EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
We have tried to set up meetings.
We did have two tentative meetings which were cancelled and there is another one set up for June 7, I believe.
Chairperson (interpretation): Is that an adequate response Mr. Tootoo?
Mr. Chairman the Minister spoke about the use of traditional counselling, land camps and so on and I think that everyone here is in support of that, strongly.
My question would be, in reference to the more serious crimes such as murder, I notice there is nothing in the capital budget, is the Minister considering any type of a facility that could be located in one of the regions that could be used to house inmates for such serious crimes?
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Anawak.
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Thank you. As I said earlier, there is a committee struck to deal with the setting up of such a structure.
Rebecca Williams can talk about it in detail because she works with that committee.
They are considering, and talking with the department of Justice at the federal level, about setting up some type of facility in the Nunavut area.
Rebecca Williams and I went to Fenbrook which is a federal penitentiary.
I can't say it was a nice tour, but the facility is situated in a southern province. We would like to get one set up here, like Mr. O'Brien stated.
It is very likely that we won't get inmates, for example, that have committed murder to be held here, but there are people who are convicted under the federal laws and then there are the territorial law in Nunavut.
We are going to work very hard to see if we can house those inmates up here and we are going to keep looking for money.
When it comes to the department of Justice and the court system, I hope to have a meeting, I would like to meet with the federal Solicitor General, Lawrence MacAulay and talk about either extending or enlarging the present facility we have here or setting up a separate facility. We are going to be talking and looking at all of the options.
For the serious crimes we are going to keep sending the inmates down south.
Mr. O'Brien: Just for a point of clarification Mr. Chairman.
The Minister indicated that there was a committee struck to look at setting up the type of facility that I am speaking of, but on the other hand, are you saying that you want to keep sending people that have committed serious crimes back down south?
Can you clarify that, Thank you.
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) There is a possibility of getting some funding to get a correctional facility up here which would probably focus at the beginning on the more medium security type inmates.
At this point in time I don't know if we will get the ability to hold any offenders who have killed somebody or committed murder all that, that is a maximum security type of sentence, so all I am saying is that the committee is looking at the possibility of at least expanding what we have here in Iqaluit, or maybe in another community or in Iqaluit, but at least expanding the type of facility that we have now.
Thank you Mr. Anawak, that answered my question.
I thought it was a little too harsh using the word murderers, but what I was referring to was the more serious crimes but not to that degree.
More or less an expansion of what we have now for example in the Baffin and over in YK.
My second comment or question is in reference to law reform.
You have indicated that you are going to involve elders in this review.
What role do you see for the members that sit on the Standing Committee on Justice.
What role do you see these members playing in this review.
Hon. Jack Anawak: Mr. Chairman at this point in time we are having discussions with Culture, Language, Elders & Youth on the law review.
We have not come to the point of deciding exactly what the make up will be, but it will certainly be with the advice and the participation of some members or a member of that committee.
I mean if we are going to move forward we want to move forward with regular members.
For further clarification I would like to know how many judges there are in Nunavut.
How many judges are there that work on the circuit in the Nunavut area.
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Maybe Ms. Sanders could respond to that question.
Chairperson: Ms. Sanders.  Ms. Sanders: Two judges have been appointed.
The Senior Judge, Judge Brown, is already sitting here. The second judge, judge Kilpatrick, will be coming in June.
He was sworn in on April 1st, but has not yet started.
Hopefully by this time next year there will be a third judge appointed and those three judges will serve all of Nunavut.
So right now, 2 and there will be 3.
At times we also have Deputy Judges, or judges from other jurisdictions that come for a week or two, to help out or to do a circuit, that sort of thing.
That can be where there is a conflict or where the work load gets too heavy.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Ms. Sanders.
We heard both the Inuktitut and the English on one channel.
Could we have the technician fix that problem please?
The reason why I asked that question is just because you don’t have enough judges, you defer some of the sittings.
For example they set appointments for when they're going to be sitting and they keep deferring the date from one date to the next and possibly three-four times.
They’re adjourned three-four times, is it because of a lack of judges that you keep adjourning the sittings?
They set up an appointment, it doesn’t go through, then they set another sitting, and so on, and it effects the people who have to wait a long time to go through the court system.
Is there a good reason?
There could be a lot of reasons that the person can be effected, like there’s tiredness, there’s anxiousness, and everything else, so that’s why I asked my question.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Puqiqnak.
Mr. Anawak?
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Ms. Sanders will make a supplementary to my remarks.
