Pursuant to Standing Order 87, Walter Noel, MHA, Virginia Waters, substitutes for Mary Hodder, MHA, Burin - Placentia West; Gerald Smith, MHA, Port au Port, substitutes for Wally Andersen, MHA, Torngat Mountains; and Ralph Wiseman, MHA, Topsail, substitutes for Gerald Reid, MHA, Twillingate & Fogo.

The Committee met at 9:00 a.m. in Room 5083.

CHAIR (Mercer): Order, please!

Welcome, Minister. Just before we get started I have a few preamble types of comments. The normal process that we follow at the Committee is to give the minister fifteen minutes or less, as the case might be, to introduce the budget. Then we would go to the Vice-Chair to lead off the questions. Then we will alternate with the members for every ten or fifteen minutes or so until all the questions have been exhausted or, as was the case last night, until we are exhausted. That is basically the process we would follow.

In a moment I will ask you to introduce your officials, Minister. I would also ask that when any of your officials or any of the members are speaking for the first time that they would introduce themselves to the recorder from Hansard, so that we can maintain the appropriate records for this particular meeting.

Having said those few remarks, I will ask the members of the Committee, starting at my far left with Mr. Ottenheimer, to introduce themselves.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: John Ottenheimer, MHA for St. John's East. I'm not on this Committee, I'm just simply here as a critic, I guess, of this department.

MS S. OSBORNE: Sheila Osborne, MHA for St. John's West.

MR. WISEMAN: Ralph Wiseman, MHA for Topsail.

MR. MERCER: Bob Mercer, MHA for Humber East.

MR. NOEL: Walter Noel, MHA for Virginia Waters.

MR. WHELAN: Don Whelan, MHA for Harbour Main-Whitbourne.

MR. SMITH: Gerald Smith, MHA for Port au Port. I'm filling in for Wally Anderson.

MR. H. HODDER: Harvey Hodder, overlooked in the first round here but definitely determined that the Minister is going to work for his money this morning and all that kind of stuff.

CHAIR: Thank you very much. Just before we start a matter of routine business, the minutes from the meeting of last evening at 7:00. Could we have a motion to adopt the minutes of the Committee?

On motion, minutes adopted as circulated.

CHAIR: With that, Mr. Minister, perhaps you could make your introductory comments.

MR. DECKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before making a few brief remarks I will ask my officials, for the record, to introduce themselves, starting with my Deputy on my left, Ms Spracklin.

MS SPRACKLIN: Lynn Spracklin.

MR. ALCOCK: Ralph Alcock, Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Protection and Support Services.

MR. McCARTHY: Acting ADM, Civil Law and Related Services.

MR. FLYNN: Colin Flynn, Director of Public Prosecutions.

MR. McNUTT: Marvin McNutt, Director of Corrections.

MR. WHITE: George White, Director of Finance.

MS HEFFERNAN: Theresa Heffernan, Manager of Financial Operations.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Chairman, I am not going to take fifteen minutes. I will make just a brief overview. The Department of Justice, as I am sure all hon members know, provides legal services to government and is primarily responsible for the protection of citizens of the Province in respect of their persons and their property.

Just a couple of days ago one of my colleagues asked me how can the Department of Justice provide legal advice to government when I am not even a lawyer. I explained to him that if were a lawyer I would not providing legal advice because the worse thing a lawyer can do, I think, is advise himself. I have to rely on the experts who are around me to provide that legal advice which more often than not is good solid advice, I am sure.

So it is legal service to the government, protection of citizens to the Province. The objective is met by providing the police protection, of course, the prosecution of alleged offenders, the operation of the court and the correction systems of the Province, and the provision of services to victims of crime. Also, the drafting of legislation for the House of Assembly comes under this department, which is done by the Office of the Legislative Council which we also provide.

During the past year we had a Select Committee of the House of Assembly which did some very valuable work for us where we have re-visited the policy of arming the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. On behalf of the department I want to express appreciation to the Chairman of that Committee and the members of that Committee who did some excellent work and helped us in making the decision which has proven so far to be the right decision. We have not been getting any major complaints. We did get a few letters, probably not more than a dozen, I suppose, Deputy?

WITNESS: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: No, I didn't know if it was that many, would you, Ralph? It really was a non-issue. There were only a few complaints in St. John's, no more than a dozen I wouldn't think, and one from out around Conception Bay. Most of the other letters which we got were very positive (inaudible).

Mr. Chairman, that is all the time I'm going to take up. If it is something specific apart from the actual Budget itself that hon. members want to raise I will attempt to address it, or else ask one of my officials, with your permission, to address whatever questions might be presented.

CHAIR: Thank you, Minister. Harvey, if you would like to lead off.

The Clerk would normally be here to read the first head but we will assume that we are on head 1.1.01. So, Harvey, and then we will go to Walter.

MR. H. HODDER: Just a couple of general questions on some of the budget stuff here. In the Minister's Office I noticed that last year's budget had $165,500 for Salaries that went to $168,100 in the revised budget, and it has jumped now to $227,000. Are there some explanations you could offer for that?

MR. DECKER: Yes. That is where the Communications people were all moved into the Minister's Offices from the central (inaudible). The salary now comes out of the Minister's Office.

MR. H. HODDER: So there is a corresponding decrease in one of the other offices.

MR. DECKER: That is correct. Well, there should be. I'm sure you will check that when the appropriate time comes.

MR. H. HODDER: The other thing I wanted to mention was that in the area of Executive Support, 1.2.01, we went from $483,500 to $481,600. This year it's up to $514,700. Is that along a similar line?

MR. ALCOCK: Basically you are going to see in all the salary accounts increases primarily related to the twenty-seven pay periods, as well as the increase in wages which government has approved, a 2 per cent increase (inaudible). Basically it will take effect for this fiscal year.

MR. H. HODDER: Could we say both in the Minister's Office and in the Executive Support, looking at Salaries and Employee Benefits, that when we allow for the transfer that the minister noted and the twenty-seven pay periods, there have been no major changes other than maybe a step program here or a program there?

MR. ALCOCK: That is correct.

MR. H. HODDER: I wanted to go to Fines Administration which is 1.3.01. I wanted to get some idea as to what the total amount of outstanding fines in the Province, at this time, is, and what broad categories they would fall into.

MR. ALCOCK: I do not have 1998 here with me. At the end of March 1997 it was approximately $22 million. That is reasonably similar in this fiscal year. At the end of March 1998 we have a reasonably similar amount, although I do not have the exact figure here with me at the moment. I have a breakdown of the fines if that is off interest to you, again, as of that particular date. Traffic court is approximately $14 million, fines through the Provincial Court are approximately $7 million. Then there are some other miscellaneous amounts. The Supreme Court, for example, has a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

MR. H. HODDER: In terms of the initiatives that began a year or so ago, where there would be some actions taken in terms of collections, if my memory is correct, what we are saying is that while they may have collected some of the amounts, the total amount that is owing and therefore due to be payable to the Crown has not changed at all. What has been the success of some of the initiatives taken to reduce the fines? Are there any new initiatives anticipated?

MR. ALCOCK: I guess you are correct when you say that the amounts of outstanding fines have not changed. As I indicated earlier, there are a number of reasons for that which we have been able to determine that varies from the length of time that individuals have to pay fines.

For example, if it relates to a driver's license, there is five years basically to pay a fine. Out-migration has had an affect on the amount of fines which are outstanding, because as you can imagine, individuals who leave the Province are not inclined to pay outstanding fines. There is a considerable number of individuals in the population who are not in a position or not prepared to pay their fines, which is a considerable difficulty for us.

