EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Very likely, if we have a meeting with the caucus we could come to a decision on that.
Chairman: Mr. Okalik, anything else?
Total Headquarters Region. $295,000.
Chairman: VII. Office of the Legislative Assembly.
Office of the Clerk. Detail of Capital.
Computer Hardware and Software.
Total Headquarters Region. $20,000.
Chairman: Thank you. Go to A-4.
Total Computer Hardware and Software. $20,000.
Chairman: Thank you. Bless your heart. Go to page A-4.
Detail Department Summary.
Total Capital Expenditures. $315,000.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Speaker, do you have any closing comments.
Speaker (interpretation): Thank you, Members of the Legislative Assembly for supporting the Office of the Legislative Assembly.
Chairman: We will then go on to the Department of Justice.
If our Premier has any opening comments, you can begin.
Bill 01 – Appropriation (Capital) Act, 2006-07- Justice – Consideration in Committee
I will be giving you my opening comments on the Department of Justice and the detail of capital for our department.
The Department of Justice is pleased to announce that the project to construct a new justice centre in Iqaluit is moving into completion.
Site preparations and construction of the exterior of the building has been completed and finishing of the interior and landscaping will be completed by the spring of 2006.
The total funding for this project is just over $17 million in total.
Construction of a new justice centre was required for a number of reasons. The current courthouse facility is a leased building, old and with serious physical deficiencies which do not meet present building codes or fire safety standards.
In addition, the current facility was not designed as a courthouse and does not meet security standards, where public safety requires separate circulation corridors for the public, jury, witnesses, staff, and accused in custody.
In the past, the public has expressed concern about the safety of people using the existing facility. Once completed, the new justice centre will provide a safer, healthier environment for employees and visitors to the building.
Currently, the Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit is well above capacity, which adds significant costs to housing inmates outside of Nunavut. Additional corrections facilities are required for Nunavummiut in custody.
This is because the existing number of correctional spaces in Nunavut does not meet the current need and is not able to handle future growth.
This year, we have had as many as 40 offenders at a time being held outside of Nunavut.
While a longer-term resolution is proposed by the department’s seven-year capital plan, we also need to address current needs.
I was very pleased to go to the Kugluktuk Healing Facility, which was opened this past spring.
The facility is small and designed to serve offenders from the Kitikmeot area of Nunavut, and will eventually be able to accommodate between 12 and 20 territorial inmates currently housed either in the overcrowded Baffin Correctional Facility in Iqaluit or facilities outside of Nunavut.
The facility was faced with some staffing issues when first opened but we are confidant that is behind us now and staff are moving ahead.
Mr. Chairman, it is our intention to continue with the establishment of such healing centres in other communities outside of Iqaluit.
Construction of another such facility will be commenced next year after community consultations, and the planning and design steps have been addressed this fiscal year.
Mr. Chairman, another area we know we need to address is the establishment, in Nunavut, of a correctional and remand facility for women.
Although the number of Nunavut women currently sentenced is very small, we must address their needs in a more appropriate manner.
Establishing an institution for them closer to home will allow us to provide the programming they need. It will also reduce the hardship on relatives wishing to visit.
As a result, we have included funding in the amount of $312,000 for design and site planning for construction of an institution that would serve female inmates in Nunavut.
This institution would be planned and designed as a healing-focused correctional centre based on the men’s model, but tailored to the specific needs of women.
Mr. Chairman, the Department of Justice is committed to finding creative ways of fulfilling its mandated responsibilities in a way that will ultimately benefit its clients and Nunavummiut generally.
Those are my comments; I will be pleased to respond to questions.
If you would go up to the Witness Table, and if you could bring your officials. Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you would escort the witnesses, please.
For the record, Mr. Premier, if you would introduce your officials.
On my right is our Deputy Minister, Markus Weber, and on my left, I’m very pleased to introduce Regilee Adla, who is our Office Manager.
She is working extremely hard and was one of the students taking the Sivuliqtiksat Program.
She started in January 2003 and will now be completing her program in January 2006 and she will be working in our department.
She is currently working in that position even though she is supposed to be in the program.
I’m sure that we will be seeing more and more Inuit taking on higher-level positions.
I would like to welcome Markus Weber and Regilee Adla, and we are very proud of you for your achievements. (interpretation ends) Does the chair of the standing committee have any comments?
Mr. Mapsalak: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Standing Committee Ajauqtiit has reviewed the proposed Capital Estimates of the Department of Justice for the 2006-07 fiscal year, and I am pleased to provide you with the Committee's comments.
The committee notes that the department’s proposed 2006-07 capital budget of $5,107,000 is approximately 40 percent lower than its 2005-06 budget, primarily as a result of the completion of the new justice centre facility in Iqaluit.
