opening comments about some of the substantive changes that were negotiated and agreed to in the clause-by-clause review. As one of my colleagues mentioned, there were 32 motions, and it is certainly not my intention to go over all of them.

Some of the significant changes to the bill included a statement of purpose for the bill and guiding principles, a statement of victims' rights, and the inclusion of the development and offering of both general and rehabilitative programs that would be offered to both sentenced and remanded inmates...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We recognize that the Department of Justice is currently reviewing its victim services program and that there may be recommendations in that review that improve the service that is being offered, and so this motion really speaks to that, that the victim services staff in given communities are able to serve the needs of victims, not only by providing information about inmates but also by providing information about people who are on remand, so that the victims are aware of basic information about the person being released and to where and so on. More details about this are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In our public consultations, we heard community members speak positively of inmates doing work in their communities when they were incarcerated, that they were part of work programs and they did good volunteer work in the, or it was not necessarily volunteer, but good work in the community. It could be cutting lawns. It could be shovelling sidewalks. It could be stacking tables after a public event. The public consultation also indicated that people felt that was a very positive thing, to connect the community and the inmates together around a constructive activity, and...

Thank you, Mr. McNeely. I just wanted to say to this motion that one of the things that we really liked about the Nunavut Act, the Corrections Act, was that it had a significant cultural context in it reflecting the culture and language of the Inuit. We felt that by what we could do to reflect that in the Northwest Territories is to find a role for elders and spiritual advisers. They do exist there now, and they operate in group settings. We felt that the opportunity for private interviews may also be beneficial to inmates. That's the background to this decision. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Friday, August 23, 2019, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that this Legislative Assembly request the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories to dissolve the 18th Assembly of the Northwest Territories on August 31, 2019, to permit polling day for a general election to be held on October 1, 2019;

And further, that the Speaker transmit this resolution to the Commissioner. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, hereby table the Draft Code of Conduct and Guide for Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. Mahsi.

That sounds like an interesting initiative. A final concern I have which the Minister has touched on is about the systemic changes needed to prevent children from going into care because of issues such as a lack of food and inadequate housing. The anti-poverty commitments, which the Minister has also represented, include a continuum of service and maybe should include a continuum of support. Can the Minister say what kind of prevention is taking place around this issue of neglect driving children into care?