Given these various factors, our intent is to try and use the Provincial Offences Act to collect some of these fines through the Sheriff's Office. At this point in time we are developing a pilot project to more aggressively collect fines from individuals. We are currently looking at a figure of fines owing in excess of $2,000, and going as far as to attach wages to collect these fines. As you can imagine, many of the individuals who owe this money are simply not prepared or not in a position to pay the fines. Often times the amount of effort that we would extend to collect fines will be in effect a waste. The main excuses for example are: Do not have income, are on social assistance, and for many other reasons have not been prepared to pay their fines. We have not gone any further with licence denial to try and collect fines beyond Motor Registration at this point in time, at any rate.

MR. H. HODDER: There was some talk at the time that there might be some work done with such licenses as moose licenses and other things that people would regard as a privilege from the government. In other words, the right to be able to participate in some of these activities. You are saying that we haven't moved beyond the driver's license system. Why hasn't that occurred?

MR. ALCOCK: I guess there has not been a desire on government's part - I guess maybe the minister can probably speak to that better than I - to use some of these other mechanisms that are available through the Provincial Offences Act through license denial, to attempt to collect some of these fines.

MR. DECKER: That is just a step we have not taken at this time. We have the ability, we have the authority to do it, but we have not taken it. Maybe we will visit it at some future time.

MS SPRACKLIN: There is also some information technology issues that have to be addressed just to make it work on the ground. There have to be interfaces and linkages with some central record of who owes a fine if you are going to administer license denial through a bunch of different departments. From a practical perspective I am not sure if it would even be possible right now.

Having said that, I think that while we carry sort of a steady balance the vast majorities of fines are of a relatively small dollar value and they do get collected through the Motor Registration Division. Probably as you clear out a certain number they are replaced by new ones, but the vast majority of fines are paid.

MR. DECKER: I would think of the $14 million which Ralph put forward there, it is $14 million, and probably last year it would have been $14 million, but not necessarily the same $14 million.

MR. ALCOCK: Yes, that is the point I made earlier.

MR. H. HODDER: When we look at the interfacing that we were talking about by technology, has there been an agreement reached, for example, between all the provinces and the federal government? Where if we are going to move to the attachment of wages that was mentioned earlier - I believe by Mr. Alcock or the minister - we could have a universal approach to that. Rather than having certain employees who work with certain governments or certain agencies who would be exempt from that. Have we sought an agreement with all the provinces and that so that you won't find in Newfoundland you can't be collected if you are working in Alberta, or working with the federal government in Ottawa or anywhere?

MR. DECKER: Lynn, do you want to address that?

MS SPRACKLIN: No. Frankly we have not pursued that nor do I know whether it would be necessary to do that. I cannot honestly answer that one with any...

MR. H. HODDER: Alright. When Mr. Alcock was responding he mentioned two expressions: not able and not prepared. Did you mean both of those for the same thing? Because if we are not able I can understand, but not prepared causes me concern.

MR. ALCOCK: I guess at times they are mutually exclusive and at other times they are not. By and large there certainly is an element of the population that is not prepared to pay the fines. We have several collection officers who are attempting to collect the fines from these people, but there are huge numbers in terms of the numbers of individuals with outstanding fines. The ability of several collection officers to deal with a significant number of people is somewhat limited, as you can imagine, given the number of individuals with outstanding fines.

I am sure it goes without saying that given the numbers involved there is a certain number of those people who probably have an ability to pay who do not pay. Equally, I would add that over a five-year period for people who had fines against an individual driver's license, those individuals have an ability to pay but wait until the driver's license expires before they do pay.

MR. H. HODDER: Is there interest charged on these outstanding fines then to make it...?

MR. ALCOCK: No. There is a late payment penalty which is implemented. Depending upon the fine, if it is the five-year period on a percentage basis that late payment penalty may in fact be more than a reasonable interest rate. We do it through a late payment penalty rather than an interest rate.

MR. H. HODDER: I mentioned that because the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, for example, will command a municipality to set its interest charge on overdue accounts for people who do not breach the law but who cannot pay their municipal taxes. That is generally set at 3 per cent higher than prime as established on January 1 of each calender year. That becomes a significant impetus to get people to pay, because you are going to pay 3 per cent over prime and that is set every year. The penalties for non-payment, I get the feeling that your system is not commensurate with those people who keep the law but cannot pay their municipal taxes on time. There seems to be an unfairness here.

MR. ALCOCK: There are various late payment fees based upon the amount of the outstanding fine. If you look at a simple parking meter ticket, which in the City of St. John's is twelve dollars, the late payment penalty after sixty days on that is $5. If you use $5 as a percentage, given the prime is currently 6.5 per cent, which makes it 9 per cent or 9.5 per cent, the penalty is probably greater in that particular case with the late payment penalty than it would be with the interest rate charge.

MR. H. HODDER: I am not looking at the traffic ticket as much as I am looking at the people who make up - there are some fairly significant fines that are owed to the court system. It is not all in traffic. A fair bit of it is (inaudible).

MR. DECKER: No, $14 million you said, was it?

MR. H. HODDER: Fourteen million dollars (inaudible) said.

MR. ALCOCK: Yes, but as I say the fee is not $5 in each case. Sometimes it is $50 and so forth. There is a scale that is used depending upon what the outstanding fine is, if you try to use a simple example to illustrate the point.

MR. H. HODDER: Why I mentioned this, Mr. Minister, is because I perceive out in the public that there is an increasing lack of tolerance for people who owe those amounts at a time when we are looking for every dollar we can to provide essential services.

MR. DECKER: We will take that question under advisement, Harvey. I suspect what we will find is that actually we are collecting more than we would collect if we put a 3 per cent over prime or something. We will take a look at it and see what would be the best (inaudible).

MR. H. HODDER: I just ask it for the purpose of making sure that there is fairness in the system. Mr. Chairman, I will yield to my colleagues now, I am sure they have lots of questions.

AN HON. MEMBER: I will pass.

CHAIR: John Ottenheimer.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a few questions, and they are largely fiscal in nature. I will begin with the Provincial Court House in St. John's in the Atlantic Place. We have an significant amount of space which is rented presumably by the department. I am interested in knowing what the costs are, the actual rental expense on (inaudible) housing the Court in Atlantic Place and their related offices. I would like some indication of the breakdown of those costs.

Secondly, has the department ever considered a Provincial Court house building or a Provincial Court house structure, particularly as it relates here in St. John's, or even the purchase or the construction of a facility? I wonder could I have some information as it relates to the costs. Because one would think that it is fairly significant.

WITNESSES: (Inaudible).

MR. ALCOCK: Theresa, do you have a breakdown of the -

MS HEFFERNAN: Not the cost (inaudible).

MR. ALCOCK: We would have to get you the cost of the accommodations.

MR. DECKER: As you know, we do have some Provincial Court houses. The case in Gander, I think we have the Supreme Court as well as the Provincial Court. Aren't they in the same building?

MS SPRACKLIN: Basically the courts are in the same building all across the Island now except for St. John's (inaudible).

MR. DECKER: We own the building in Grand Falls, we own the building in Gander. Corner Brook we rent?

MS SPRACKLIN: In Corner Brook we are in the Sir Richard Squires Building.

MR. DECKER: Okay, I think we own that one. In Labrador we are renting. It is not general across the Province. Some we own and some we rent. We will get the breakdown for the hon. member (inaudible). Maybe you are right, it might be (inaudible). We have been having a difficult time in all government departments because of the various fiscal problems we have had. It has been extremely difficult to get money to build new courthouses. Even this year. We have a problem with the Court of Appeal, for example. It is very crowded down there. I don't know if you are familiar with it. One option there of course would be to build or to rent other space. You weigh off to see which would be the better. In the case of the Court of Appeal we need it yesterday, and it would be impossible to address it by building immediately.

These are issues which probably we will look at again. There is no such policy saying: We would rather rent than build. It is not policy as such but it evolved that way. As you know, the major Supreme Court Building in St. John's, we own it.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Has there been an analysis done to your knowledge recently with respect to the cost?

MR. DECKER: I am not sure there has.