What we did was set up one court system when we became Nunavut because it seems that it takes a longer time when you have different levels.
I know exactly where you’re coming from because I went through that same thing with my daughter, so what we’ve been trying to do is use the justices of the peace more at the community level so that there will be a decrease in numbers for the ones that have to go through the formal justice system.
Possibly, Ms. Sanders could make a supplementary comment.
Chairperson: Ms. Sanders?
Ms. Sanders: I think the Minister’s already said the important things.
I’ll just add kind of a technical level about why there could be different reasons for an adjournment – the lawyer needs more time to prepare the defence for the accused, or the prosecution needs more time to prepare with the witnesses or something like that, so there can be different reasons.
I think the Minister’s already said the important things, that was part of the reason why we wanted the new court, to try to avoid those extra delays, and also part of why we want to have training and support for the JP's so that they can deal with some of the cases in their own communities.
Chairperson (interpretation): Any further questions?
While we are on the issue of justice, there’s the correctional centre, the jails, if we’re going to be building such a facility, of course we’ll have to be paying, the Nunavut government, of course we’ll have to be paying for operations and maintenance; we’re going to be responsible for the operations and maintenance, and because of that, I will not be able to support the building of such facilities.
I can only give my support in prevention and education programs to be used in the Nunavut area, if that is going to be the case, if we’re going to be using any money at all, I would suggest that we use prevention and educational programs because it would be more helpful to the people of Nunavut.
The correctional… if we’re looking at the correctional centres in the Nunavut area, we’re just going to be using money instead of helping our people.
We have to think like that in the future.
I think it’s very important that we, as people of Nunavut, we are a very small population, and there’s going to be… the population is going to increase over the years, and I think that we would use our money a lot wiser if we invest it in prevention programs and educational programs for the people of Nunavut.
If we’re going to be building correctional centres, and jails, and so on, it’s just going to be eating our money without helping the people.
I think that should be… those issues should be seriously considered because it’s very important as communities and with the communities getting larger and larger, the people – the Inuit should always look for things that can improve their lives.
With that in mind, the Nunavut government should seriously look into preventative and educational programs.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Anawak?
I… we would be very glad to start such programs if we didn’t need correctional centres or jails.
I truly support the idea of setting up such programs, but of course there’s always going to be people in correctional facilities.
There’s some in Fenbrook, and some in Bowden, and some in Yellowknife.
We are putting our money into those facilities every day and we pay the Ontario government, we pay the Alberta government, and the government of the Northwest Territories for housing these inmates.
Of course we truly support preventative methods, and educational programs if we can find money to pay for such programs.
But looking at the number of people that are in the southern penitentiaries, I don’t believe that the numbers are going to decrease.
If we’re going to be giving our money to the Ontario government, to the Alberta government, and to the government of the Northwest Territories, then we should seriously consider building one in the Nunavut area because of course there’s country food, there’s local employment, and so on. So I believe once this facility goes up, once the initial costs have been incurred – once the capital is expended, then the money would go to the Nunavut government.
I support you fully in your idea of setting up preventative measures, but there are still going to be people who will have to be housed in those penitentiaries, and if we set up a facility here, then we’d be increasing the employment of the people, and more than one person has asked me if there is going to be a correctional facility built in their community. So we’re just going to go ahead with that and the inmates, we do know that they’re there for a good reason, but when you visit them, they feel so out of place down there in a southern penitentiary.
There’s not much we can do in that area but I think we have to work together.
I should… I truly believe that we should build the facility in the Nunavut area, but I still believe that we have to look at preventative programs and setting up educational programs because it helps our people and today… I have been a justice of the peace for five years… approximately five years and I have seen how the system works and there are some people who are incarcerated and they cost money for airfares and daily upkeep and so on, even if their crime was petty, not serious.
In the Inuit culture and tradition, there is counselling, traditional counselling that could be used and when I have been involved in the justice system, there are some people who are not criminals that we tag as criminals and use a lot of money for their upkeep and it’s true that we seriously have to work together sometime in the future in order to alleviate this problem.
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Regarding the comments that were just made by the member.
I know that… I think there’s a concern in all of the communities. People often feel that someone who hasn’t offended seriously should not have been sent away.
That’s why we want to see local people dealing with these issues especially when they are JPs dealing with people that they know and who come from the community.
If there was a young offender who committed an offence in a community and they’re going to be arrested by the R.C.M.P., they will be told what they have done and for what they have been arrested. If that was an Inuk person and if that person happened to be a young offender, I think the Inuk person would be asking “Why are you doing this?