Over the next five years, the department plans to spend over $47 million on new correctional facilities in Nunavut. These include a replacement for the Baffin Correctional Centre, a new women’s correctional healing facility, and a new men’s healing lodge in Kivalliq.
The standing committee has noted that the locations for the new women’s facility and the new Kivalliq healing lodge have not yet been finalized.
Members would urge the department to be fully transparent in explaining to the House and the public its criteria for community selection.
Members would also wish to see the government give full consideration to local training and employment opportunities in its selection process, while ensuring a high quality of staffing in these facilities.
Members stress the need for the department to communicate clearly with the communities hosting such facilities, especially with respect to public safety concerns.
Mr. Chairman, in November of 2004, a committee member posed a detailed Written Question in the Legislative Assembly on the recidivism rates for different categories of offenders in territorial custody. The government’s response revealed disturbing information.
For example, the rate at which young male offenders re-offend is 73 percent.
The department plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to construct a number of new correctional facilities across Nunavut over the next few years.
This strategy must be accompanied by plans to measure the success of the rehabilitation and healing programs that are offered by the department.
The standing committee was pleased to learn that the department is working with CLEY on healing initiatives.
The standing committee recognizes that while the government will actually spend more in the long term by repatriating offenders currently being held in the NWT and elsewhere to serve their sentences closer to home, it is hoped that these higher operational expenditures will be offset by better programming.
Members remain supportive of on-the-land programs, particularly for young offenders.
These programs should be delivered as close as possible to the home communities of the youth.
Mr. Chairman, Nunavut’s new Human Rights Act received Assent over two years ago, on May 11, 2003.
Earlier in 2005, the Legislative Assembly approved a transfer of $315,000 within the department’s budget to fund the retrofit of the new Human Rights Office in Coral Harbour.
The standing committee has been informed that this work was to have been finished in October, and that efforts continue to recruit staff for the office.
The committee urges the department to take advantage of the office’s location by recruiting and training its staff locally.
Members look forward to reviewing the first annual report of the Human Rights Tribunal, which is required by law to be tabled in the Legislative Assembly, so that we can begin to evaluate the success of this new body.
Mr. Chairman, the standing committee has noted the department’s plan to spend $180,000 in 2006-07 on new computers.
Over the timeframe of the 2006-11 five-year capital plans, the department anticipates spending close to $1 million in this area.
The committee would note that in the first years of the GN’s operation, significant expenditures on information technology were incurred.
It is important that costs in this area be closely monitored.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Mapsalak. Before we proceed I would like to remind the members that according to Rule 77 (1), you have 10 minutes to speak.
And according to Rule 77 (2), subject to the discretion of the Chair, a member may speak more than once on a matter under discussion, but not until every member wishing to speak has spoken.
I suggest to members wherever possible you ask detailed questions during page-by-page review of the departmental estimates.
I don’t have any names. We have no names.
Do members have any questions?
Go to page E-8 first.
Justice. Registries and Court Services.
Total Headquarters Region. $1,620,000.
Chairman: Total Tangible Assets. $1,620,000.
Chairman: Turn to page E-10.
Mr. Curley (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is with regards to the Minister’s opening comments and the opening comments of the Standing Committee Chairman.
I would like to congratulate your officials.
You talked about the healing lodge. If you could elaborate a little further on whether there are healing lodges around Nunavut or in the Provinces and how they work. You talked about the healing lodge in the Kivalliq region.
Exactly how is the healing lodge working, what would it do and whose job would it be to work at the healing lodge.
The Kugluktuk healing facility houses inmates but it is not a maximum-security facility.
It is more geared towards healing the inmates.
Although they can’t do whatever they want to do, what they do is they bring the elders in and counsel those inmates.
I heard about the correctional facilities in the communities where they can have access to healing by elders and others.
We would really like to be able to have such facility.
It is very good to hear that there will be a healing lodge.
The other item that I would like to ask is about the women being able to have a facility, a remand centre for women.
I just wanted to find out where the location might be for that facility for a women’s remand centre?
We have not decided on the location of the facility as yet because there’s no remand facility for women at the present time.
We have a need for a remand centre for women.
Sometimes there are only two women that have to be housed in the remand centre.
We are just in the planning stage to construct the remand centre. At this time we have not made any decisions on where the location might be yet.
I would also like to ask a question about the remand centre for women.
How many women are in custody at this time? I think they house them in Fort Smith.
If I am not mistaken, how many of them are there right now from Nunavut?
Chairman: Thank you. Minister Okalik.
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): Just a minute while we get the information.
We don’t have the information with us right now. There hasn’t been over four so I am not really sure of how many there are; perhaps if I can respond to the members tomorrow.
Did he just say that there are never over four?
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes.