MR. ALCOCK: The best that I recall, and this predates my joining the Department of Justice, was that there was some work done in that area for St. John's, and a figure of approximately $25 million was what I recall. I don't know if...

MS SPRACKLIN: Our objective was to get the provincial Supreme Courts under one roof, if possible, because it allows for efficiencies in staffing; in public areas things like robing rooms, victim services rooms, client interview rooms, and just common areas; and vault space, cell space, prisoner holding areas. We were looking at that.

It is just a question of: firstly, we have this old Supreme Court building which is difficult to abandon; secondly, it is difficult to add on to it because of the configuration of the land there, and it is horrendously expensive to build a building. It just did not make it through the capital works budget which is done through the Department of Works, Services and Transportation, as you are aware. I guess it is a question of priorities, whether you build hospitals and schools, or whether you build court facilities out of limited budgets. I would assume that globally the Department of Works, Services and Transportation would give an analysis of how they are going to spend their capital budget based on provincial priorities.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: The reason I asked the question is this. One had the impression I think ten or twelve years ago, when the Provincial Court moved from downstairs in the present court house to Atlantic Place, that it was almost on an interim basis. Of course, that has now developed into obviously the long term.

I have another question, this time about legal aid and the facilities with respect to legal aid. Recently it moved - again I am referring specifically to the City of St. John's - from Church Hill to the waterfront. One person told me it was just behind Piper's. Again, is it possible I could have some indication of the cost incurred in that move, and what the benefits from the department's point of view are in actually moving from its previous location to where it is now presently located?

MS SPRACKLIN: Again, I cannot remember that number off the top of my head. I had it actually a few weeks ago because I am trying to figure out what downtown spaces cost. We have to go to tender when our leases expire. There are certain, I guess, standards imposed upon all departments in leasing space. The Church Hill building is quite antiquated. It needs refurbishing and probably did not, I suspect, meet standards or codes as they currently exist. Consequently when our lease expired we renewed from year to year for some time, again, trying to avoid increased costs, but you do have to go to tender and tender for your space. The results of that tendering process was (inaudible) we got. I think it worked out to something like about $10 a square foot, is my recollection. No? Pardon?

WITNESS: I can't recall right now (inaudible).

MS SPRACKLIN: (Inaudible).

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Recently in the news there was some discussion on the facilities - this is perhaps more for Mr. McNutt - and the transfer from the Stephenville facility to Clarenville. Again, my question is related to cost, in terms of there has been some commentary with respect to the facility in Clarenville not being up to the standard that we were accustomed to in Stephenville. In fact last week I was in Stephenville and met with the town council. One of the major concerns by the town council in Stephenville was with respect to the loss of that facility.

The question I think again has to be asked: What was the financial impact? I think there is some general concern about the facility itself, but what was the financial impact of the moving? In fact, what was the cost to the taxpayer of this Province in the shift from Stephenville to Clarenville as it relates to the women's prison?

MR. DECKER: I will allow Marvin to answer.

CHAIR: Marvin, if you could approach one of the mikes, please, I would appreciate it.

MR. McNUTT: Mr. Chairman, with respect to the questions, in terms of the operational costs - that is, the ongoing daily costs of staffing and providing the programming and so on -, the cost is virtually the same. In terms of the maintenance, however, we had to look at the comparative sizes of the building, the age, the relative life cycles, and so on.

The building in Stephenville, first of all, is not wheelchair accessible. We had an estimate from the Department of Works, Services and Transportation that we would require $250,000 to install an elevator in that building to make it accessible. The building in terms of its overall size well exceeds our special requirements, and even more so since the female offender population has dropped dramatically, because of changes in the sentencing patterns more than anything else. Approximately one quarter of the people receiving conditional sentences in this Province now are women. That is 100 out of the 400 that have been sentenced since the new legislation was passed by Parliament. While we were in Stephenville our average population on a typical day would be fifteen to eighteen. We are now down to seven or eight.

The cost of relocating in terms of that actual shift was virtually nil. There was some overtime involved because we had to escort all the inmates out on a particular day. There have been some other minimal additional costs involved because of the absence of a local psychiatrist, for example. So we did have to contract with a psychiatrist here in St. John's to make regularly scheduled visits to the institution.

MR. ALCOCK: If I could add this as well, I believe in terms of media reporting something has somewhat been missed, and that is that when Clarenville was a male institution it had an inmate capacity of twenty-six. We have since reduced that capacity for females to twenty-two, I believe it is. The fact of the matter is that you have an institution designed for twenty-six inmates which typically now has in the six to eight range of inmates. Having said that, we have determined that there is a requirement for some better programming space, and of course we are dealing with that issue currently and hope to have it dealt with during this fiscal year.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Essentially what you are saying is that from a cost point of view there is no difference.

MR. McNUTT: In terms of the operational costs, no difference. In terms of the maintenance, both in the near future and the long term, I suspect that there would be a major discrepancy.

MS SPRACKLIN: If I could just add as well, the majority of our female inmates are from this area and keeping them in Clarenville: (a) reduces the amount of time taken and needed to get them back and forth for court appearances and what not; (b) it keeps them close to their families; and (c) generally is supported by the inmate population. They do not want to go back to Stephenville, while they do want some programming space. (Inaudible) locked up in their cells and there is no larger area for programming (inaudible) requirements. The other thing it has done is it has reduced our reliance on the lockup in St. John's. Because females were in the lockup for unacceptably long periods of time when we were in Stephenville because of the needs for court appearances and assessments and the like.

MR. ALCOCK: Could I divert back to the original question, or your question on Provincial Court costs of space? It costs approximately $530,000 per year for Provincial Court.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: In rental?

MR. ALCOCK: In rental, yes, which includes the services of course.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: It's a significant cost, and over obviously an expanded period of time it - the impression one gets is that maybe, and I guess the minister alluded to it, an analysis as to what is in, I guess, the public interest ought to be conducted, particularly from the point of view of the long term.

MR. DECKER: In business you always have to weigh which is less expensive. It is not just putting up the building, it is the maintenance, it is the ongoing operation of that building. In some cases it could be less expensive to own. It depends on what happens to property in St. John's over the next fifty years, when we think about the offshore and if the economy of this City moves the way we all expect and hope that it will. It might be time for us to look at owning buildings as opposed to leasing them, but for the last number of years rent has been quite reasonable in St. John's, as you are quite aware I am sure.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: There is legislation recently on the expansion of Unified Family Court and the jurisdiction of the court. I wonder, Minister, is there any indication as to when the changes contemplated in the legislation may come into effect?

MR. DECKER: I think what we said when we put it through the House is that it would become effective the day that it is proclaimed. We have been talking to our federal counterparts. They have to appoint the new judge. All we are waiting on now is for the federal government to appoint the judge. Instantaneously, as soon as the judge is appointed, we will proclaim our legislation. The ball is in the court of the federal government. I had thought it would have been done actually before the middle of April but it has not been done. The appointment is clearly, for the Supreme Court, in the hands of the federal government. They have not acted yet. Which reminds me, I should follow up with a phone call I suppose and see what the hang-up is, if there is any.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: You say that once the appointment is done the change will take place immediately.

MR. DECKER: That is correct.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Will that include the support staff? Of course with Unified Family Court, associated with that is the social arm of the court in terms of social workers and mediators and so on. Will those positions become available immediately upon the expansion of that court, upon the appointment of the new Unified Family Court judge?

MR. DECKER: We don't foresee the need to bring in a whole lot of support staff but I will ask my deputy to address this specifically.

MS SPRACKLIN: I received an analysis from the Court and they are anticipating, obviously, some increased need for social support staff which would be the equivalent, they tell me, of one person year. Whether one would hire permanent staff for that or whether one would develop a list of qualified interim casual workers so that they could be close to the homes that they are studying...