What can we do to help you?”
but that step is not part of the present administration of justice, so we want to promote those kinds of things and we’re working on getting those kinds of programs in place.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Anawak.
Yes, I understand what you are saying and I think that you all understand the same thing but you’re just in different stages of trying to reach your goal.
Mr. Alakannuark (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a question that I would like to ask regarding the role of the elders and it’s one of the goals of the department to involve elders in their programs.
Now, in which way are you going to involve the elders?
Is that going to be at the local level, or are you going to get the elders together to decide on the goals and objectives of the department?
Our objective, our overall objective is to involve the elders at all levels of the programs, but initially we’re looking at involving the elders in the law review because the present legislation from the GNWT needs to be looked at, and changed to reflect what we want to do in Nunavut.
I think we also have to be aware that not only the elders have to be involved.
We will have to involve the young people as well, because I think we all know that they have different things to contribute.
We have different understandings and different issues in various stages of life. When we say adults we’re thinking about elders, those people who are older than us, not just adults.
I just want you to be aware of that.
The elders are much more involved in justice issues, especially in the area of justice committees in smaller communities.
When we’re talking about the department of justice, I know you’re asking about that.
I think that the Nunavut government is going to be using the elders in their programs.
We’re trying to institute the Inuit Traditional Knowledge, or Inuit Qaujimajituqangit.
This is going to be one of the first priorities in how we can involve the elders and other people in the communities.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Alakannuark?
Yes, I understand what you are saying.
We will need jails in the future as well as now.
We have a traditional system of justice and our forefathers did not use jails.
The way we dealt with offenders was that the elders would deal with the offender, and if they felt that they could not solve the problem at that level, and I think that by using the traditional form of justice, I think that can be a major saving.
I know that you have to send some people to jail, yes, that’s a given, and it’s not going to go away, but we have to… somehow to use the traditional form of dealing with the offenders.
The other thing is that the way it’s done is a person goes to court, is placed on probation, and has to see a probation officer, and that does not involve the community or the resources available like the elders at all.
That has not worked.
I think sometimes people are sent away to jail, like to penitentiaries when it would not have been necessary.
Even people who are still in denial of having committed a crime are convicted in court and is sent away to heal.
Once a person is in jail, they are just getting more angry for being put away for an offence they feel they did not commit, and if it’s not so serious that a community could not deal with it, I think it could have stayed at the community level and be solved right there, and that healing process would have started.
Presently, the people who have been sent away to correctional centres and jails have not seen a healing process.
Chairperson (interpretation): Minister Anawak?
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I’m sorry I forgot to mention that.
That is another area that we’re seriously looking at. We need to have on the land programs where people can go to as an alternative to jails.
This has been an ongoing process in the Baffin region but it’s not so apparent in Kitikmeot and Kivalliq, so we’re looking at that right now, I think that we can look at alternative ways to sending people away to jail and I think that’s one of the alternatives that we need to look at is to have on the land facilities.
If we’re going to institute a traditional form of justice, I think we can be looking at that.
If we change everything right away, it might not be a good thing for everybody.
I know that people have been hurt by the system because it's not their system and they did not set it up, but right now we don’t have much alternative to the present court system.
That’s why we want to review this first and try and institute the Inuit way of dealing with offenders.
I think that we’re going to see fewer people being put away, even though I was talking about putting people into correctional centres or penitentiaries, but in an Inuit sense, being punished is not really in our vocabulary.
What we’re trying to do is to utilize the Inuit way which is that you try to correct a person from doing it again, and to integrate that person back into the community and to society, and to deal with the problem that caused him to start committing crimes in the first place and to start healing them.
We will keep those in mind, but we have laws, we have a criminal code that requires that a person be brought to court if they commit certain offences, and these will be in place for some time, and we have little alternative but to go that route right now.
Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.
Tootoo?
Mr. Chairman, just a question for the Minister.
I was just wondering relating to the contentious issue with many residents of Nunavut, and that is the gun control legislation, I’m just wondering if his department will be reviewing any possibility as to whether or not the government of Nunavut will be joining the other provinces and territories in pursuing a challenge on that legislation to the federal government.
Hon. Jack Anawak : To that, I guess the cabinet would have to take a look at it, but right now, there is no money set aside for such a measure, but again, if the legislature is willing to put up something in the neighbourhood of $400,000, we’ll reconsider.
