Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Security assessment tools are standard practice in correctional facilities, and the concern that this particular recommendation addresses is that the assessment tool be particularly inclusive of the realities of Indigenous inmates, that, particularly, corrections staff look for security assessment tools that are culturally more appropriate than a standard tool that may be developed and used on a Caucasian population. We recognize that there are different tools, and we are encouraging with this motion that corrections finds and tries tools that may be more appropriate to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The background to this motion is that we wanted to expand the kind of information that was taken in for assessments so that it was not just the security risk that the inmate posed to the facility and the staff but also what were their own capacities and limitations. Gladue, for example, is the set of factors that courts take into account in sentencing inmates, that recognizes that they may have disabilities and they may have factors in their lives that have caused them trauma and difficulty which have really formed their character and need to be taken into account, and so...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It has been a real journey with the Corrections Act. The committee was a little dismayed, I think it is fair to say, by the bill in its original form, and we didn't find that there was a huge amount of public interest in it when we did our public hearings, but we really benefited from the expert advice that I was able to round up through the BC Civil Liberties Association; Mary Campbell, who is the former Director General of Corrections for Canada; the Canadian Bar Association NWT Chapter; Lydia Bardak, who, as you may know, was the ED of the John Howard Society for many...

Mahsi, 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 adopt the Code of Conduct for Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories identified as Tabled Document 509-18(3). Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

The Standing Committee on Social Development recommends that the department of Justice explore the possibility of allowing for private interviews between an inmate and a facility's Indigenous elder or spiritual advisor, subject to reasonable restrictions.

Residents told committee that programming should be available to all inmates, including those remanded in custody, who make up more than half the inmate population in the NWT. Remanded persons, including those who are eventually convicted, are frequently released without having accessed rehabilitative programs. Even of...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. In our mandate, we describe community and family violence as a crisis and determined to take action. Four years on, it's still a crisis, and our efforts have flagged. According to Statistics Canada, the national incidents for intimate partner violence is 313 people per 100,000 population. In the Northwest Territories, the rate is an astonishing 2,906 people per 100,000 population, or about nine times as high. These are 2017 numbers, but they have been at this level for 10 years.

When the Coalition Against Family Violence was still active, it had three priorities. The first...

Mr. Chair, I move that you rise from the Chair and report progress. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I request that you rise and report progress. Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister. Is there any chance of action on solutions before this Minister leaves office? Mahsi.

Thank you to the Minister for that answer. What is the Minister expecting for a response rate? What would be, in his view, a statistically valid response?