In other words, if there is an assessment needed in Bay Roberts, Harbour Grace, Bay de Verde or Clarenville we would draw from a list of people who are prepared and qualified to do those assessments in those regions. That would be my guess as to the best way of doing that, but there is still some discussion ongoing as to our alternatives in that regard.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: There certainly seems to be a trend in Unified Family Court to really expand mediation services, particularly as it relates obviously to custody and access issues, putting less reliance on the adversarial approach in the courtroom. That is why I asked the question. One would think that with the expansion of the court it would be important that those services be available so that that particular trend can continue in family law.

MS SPRACKLIN: Yes, they would agree. They are also mounting essentially some programs that they are going to try and feed all their clients through where there is a custody dispute. I guess essentially trying to orient parents to the needs of their children before they enter into this whole divorce process and custody process. They have developed a program that they intend to deliver to all their clients to try and encourage them to understand what the needs of the children are and to focus them on the needs of their children in terms of custody and access.

They have thought this through. As I say, what they are indicating, and I guess they are judging this on caseloads, we know what the divorce caseload is because these cases are currently being dealt with by the Trail Division. We know pretty well how many of them involve contested custody matters. Their information to me is that one person year is what is going to be required. Obviously we will have to monitor that and -

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Do you, in your opinion, have a serious backlog of people who require the services of mediation, for example? Is there a backlog or is it on schedule? Is it acceptable I guess in terms of the scheduling?

MS SPRACKLIN: I am not aware of a concern in that regard.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Minister, in your introductory comment you talked about the arming of the RNC and that there has been very little backlash. I was on that Committee and I agree with you. I think Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Hodder, also on the Committee, I think we all agree that there was a minimal reaction once the change in the policy was announced by your department.

I am just wondering when you anticipate in fact the RNC adopting the provisions of the recommendations. To my knowledge the RNC members today are not wearing sidearms, but presumably in due course that will change. Any idea when that will -

MR. DECKER: That is solely at the digression of the Chief. We only gave him the formal letter a few days ago. We have had the Order in Council and all this sort of thing. He was aware of it, as was the population aware of it, but we only officially advised him I think it was late last week or the early part of this week. He then will make the decision as to when that is done. I think, Ralph, you might want to give some further details on that.

MR. ALCOCK: The Chief advised us that it will be before the end of May. He has not set a specific date on it. There is a considerable policy review that is currently being undertaken as we speak. Some time before the end of May he will issue the order to arm the officers who will appropriately be armed.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. McNutt, I would like to ask about the facility in Whitbourne. I know this is an issue I have raised with the minister in the House of Assembly. Specifically, can you indicate the numbers of professionals, either on a full-time or part-time basis, assisting with the young offenders in terms of psychological needs, professional services, as it relates to particular difficulties that young people are having while being incarcerated at the Whitbourne facility?

It has always been said that this is a facility which does well. I think, by and large, that is the general consensus; however, we need the professionals to deal with the very serious problems which affect a lot of the people today.

Are those people there? How many are there? What steps are being taken actively to ensure that the serious problems which are being experienced by young people incarcerated at the facility are been addressed? I am not talking about the day-to-day classroom teacher; I am talking about the professional expert there to help young people.

MR. McNUTT: Mr. Chairman, we do have a number of professional groups who provide services directly to the young persons at the facility. We have a core group of four social workers, along with a social work supervisor. They are responsible, actually, for conducting the needs assessment on the kids after they are admitted to the facility, developing a case plan, liaising with community social workers for pre-release planning, providing reports to the court in terms of judicial review of the disposition, and so on.

As well, we have a health program staffed by two full-time nurses. We do have - I know you did not want me to talk about it - eleven teachers, full-time teachers, at that facility, including the principal. That is a very good ratio, I think, when you consider we only have an average number of fifty to fifty-five young offenders in custody on any given day.

We do contract for other services as well, including psychiatric services. Dr. John Angel does go out on a regular basis and is available twenty-four hours a day on standby for consultation if we do need to avail of his advice in a given situation.

The other thing that we are doing, however, is broadening the skills through training of the youth care workers. We spent $65,000 on that initiative last year; we expect to spend another $85,000 this year.

The youth care workers, and there are forty-four permanent youth care workers on site, along with a number of on-call workers who work casually. Actually, we just recruited twenty; they all had university degrees in the social sciences. It is not a requirement, basically, it is certainly regarded as an asset. It probably will become a requirement in the next year or two. It is just the quality of the people who are making application for the position.

Basically, the training we are providing to the youth care workers is designed to upgrade their skills and their ability to become a formalized part of the case management team. They would be assigned a small caseload and would be expected to provide some clinical counselling and to participate in the case planning process much more intricately than they have ever been involved before. The idea there is to create a therapeutic environment as opposed to one that is geared primarily to security.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Is each young offender assessed?

MR. McNUTT: On admission, each young offender is assessed, yes.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: And the follow-up is there as well, if required?

MR. McNUTT: Absolutely.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Even in the absence of a court order?

MR. McNUTT: Yes.

We have programs, for example, that address specific offence types such as sexual assault. We have had as many as fifteen adolescent sex offenders in custody at a time. For some reason we do not have any today. That is an encouraging sign for us.

There are other kids, of course, who have substance abuse problems, and we have group treatment programs to address that. There are kids who have cognitive deficits, and we have a cognitive skills training program. These are highly scripted, highly structured programs which, on the basis of research, have been demonstrated to be quite effective in terms of reducing the risk of re-offending.

There is still, of course, a core group of high risk, very troubled young persons, some of whom require intensive mental health treatment. The facility has been designated just recently as a hospital, under provincial legislation, and we are developing a strategy and a plan to make sure that we are well equipped for handling kids who have been deemed to be unfit to stand trial or who are found not guilty by reason of insanity. We have only had two of those cases in the past fifteen years or so.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr. Ottenheimer.

Ralph Wiseman, and then we will move on to Sheila.

MR. WISEMAN: I will pass, Mr. Chairman.

MS S. OSBORNE: Line 1.3.01.01, there is a salary reduction there of $52,000. Is that a position that has not been filled? It is on page 223, Salaries, under Fines Administration.

MR. ALCOCK: There are a couple of vacant positions that are being carried or left vacant for a period of time to meet our overall salary plan requirements.

MS S. OSBORNE: Under 2.3.03.01, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Salaries have gone up by $30,000. (Inaudible) gone up, is it?

MR. ALCOCK: No. Unfortunately, I have to admit that in the 1997-1998 year we made an error in the salary allocation to the medical examiner and we corrected it in 1998-1999.

MS S. OSBORNE: And he is happy.

MR. DECKER: Even the Department of Justice is fallible.

MS S. OSBORNE: 2.3.04.01, just a small discrepancy there. Under Human Rights, Salaries are down. It is just a small amount.

MR. ALCOCK: I believe you are referring to Revised?

MS S. OSBORNE: Yes.

MR. ALCOCK: There was a vacancy for that particular year. As well, when you look at the Estimates for 1998-1999, they were carrying, for their salary plan, a deficit when it was transferred to the Department of Justice. That was corrected.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Provincial Court, 3.2.01.01. Salaries are over by $338,000 from Budget to Revised.

MR. ALCOCK: That is primarily the increase in the salary for the Provincial Court Judges.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Transportation and Communication there, can you tell me the reason why the difference from $349,000 to $375,000?

MR. ALCOCK: It relates to accommodations that we are giving up, basically in - I think I have the wrong account here.

MR. DECKER: Which one was it you said?

MS S. OSBORNE: Travel.

MR. DECKER: 3.2.03 you are saying, is it?

MS S. OSBORNE: Yes, 3.2.01.03. It is on page 228, Transportation and Communications.

MR. DECKER: That is the unanticipated travel expense for the heavier case loads.

MS SPRACKLIN: Just additional (inaudible) to deal with case loads.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Now over to the RNC. There has been $120,000 less in Salaries there. Are there some positions that are not filled?

MR. ALCOCK: You are referring to Revised as well?

MS S. OSBORNE: From Budget to Revised, yes.