I guess I wasn’t really asking about the cost involved in pursuing a challenge as far as… as much as a possibility or the avenue of there being enough reasoning or rationale in there in order to take… pursue that option and go forward in pursuing that challenge. I was just wondering if his department is doing any preliminary work to see whether it’s something that is winnable or is not worth
looking at. I was just wondering that, Mr. Chairman.
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Mr. Chairman, at this time, we cannot say at this time if we’re going to talk about a challenge about the gun law and taking it to court, we have to talk about money right away, it comes right down to it right away and we don’t have any money set aside for a contingency of this kind.
So I will be discussing ways with Ann McLellan to explore these issues and discuss how we can deal with this issue outside of court and look for ways as to how we can correct the concerns and issues that we are facing right now outside of court, but if we’re talking about court action, we have to first speak about how much it would cost for us to challenge this legislation in court.
Chairperson: Tootoo.
Again, I guess I’m not asking… I guess in order to make a decision of whether we want to pursue something in court or commit fund for it, we have to know whether there is grounds for it, and I was just wondering if any work is going to be done by the department to look into whether there are grounds to pursue legal action on this.
Chairperson (interpretation): Anawak?
Hon. Jack Anawak: There has to be an understanding that the gun control challenge, has nothing to do with hunting rights.
All it has to do with is whether it constitutionally can pass , the judgement is going to come down in July on the challenge by the western territory and provinces, and I would suggest that we see what the judgement is.
At this point, if we join in the challenge, we’d just be along for the ride rather that contributing to the discussion because of the judgement coming down in July, but again, I point out that any discussion on challenge would have to include a discussion on the funding or financing of such a challenge.
Chairperson (interpretation): Tootoo.
I don’t mean to get going on this, but he still hasn’t answered whether there would be grounds to pursue it or not?
And no mention to whether it relates to hunting rights or anything like that, I’m just wondering if there are grounds to pursue a challenge or not, I’m wondering if there are grounds or not.
That’s quite simple.
Hon. Jack Anawak: Obviously there are some people who think there are grounds, like the western provinces and the western territory, but at the same time, the rest of the provinces don’t have a challenge with the gun control bill, so it depends on what you define by grounds. One part of Canada is not challenging the bill . It’s a judgement call more than anything else.
Chairperson (interpretation): Tootoo?
I think it’ll be your last question, Mr. Tootoo.
I guess then… in that case and as the Minister mentioned it, it’s up to what you consider grounds.
Is it not the justice department’s mandate to provide advice to the government on such matters?
Hon. Jack Anawak: Again, my advice is that we don’t have to expend the 400 thousand dollars.
Chairperson (interpretation): I would like to give a chance to those members who did not have a chance to ask their questions or comments.
Mr. Nutarak did you want to make a comment?
The Nunavut Government has contracts, does the Nunavut Government contract out to the GNWT for the Department of Justice?
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Yes we do have a contract with GNWT.
Perhaps Ms. Sanders can give you the information.
Chairperson: Ms. Sanders.  Ms. Sanders: We have a number of programs contracted back for this current fiscal year.
They still show up in our budget because the money we would be using to run the program here instead, we are using to pay the GNWT to run them and then to set up to get people in place so they will be in place by the beginning of the new fiscal year.
The programs we are contracting back include the Labour Standards Board, Labour Services, the people that do the inspections under the Labour Standards Act, whether people are paying minimum wage and that kind of thing.
The Public Trustee Office, the Chief Coroner, and in that program we hope to have it relocated to Nunavut well within the fiscal year. We have already advertised for a Chief Coroner so by the summer that will be fully in place.
Legal Services Board that runs the Legal Aid Clinics, three clinics with four offices in Nunavut, they are still functioning but we are still using the administration services of the Board in Yellowknife and Legal Registries which runs the Corporate Registries/Land Titles those kind of things. They have set up a separate office, that is a Nunavut Office, separate from the GNWT office, but still in Yellowknife, using some of the same staff and then we are making steps to move that office to Kugluktuk during the current fiscal year.
Chairperson: Mr. Akesuk.  Mr. Akesuk (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Chairperson.
Could you tell us what you are paying for those services.
Nakurmik.
Chairperson (interpretation): Who would like to respond first?
Maybe the person who finds the document first.
Ms Sanders?
Ms. Sanders: The total amount that we are spending is $2,400.000. That’s actually, I am sorry, that is the Legal Services Board, which is the single largest one, and that is a little bit misleading because that is really including the cost of the clinics here and the costs paid to lawyers for services here.
I am just trying to see if we have a total for all of the programs.
Do you have it there Mike?