For many years now we had the Northwest Territories government and the minister is saying that there have never been over four inmates.
My question is: how much would the facility cost; the correctional facility for a women’s centre?
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): It would be under $3 million.
Mr. Netser (interpretation): I am sorry. Which page are you looking at?
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): Putting together what we have planned, it’s $2,640,000 that would be the cost under E-10.
Mr. Netser: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation) That $3,647,000 that would be used to build the women’s centre; how many staff would that facility have?
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): I can’t answer the question at this time because we are in the planning stages at this time.
Perhaps there wouldn’t be that many women in the remand centre, so I don’t think there’s going to be that many staff, but if the numbers rose, the staff numbers would rise too as well.
Mr. Netser: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation) The question that I have is, we are going to use a lot of money to get the women’s facility and the minister is saying that sometimes the numbers are not there and there’s only about four or less.
That $3,647,000 is a big amount of money.
Whenever there’s a domestic dispute sometimes in the communities, they have a court order whereby they have to be apart. This happened recently in my constituency.
The husband is not allowed to see the wife. When there’s a domestic dispute, the family is given the job to look after the children and the family members too.
Wouldn’t that amount of money be more helpful if there was a facility in the community, when there’s a domestic dispute, it could house those individuals and to use as a healing centre in the community because it’s usually that the man is shipped out of the community and then they have to keep on phoning each other.
Wouldn’t that amount of money, over $3 million, be more useful to get facilities in the communities where domestic violence occurs and there’s a court order for them not to see each other?
Yes, I realize that this is a problem that we have no remand centre for women in Nunavut. This was part of the requests by the public to have a women’s remand centre so that we don’t have to send those people to Fort Smith.
I realize that we have to resolve this because the women don’t have a facility when they are in remand. Even though there’s a remand centre for men, they don’t have any facilities for women and we have to ship them out to Fort Smith.
So, for that reason, we feel that we should have a remand centre for women in Nunavut.
A few days ago I didn’t realize there was a healing centre for men. Few days ago in my community there was an individual in custody who is a youth and when he was about to leave at the airport he had called his aunt and just before he boarded the plane the aunt was called and if you don’t sign this document your nephew will be released. And he is remanded in Rankin Inlet.
I didn’t realize there was a remand centre here in Iqaluit.
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): Yes, when individuals are dangerous they are put into a remand centre. We do have a remand for men but we don’t have a remand centre for women. This is quite a concern for some time.
Mr. Netser (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the explanation.
When actually are youth remanded, or you feel that they are not dangerous enough to be put into remand?
For youth we have a youth facility here in Iqaluit and they can be put into remand there if they are dangerous offenders.
I have no further comments on this issue.
We are page E-10 we are looking at the Baffin Correctional Centre retrofit. It is quite a huge sum and there were other plans to retrofit in previous years.
Perhaps the Minister knows how much it cost to construct that facility and when they constructed that facility.
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): Hold on. Although I can’t state how much it cost because it is not available but the facility was constructed in 1983 and it was to house up to 43 inmates, but currently we facilitate 60 inmates in that facility.
I know that he didn’t respond to some of the questions that I had asked as to how much it would cost. This is going to cost in excess of $40 million up to the 2007-2011 and there is $8 million that is set aside to be used. And he already identified the lack of capacity of the facility and for quite some time I am sure we’ve been using the facility even though we were over capacity with that facility.
Have you ever considered how much it would cost to construct a new facility if you’re not going to retrofit the correctional centre, have you ever considered constructing a new facility?
We will need to make a new facility.
It’s not going to be in Iqaluit.
We’re looking at Rankin Inlet as the location for this facility.
Although it’s not geared towards Baffin Correctional Centre, but I’m sorry, this correctional centre in the line item, it should be new.
After asking that question, I need further clarification. At the bottom, project (inaudible) 505059, Men’s Community Correctional Facility, $2,372,000.
Is this for the retrofit or, rather, is this for the planning stage because, there are plans from 2007-11.
Looking at the price, it seems like it’s going to be a small facility. So, if you can clarify this line item. Men’s Community Correctional Facility, and the cost for constructing; is this new, or is it a retrofit?
Could you update us? Thank you.
We’ve been told that we were building too many facilities here in Iqaluit, so I would like this facility to be built outside of Iqaluit, so that there will be more employment opportunities outside of Iqaluit.
I’m going to work hard to have this built outside with $38 million for $2,372,000. It’s mainly for healing programs. As I mentioned earlier on, there is a healing facility in Cambridge Bay.
So, we would like to construct another healing facility like that, outside of Iqaluit, within Nunavut.
So, this is at the planning stage whether we need to construct it or not.
It’s pretty hard to get a clear definition.