MR. ALCOCK: Yes, there are a number of positions throughout the year which have not been filled as they became vacant. Additionally, with the RNC there is a reasonably significant amount of monies allocated to things like court time, overtime, and various... Some of these were lower than anticipated.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Transportation and Communications for the RNC is over by $113,900.

MS SPRACKLIN: That is Revised over Budget again. That was -

MR. DECKER: Relocation costs, wasn't it?

MS SPRACKLIN: Yes, due to contractual obligations. That would be people coming in from Labrador, or between St. John's and Corner Brook, I guess: a witness, an officer, travel relating to Mount Cashel, Belvedere, and some investigations, and some higher than anticipated telecommunication expenditures.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Under Adult Corrections, Salaries, line 01, it is over by $355,000, the Revised over Budget.

MR. ALCOCK: There are a number of reasons, I guess, for the Revised in that last year we lost an arbitration case which caused us to expend more than anticipated. Marvin, there were several other areas there, if you recall.

MR. McNUTT: The increased salaries that we had to incur because we were retaining more federal offenders in custody; that was generating exact revenue, however, which compensated for it.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Under Youth Corrections, the Salaries there are down by $298,000. Are there positions that have not been filled?

MR. McNUTT: Primarily, the Revised for Youth Corrections... As a result of the lower than previous year's account of Young Offenders, we found it unnecessary to open the old building in Whitbourne. As a result, we have saved significant amounts of money by not having to open that unit. We have been able to handle all of the youth primarily in the new facility.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Supplies, line 04, for Youth Corrections, is down considerably.

MR. McNUTT: That is just a restructuring of the budget. The food catering contract is really the explanation there. The monies that were under Supplies have now been included under Purchased Services.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. The total budget for the Youth Corrections is down by $294,000. Has that been put back, or will that money be put back into the system, that saving?

MR. ALCOCK: It was not.

MS S. OSBORNE: It was not?

MR. ALCOCK: There is a reduction, year over year, resulting from the work we did on program review. There is a reduction in a number of accounts, one of the accounts being Youth Corrections. We had an anticipation as to what would transpire with the old building, and saw that we certainly had an opportunity to save monies in that particular area and it has been realized. As well, we have taken some positions and so forth (inaudible).

MS S. OSBORNE: Can you use it as a down payment on a new remand centre?

MS SPRACKLIN: We have been successful in having (inaudible) for that in this year's budget, so there will be a remand centre. It will be planned this year.

MS S. OSBORNE: In Stephenville, you said that this space would soon be renovated to provide for more open space; it would be renovated to realize the needs of the people who are incarcerated (inaudible).

WITNESS: In Clarenville.

MS S. OSBORNE: Yes, in Clarenville, I am sorry.

MR. ALCOCK: We have looked at the various alternatives with Works, Services and Transportation, to provide for additional programming space. I think we have come to the conclusion that a small addition to the building is the best alternative for us, and hopefully that will be able to be funded through Works, Services and Transportation this year.

MS S. OSBORNE: So it is in the works, is it?

MR. ALCOCK: Yes, it is.

MS S. OSBORNE: If it was built for twenty-six men, and there is only an average of seven to eight women there, could some of the cells be taken and converted into an open space?

MR. ALCOCK: We certainly considered that the more practical and cheaper solution.

MS S. OSBORNE: Is it, to an addition?

MR. ALCOCK: Yes.

There are a number of operational considerations to doing what you suggest, and we have concluded that the best solution for us is to add a small extension to the building.

MS S. OSBORNE: How often is the St. John's lockup used for women?

MR. McNUTT: For a number of reasons, of course, the lockup still has to be operational for women who are arrested and have to be detained until first court appearance, for those who are detained under the Mental Health Act or the Detention of Intoxicated Persons Act. I assure you, Mr. Chairman, that in virtually all cases a woman is detained no longer than overnight. If she was remanded in custody by the court the next day, she would be almost immediately escorted to the Clarenville facility.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Have any improvements been made in the physical facility for the women who are detained overnight at the lockup?

MR McNUTT: In terms of privacy and surveillance, yes. If you do have an opportunity to visit the facility, as old as it is, it is fairly well maintained. It is certainly kept in a very hygienic state. There is very little we could do to improve the facility without actually building another one.

MS S. OSBORNE: I have not been there, and I suppose I should take advantage of the opportunity to see it, but there was some adverse publicity a year or so ago where women were being detained, the conditions that they were being detained in, in the lockup. That has been improved, has it?

MR. McNUTT: That has been rectified (inaudible) to Clarenville.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. My colleague referred to the professional experts at Whitbourne. There is no psychiatrist on site; Dr. Angel is just available on call?

MR. McNUTT: He visits the institution every two weeks, but he is available on a twenty-four-hour basis for consult.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. When the youths are being admitted, who does the assessment?

MR. McNUTT: That is a shared responsibility. The initial preliminary assessment - and that includes suicide risk assessment, basic security assessment - is done by the youth care worker who is specially qualified to do that assessment.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay.

MR. McNUTT: The social worker then would be assigned the case. They would do the complete work-up in terms of the overall social needs and programming needs of the young person.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. In terms of drug problems, there isn't a facility here in Newfoundland to treat young people is there? Do they go to the Janeway? I think one of my colleagues spoke recently of a young person who had to go to the mainland for drug treatment.

MR. McNUTT: In terms of the more specialized long-term treatment, both adult and I think a limited number of adolescents would go. I am not aware that the Province has in fact funded for any adolescent to be treated on the mainland. However, in the facility in Pleasantville now, operated by the community health board, I believe it also provides counselling services for adolescents who have substance abuse problems.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay. Has any movement been made towards the implementation of the advisory board that was recommended by Dr. Inkpen?

WITNESS: (Inaudible).

MS S. OSBORNE: The special advisory board that was recommended by Dr. Inkpen, that would be sort of a neutral board that would liaise between the children and -

MS SPRACKLIN: There is, in fact, a paper on that in existence as we speak, and we would hope to have that in place.

MR. DECKER: There is a paper in existence but I am not prepared to say what we are recommending. I have to discuss it with my colleagues in Cabinet. Hopefully we will be able to address the issue over the next little while. As you understand, I am not at liberty to say what I am recommending.

MS S. OSBORNE: Okay.

MR. DECKER: I would accept whatever the Cabinet decides to do.

MS S. OSBORNE: Thank you very much.

CHAIR: Thank you, Sheila.

Don Whelan, and then we will go to Gerald Smith.

MR. WHELAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have just a few brief questions to follow up on the Whitbourne facility. Do you have any figures indicating the repeat offenders, the percentage?

MR. McNUTT: Mr. Chairman, we have not conducted a study recently in terms of the recidivism rate. I do know of an independent research initiative that was conducted when secured custody was administered by the former Department of Social Services. The findings then were that approximately 25 per cent of the young offenders who were sentenced to secured custody eventually ended up in the adult prison system; in particular those who might have appeared in court and only received probation or were fined or whatever. Our impression is, that particular rate would stand up.

Now we have contracted with a Dr. Don Andrews at Carlton University to do that study for us, not only to look at the recidivism rate but also to look at the effectiveness and quality of the programming that we are delivering at the institution.

MR. WHELAN: The figure that you just mentioned, 25 per cent, I know (inaudible). How long ago was that?

MR. McNUTT: That study was conducted about five or six years ago, as I recall. I can't remember the exact date.

MR. WHELAN: The RNC, the status on the arming policy, the mid-term and long-term policy with regard to that, as well as the training policy, are they still at Holland College? If so, is there any thought to changing that? Could you just expound on those two items?

MR. DECKER: Ralph will follow up on that. We still have the seats there, but it has been years since we have actually paid for some people to be trained for the RNC.

Before Ralph goes into more detail I want to say, though, that I checked, I believe it was last year, and out of twelve people who were training, eleven had university degrees. It is sad that we don't have room to take some of those. I am sure they would be excellent additions to the force.

Ralph, you wanted to just go a little further on the Holland College issue.

MR. ALCOCK: We had an agreement, or do have an agreement, with Holland College, as you are probably aware. We gave notice a year ago to Holland College, as did all of the other provinces, that we would be exiting that agreement, cancelling the agreement. The agreement basically, as the minister indicated, provided for the Province to have trained twelve individuals in a year. It has varied, but basically that is what the agreement says.

The intent of Holland College is to basically privatize the supply of that service, not have a grievance with the various four provinces, and operate in a more private sector kind of environment without a guarantee of funding from the provinces. Having said that, over the last six or eight months the Province of Nova Scotia has established its own training program and that program, both for recruits and for in-service training, is ongoing as we speak. The reason I bring that up is that puts a major stumbling block, or it will be a major stumbling block, for Holland College to be able to deliver an effective program, given the fact that a large percentage of the population will be going through Nova Scotia versus the individuals who will be available to attend Holland College.

Our long-term view is that we will either buy seats in Holland College - we now have the opportunity to buy seats in Nova Scotia; we have the RCMP Academy available to us to buy seats. So, depending on our demands as we move into the future, we have various ways of satisfying that demand.

The current situation, in terms of hiring, is that the RNC are going through a civilianization program whereby we are converting a number of positions which are currently occupied by police officers into civilian positions - they are more appropriately staffed by civilians - but we have, over the last month-and-a-half, had an opportunity to hire back two of the police officers who were laid off almost two years ago or a year-and-a-half ago at this point.

Our strategy is that as an RNC officer retires or quits, whatever the case, our strategy is not to replace on a one-on-one basis but to combine civilianization with bringing back the officers in the first instance who were previously laid off. I think, as we speak, there is only one officer remaining of that group who is currently unemployed, and I anticipate that we will be able to bring that person back possibly within the next month to six weeks, given that there have been some other resignations over the last month within the RNC.

MR. WHELAN: You mentioned buying seats at Holland College, or at the school in Nova Scotia, could you explain that? I know that the students who leave here usually borrow, and it is quite expensive to spend a year in Holland College, in excess of $20,000. When you say buying seats, does that mean that you extend a loan to the student? Is that the extent of it, or is there some other contribution over and above the $20,000-odd that they are spending?

MR. ALCOCK: Well, in the first instance I guess I should also state that our option to bring new police officers into the RNC is extended to existing police officers who are fully trained. For example, we continuously have on file a number of trained police officers, including the RCMP, who would choose to work with the RNC. Generally they are people from outside the Province, Newfoundlanders who would like to come back and work for the RNC. So in addition to training our own officers, or having officers trained specifically for the RNC, there is the option of hiring trained police officers from elsewhere within the country.

Prior to about 1991, the government paid for individuals to go; in other words, hired individuals and paid for them to go to Holland College. Since that time we have used several methods. We provided loans for a couple of years, and the last group of cadets that went through were provided with no assistance from the Province. I guess what all that means is that our options are open in terms of how we would deal with a given situation.

MR. WHELAN: Buying seats is not really an appropriate term -

MR. ALCOCK: You are probably right.

MR. DECKER: Do the seats cost $20,000?

MR. ALCOCK: Roughly.

MR. DECKER: Roughly.

Traditionally, or when the deal was put in place first with Holland College and you were recruiting new members for the RNC, you just sent them off and had them trained. The college was Holland; it could have been anywhere. The Province, through the RNC paid to have that person trained.

In recent years we have not been hiring any new recruits, so in some cases we have said: Look, these seats are there, we have the first option, so if some Newfoundlander or Labradorian wants to take advantage of that and is prepared to pay the $20,000 which the Province would have paid anyway, then go ahead and do it, rather than let the seats go into the mix for anyone else across the country. I think they have all been taken up, haven't they, Ralph?

MR. WHELAN: So basically you reserve x number of seats.

MR. DECKER: They belong to Newfoundland and Labrador - we have them reserved - and we do not use them. So we say to one of our citizens: If you want it, you pay for it, you do it.

They end up borrowing or whatever, but we do not have any attachment to them. They are trained as a police officer. Some of them are with other police forces across the country, or with security groups or whatever. Rather than let our option go to waste, we allow someone to take it.

MR. WHELAN: You say that the Holland College is one of a number of institutions across the country that you could avail of, including the RCMP training centre in Ottawa, is it?

MR. ALCOCK: Regina.

MR. WHELAN: Regina, Saskatchewan. Is there one in Ottawa as well?

MR. DECKER: For the RCMP?

MR. WHELAN: Yes.

MR. DECKER: No, (inaudible).

MR. ALCOCK: The Canadian Police College is in Ottawa, just outside Ottawa, but that is not an academy which trains recruits. It is basically what we would call in-service kind of training in breathalyser or in identification services and so forth.

MR. WHELAN: I am just wondering about the approach to training for police officers. Do they all have the same approach? For example, you know, they are trained... When they were arguing the case for wearing sidearms, they were saying: We would like to be able to do our job in the way that we were trained to do it.

It was my understanding that they were trained to use sidearms as opposed to being trained to handle cases without having to use sidearms, and because they were trained in that particular manner - I cannot say we were forced to allow them to use sidearms, but - there was a certain amount of pressure put on us because of the fact that was where their training led them. They were trained to handle cases in (inaudible).

I am just wondering if, at some point in time, would we be prone to use colleges that had training of a different approach, or maybe we should try and initiate training of a different approach?

MR. DECKER: I think you are raising an excellent point that we could discuss for some time. Traditionally, before Holland College, I believe the training was done by apprenticeship or was done with the RNC themselves. There is no doubt, and I would suspect you will find certainly in all police academies in North America today, the use of a sidearm is part of the training. There is no doubt about that.

I think it would be pretty well impossible for us to buck the tide in that one. We stopped having an unarmed police force some years ago when we put the weapons in their trunks. They have been an armed force for a number of years, but if we could speculate, I suppose, it is quite possible that had we trained the RNC differently, their attitude towards the weapons might have been a different one, I don't know. One of the main reasons I was supporting the arming of the police force in this Province was the inconsistency. We had an RCMP force which was traditionally armed and were armed. We had Brinks, we had Loomis, and there was even talk at one time of arming the fisheries officers by the federal government. It was so inconsistent to the point that it became dangerous.

You take where there was an overlap, Holyrood/Seal Cove. Some people have argued that if the police are armed then the criminal will be armed. Well, thank you very much, if I am going to commit a robbery in Seal Cove, I am not sure who is going to come, whether it will be the RNC or the RCMP. If that logic held any water, most likely I would be armed and prepared. When an RNC officer turns up, it could be dangerous for him or her. It was so inconsistent.

We were left with two options, to either disarm the RCMP - which we did pursue, by the way, under the previous Administration. My predecessor did look into the possibility of having the RCMP not wear a sidearm in this Province. It did not materialize; it did not go anywhere. I do not even know if he brought a report back to Cabinet on it, but we did at least nod in that direction.

I do not know if there is anyone here old enough to remember; I think after Confederation, for the first year, the RCMP in this Province did not wear a sidearm. I do not know what the rule was, but maybe had they trained differently they would not have carried a sidearm.

I have said publicly, I do not think it is necessary for any police officer in this Province to carry a sidearm, but you have to face reality. What you think or suspect, you just have to face reality. You could not have one force armed and the other not. It was so inconsistent that it became dangerous.

MR. NOEL: Do you know if there was any indication that it would be possible to say that the RCMP would not be armed in this Province?

MR. DECKER: Roberts was asked to check into that in the previous Administration. Are you aware of it?

WITNESS: (Inaudible). Ralph do you want to speak to this?