When I asked about the $38,753,000, you said that this Baffin Correctional Centre line item is for the planning stages, and you said it’s going to be in Rankin Inlet that is the actual correctional facility. And, the third facility you are talking about is mainly a healing facility and $2,372,000 is a small amount and there is money set aside in the coming years for this section in these estimates.
I’m confused about it now with the way that it is written.
So, if you could explain this further. Exactly what is happening here?
The first one; in total $38,753,000 is to start planning, for the planning stages for the corrections centre.
As I said we’re looking at Rankin Inlet, although it states Baffin Correctional Centre.
But, it’s to construct a correctional centre because we’ll need to get an additional centre and we’ve decided that it should be outside of Iqaluit.
Rankin Inlet is the closest.
This facility will require RCMP officers.
This $2,722,000 we haven’t identified which community it will be in or what location it will be in. But this is the plan for a healing facility like the Cambridge Bay facility.
We are on (interpretation ends) Justice.
Community Corrections and Justice.
Mr. Alagalak (interpretation): I apologize. I can see it now.
It should be Kivalliq correctional centre new. Maybe if you re-phrase the centres it would be easier to understand this $509,000. It seems it was for retrofit.
The RCMP officers I think it seems like they are using the RCMP officers a number of RCMP officers. They are looking at Rankin Inlet I am sure that this has not been discussed further and we will have to discuss this further as to where the location of this facility will be.
Although I am not too pleased as to the way it is written and it is not properly written and we will have to approve these estimates and the line items are not correct. So I am not too comfortable with that also I will conclude with that and this is just a comment. Mr. Chairman it is not a question.
If we can get a quorum we can go ahead.
There is no quorum at this time.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Mapsalak for being observant.
I would like to remind you we are on Justice.
Review of Justice. Corrections.
And also, to remind you that when there is no quorum, we can’t vote on these estimates; if you leave, please look around.
I am sure you are getting tired of me. I was talking about this earlier; I would like to ask a question on this although he answered my question during the Question Period. I want to get some further clarification the Hamlet Councils have been asking me to ask these questions.
As I stated earlier on today that there are no recreational facilities in the communities and there is nothing to do and I understand there is a safety issue. When the municipality wants to gets something like if the Minister can clarify no matter what community you are from, that they will be able to apply to be the location for the new facility?
What is he talking about? If he can clarify it.
Chairman (interpretation): Mr. Mapsalak, if you can rephrase your question or clarify it.
Mr. Mapsalak: Where the healing facility is being launched.
We have not identified the location of this new healing facility. We need to do our study and we need a certain number of officers in the community.
We can’t endanger anybody in the community. So, therefore, this needs to be reviewed or studied. We need to do a study before we construct a healing facility.
Yes, I know that we can do good plans on this, but that’s the only way we can get construction or developments going in the smaller, non-decentralized communities.
We are on page E-10.
Justice. Corrections and Community Justice.
Total Headquarters Region. $2,881,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: E-10.
Qikiqtaaluk Region. Total Qikiqtaaluk Region. $426,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Total Tangible Assets. $3,307,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Turn to page E-4.
I’m sorry, pardon me.
Justice. Departmental Summary.
Total Capital Expenditures. $5,107,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Are you agreed the Department of Justice is concluded?
I would like to apologize to you that this was not written clearly because we were working on different things, but we want to apologize for the way it was written and I guarantee that we will make a correction in the future.
Thank you for assisting us with our requests and we will remember what the comments were.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Minister, Mr. Weber, and Ms. Adla.
Go to VII, at the bottom.
VII. (interpretation ends) Total Capital.
Total Capital. $103,540,000.
Chairman: It is agreed to. Go to Bill 1 in your white legislation binder. Bill 1, Appropriation (Capital) Act, 2006-07.
We will wait for a bit.
Bill 1, Appropriation (Capital) Act, 2006-07.
Item 1.
Chairman: Application. Item 2.
Chairman: Go to Schedule on page 2. Schedule. Amounts appropriated for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007.
Capital Appropriation. $103,540,000.
Chairman: Total of Appropriation. $103,540,000.
Chairman: Go back to page 1 on Bill 1.
Appropriation.
Chairman: Lapse of Appropriation. Item 4.
Chairman: Accounting. Item 5. Do you agree?
Chairman: Does the committee agree to Bill 1 as a whole?
Chairman: Does the committee agree that Bill 1 is ready for third reading?
Chairman: Thank you. I would now like to ask Minister Simailak, the Department of Finance to make his opening remarks.
Bill 02 – Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act #2, 2005-06 – Consideration in Committee
Bill 03 – Supplementary Appropriation (Operations & Maintenance) Act #2, 2005-06 – Consideration in Committee
Bill 04 – Supplementary Appropriation (Operations & Maintenance) Act #4, 2004-05 – Consideration in Committee