MR. ALCOCK: Yes, I looked into that with the RCMP and had discussions with the RCMP on that matter. i think the bottom line would be that the RCMP would basically be saying that the wearing of sidearms is a part of the RCMP, what they consider a part of the RCMP uniform. The bottom line, I guess, would be the pressures that would be put on us by the RCMP. There was no desire, from their perspective, to do this. So I think it would have been a major problem for us if we tried to insist that they not wear -

The other problem, of course, that they pointed out at the time was that their officers are very much transient. They are working in Nova Scotia one month and in Newfoundland the next month. They identified it over and above the fact that they - it was not treated with a great deal of seriousness, our approach to them. They felt it was also an occupational health and safety issue for RCMP officers, particularly given their movement back from one province to another.

MR. DECKER: We contracted that, and it had been suggested to me: Look, you are (inaudible) the contract, you can dictate the rules. Well, unfortunately we cannot dictate the rules. We contract for policing, and government cannot say: This is how you are going to police.

They are contracted to police parts of this Province, and when we hire the RCMP or any police force they have a way that they police, the way they carry out that contract. We would be exposing ourselves for being criticized for interfering in how it is done. It is only a very slight step then from saying: Go out and arrest all the people who are not card-carrying Liberals. You just cannot have that kind of political interference in the police force. When we give them a contract to police, they dictate how they are going to do it.

Up on the Labrador Coast we are having a lot of requests from the people to put an additional detachment there. We go to the RCMP and discuss that issue and they say: Look, this is the way we police, and we are satisfied that we are providing adequate policing in that situation.

Maybe some people would like to say to the RCMP: Do not wear sidearms in this Province. But that it telling them how to carry out their policing job, and apparently it is not acceptable.

MR. NOEL: So you think it is fairly likely, if we had said, `We want to have you unarmed', that they would have said, `Well, we do not want the contract'.

MR. DECKER: I do not know what they would have done. They probably would have - I do not know.

The person I heard say this was Ted Russell, actually - he is now deceased so he cannot verify it - that in the early days of the RCMP - and I would like to check that out - the first year or so they were in the Province, just after Confederation, they did not carry sidearms. I do not know what happened, whether that was -

MR. NOEL: Was that just in this Province?

MR. DECKER: In this Province. Most of the Province was policed by the Constabulary or the Newfoundland Ranger Force, and the Ranger Force did carry a sidearm, but they were inconsistent. More often than not - I can remember that - you could meet a Ranger in full uniform without a sidearm, and the next time you may see him with a sidearm. I do not know what their policy was, but sidearms were not generally a part of policing in this Province.

The Constabulary did a lot of places outside of St. John's prior to Confederation and it is my understanding, at the early days of the contract, they did not wear sidearms. I do not know if there was any policy on it, or what it was.

CHAIR: Gerald, and then we will come back to Harvey and do another round.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Excuse me, Mr. Mercer, but I have to leave in a couple of minutes. Before we get to Mr. Smith, could I just ask one more question?

CHAIR: With Gerald's indulgence.

MR. SMITH: Sure, go right ahead.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you very much.

I just have one question - it is probably for Mr. Flynn, really - and that is the practice of contracting out of Crown prosecutors. How prevalent is that in our Province today? Can you give some indication as to what the procedure is when that arrangement is made with a member of the (inaudible) Bar?

MR. FLYNN: It is not as prevalent today as it had been, let's say, five years ago. Five years ago, because of difficulties in recruiting permanent staff, we had to contract quite a few lawyers to do our prosecutions, and our budget for that was close to a million dollars. Over the last number of years we have been able to recruit, partly through an incentive program (inaudible) students going to law school whereby we would assist them with some of their tuition, in return for which they would (inaudible). We have reduced that from close to $1 million down to about $100,000 now, as you can see in the Estimates.

That money is used for what I will call our per diem contracts in terms of if we are short staffed - let's say in Clarenville we have a conflict or whatever - we will try to get someone to fill in for the day. As well as locations where we may have a problem - we have a problem in one location in the Province where a member of our staff is on long-term sick leave and, of course, as an employer we gave a commitment that that person would have employment when they come back. We don't know when the person is coming back. We have contracted with a firm in the area to provide the service. In that particular case we could not get anyone else to do it so (inaudible).

In another area of the Province we have a contract now and we put it out on what I will call tender. We asked all the law firms within the area to bid on it were they interested, and what they would do it for. The person who came in with the lowest bid was the one who got the work. That is basically the way we do it.

The day-to-day will be who is available (inaudible) our list. For longer terms we will put it out and ask people to bid on it, and frankly whoever is the (inaudible).

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Thank you, John.

MR. SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to go back to the correctional centre that Mr. Ottenheimer referenced earlier and, of course, a debate has centred around part of my district. When the decision was originally made Stephenville was not included in my district, but under the reorganization, subsequent to that decision, I now represent part of the former District of Stephenville, including a good part of the Town of Stephenville. The centre itself is not located in my district, but obviously I have been getting a fair amount of representation from people in the area since becoming a member for that area.

I remember the debate back when the decision was made. Certainly, locally, I don't think the department convinced anyone that the reasons for making the move were sound. Of course, what we have seen recently with the pronouncements, especially by the women's group in the Province, and what I have been getting, people are saying to me that basically what this is pointing out is that the department erred in their original decision. In fact, some of the concerns that are now being raised were things that were being raised back then in saying: If you make this move you are going to an area where these services are not available.

I know, Minister, you have responded to that recently but I am just curious as to - in terms of the specifics of what has been raised by the representative of the women's groups in the Province saying the services that are lacking, what will be done? What kind of action will be undertaken by the department to address that? What kind of investment will it require, in terms of being able to provide the supports that they claim are now lacking at that facility and in that particular area?

MR. DECKER: Marvin, do you want to say specifically what services are (inaudible).

MR. SMITH: The charge initially when it was left, they said there were a lot of supports in the Stephenville area that would not be existent in the Clarenville area. Basically, what I am saying now and what has been said over the last number of weeks is the same thing. Are we now going to have to go and create, in that particular area of the Province where the centre is located, the services that were existent on the West Coast? If we are, what kind of costs are going to be attached to that?

MR. McNUTT: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to make the opening comment that the kinds of media reports that are circulating now are very misleading.

We have already met with the author of the report, with the Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women, as well as with the newly established Elizabeth Fry Society. We have pointed out to them quite clearly, and have handed over to them, an inventory of the programs and services that we now deliver at the Correctional Centre in Clarenville. That was a three-page listing of the programs and services, with a complete description of each. That particular inventory and credit was not included at all in the report conducted by the Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women, and we have asked for that to be clarified.

The community supports are there. In fact, we have more services on a comparative basis offered to the women in Clarenville than we ever had in Stephenville, quite frankly. We have the usual church groups, the women support groups and so on, who are going into the facility now, but we also have services that we did not have, such as a full-time instructor, through our partnership with the local community college.

Sister Marcella transferred over from Stephenville as well, and she provides Adult Basic Education. She is a full-time volunteer. We have a full-time classification officer, which is virtually the social worker position, which was one that was shared between the male and the female institutions in Stephenville previously but now is fully dedicated to the women in Clarenville.

We have the substance abuse program, the victimization program, done in conjunction with victim services as well. There are visits by the John Howard Society on a regular ongoing basis, certainly from St. John's. They are not located directly in the community of Clarenville.

What we are trying to convince the Elizabeth Fry Society to do is to work with us to try to establish closer community linkages and supports in Clarenville.

MR. SMITH: You mentioned, in terms of the numbers of inmates now being housed at the facility, they are very low. I am just wondering, in light of the reality as we see it today, had that been seen when the decision was to be made with regard to the Stephenville facility, would that have had any sort of an impact on the decision that was made?

The other question I raise as well: in your comments you gave significance to the fact that there would be a considerable investment required, capital expenditure required, in the vicinity of a quarter million dollars to make the building wheelchair accessible. It would seem to me, if the numbers that are presently being housed are well below capacity, that might in turn have some impact as to whether or not the facility in Stephenville could have been utilized without having to make it wheelchair accessible, at least to the second level, the elevator. Just making it wheelchair accessible from the outside would seem to me to be not the major expenditure involved. My understanding from this is that it would be in terms of installing an elevator which would be required in the building.

In light of that, and with the numbers, would that have had any sort of an impact on the decision when it was initially made?

MR. McNUTT: Mr. Chairman, the building in Stephenville is a three-storey building. The first floor was primarily dedicated to the food catering service and administrative space. The living area itself, however, was located on the second level. That was the reason we would have had to install an elevator in order for the residents or the inmates to actually have the kind of access not only to the building but within the building that would be required.

In fact, just in the past few months we did have a female offender actually confined to a wheelchair, who spent some time in the Clarenville facility. We would not have been able to accommodate her in the building in Stephenville as it exists today.

In terms of the numbers, we had some expectation certainly that the number of female inmates confined on a typical day would decline because we had just recently implemented the early release programming, particularly the electronic monitoring program. That certainly would have reduced the numbers substantially, and has in fact. We have seven in custody today, but we also have four out on temporary absence.

We did not at that time anticipate that the change in sentencing practices and laws would have had the impact, the substantial impact, that it has had in terms of providing more opportunities and options for judges when they impose sentences.

MR. SMITH: The only other thing I would like to mention with regard to that, the deputy in her comments referenced the fact that the inmates do not want to go to Stephenville. I would hope that is not of tremendous significance in terms of decisions that are made here. To me, considering the nature of the institution, what we are doing there, I am just curious as to the relevance of that comment.

MS SPRACKLIN: The relevance to the comment was that the E. Fry Society is an advocate for the prisoners, and they misread the people they were advocating for in that regard. I was really responding to the E. Fry Society, which purports to speak on behalf of the inmates and to represent their views. The information and feedback we got was that they had misread the group they were advocating for in that regard.

MR. SMITH: I guess maybe it touched a note when we consider the debate ongoing right now with Marine Atlantic. I would hope we are not equating what we are talking about here with what is happening on the West Coast of the Province right now in terms of Marine Atlantic.

WITNESS: If I could just interject a comment, the point of significance is that the majority of the inmates are from the Avalon Peninsula area and their choice would be - or any choice of any inmate would be - to be located as close as they can to their family support systems and (inaudible) contacts. You would expect the E. Fry Society, who are speaking on behalf of the inmates, to be lobbying for some facility that meets their needs and their demands.

This is not a matter of competition; it is a matter of the majority of them wanting to be, preferring to be, and probably are better off being, closer to their family supports. I can understand that.

MS SPRACKLIN: From a rehabilitated perspective it is important that they maintain... A lot of them have children, young families, and it was very difficult not only for the inmates but for the families when they were on the West Coast.

Our other preoccupation was the inappropriate use of the lockup that we were forced into. There were a lot of factors of that nature.

MR. SMITH: It is a debate that goes on. I am sure the minister will be getting lots of representation, as he has. The town has come forward and they have been actively involved in it, and it is understandable. Anyway, we will move away from that.

I want to touch briefly on Legal Aid, just for my own information, since recently I have had a number of enquiries from constituents who have been asking me to direct them. I had to confess to them that it is not an area I know an awful lot about, so maybe this is the time to become better informed.

I note from the Budget that there is an significant amount of money allocated to Legal Aid. I am just wondering in terms of the parameters. For example, I just recently had a call from a constituent who said to me: I went to the Legal Aid office in Stephenville and made application and was informed that the difficulty I have is with provincial government so they cannot get involved with me because it is the provincial government.

That struck me as awfully strange. Can someone tell me whether or not - to me, that made absolutely no sense. It is a matter that there is some sort of action that the Province is taking against the individual. The information they gave me was that they went to Legal Aid and Legal Aid said: No, we cannot do it because the provincial government is involved. Is that accurate? Surely, that is not our policy. I mean, (inaudible).

MR. DECKER: There is some misunderstanding there. Legal Aid is entitled to people who need legal aid. Legal aid is not just something you slap out. We have a budget that we have to abide by.

MR. SMITH: I understand there is a means you have to -

MR. DECKER: On that specific case I would have to have more details before we could address it. We can certainly -

MR. SMITH: That is not as a standard policy.

MR. DECKER: No, no, (inaudible).

MS SPRACKLIN: The Crown prosecutes all (inaudible) cases. My guess is that maybe it's a civil matter that either is not covered, or that the person did not qualify for (inaudible).

MR. SMITH: That is the other thing. For example, one of the things I have encountered recently is matters dealing with the Tax Court of Canada. Is there a difficulty with us providing assistance to people in such matters? Because it is a serious matter. I have people who they are going after for overpayments in excess of $20,000. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. If they are not able to satisfactorily - I personally had experience in the Tax Court of Canada. Not that I was directly involved, but I went there on behalf of a constituent because I wanted to find out what the system was. It was quite an eye opener because it is a court of law.

All I could offer was my best imitation of Perry Mason or Ben Matlock. It became pretty obvious to me that what these people required was something other than - so since then I have a group of five or six people right now who are headed to the Tax Court of Canada and it varies anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. I spoke to the Legal Aid office in Stephenville and they said they will look at it. I'm just wondering, is there anything that would preclude them from getting involved in that? They can get involved in such matters.

MR. McCARTHY: Legal Aid, in fact, does send lawyers to represent people before the tax appeal board or whatever it is called, as well as other tribunals. They obviously cannot represent everybody for every little claim or every little dispute. No, it is not our policy to preclude that. In fact, Legal Aid does represent many people before the tax appeal board.

MS SPRACKLIN: Essentially my understanding is that they look at the financial eligibility of the individual in that, alright?

MR. SMITH: Sure, I understand that.

MS SPRACKLIN: Secondly, at the impact upon the individual as a consequence of not being able to appear before this tribunal. If it is a very minor impact they might not become involved. Again, it is a question of prioritizing (inaudible).

MR. SMITH: Yes. The earlier levels of appeal, or the referees and the umpire, I have assisted at that levels. The only thing is that once it reaches the final level which is the Tax Court of Canada - this is the concern that I have, and this is where I (inaudible) right now.

I tried going the paralegal route. Because when I had gone there myself prior, there was at least one paralegal there that day who represented, and didn't do a very good job. I did explore that route because I thought maybe these people might be more within the range, maybe this is something they could do, only to find out that it is not available anywhere on the West Coast. I even spoke with a group in the Carbonear area, but to get someone from Carbonear to go out to the West Coast to represent them, even paralegals, you are talking big bucks.

MS SPRACKLIN: I would hazard a guess too that there are many lawyers who - tax law is a very specialized area. I tell you, I tried once to read the Income Tax Act. I go to my accountant now. It is very specialized and (inaudible) very complex.

MR. SMITH: I recognize that, too, that lawyers are not specialized in all areas. My question was: So there is really nothing keeping them from getting involved.

One other area, 2.1.03, Support Enforcement. I noticed that there is an increase in the Salaries end of it. I'm just curious. Does that mean we are hiring more people to get involved here? Because one of the things that Harvey alluded to earlier was that when we worked on the Children's Interest Committee one of the things we found, especially when we travelled and visited other jurisdictions, was the efforts being made especially to have these court orders enforced.

One of the things that I do know is that in recent years the department - well, now it's Human Resources and Employment - has been really aggressive in saying to their clients: You have to go to them, if there is money that is owing (inaudible) support is owing. Would this be reflected here? Does it mean now that because of this increased pressure your department is having to provide more in terms of support to carry that out?

MR. McCARTHY: I understand that there was some additional funding provided to deal with the increased demands. I think the informational technology area in particular required some additional assistance. (Inaudible) outstanding maintenance requests of course from the new government enforcement act. It requires some additional help from the IT side of things. I am not aware that (inaudible) themselves or that there is any increase in that area. Certainly the IT problems were very real and very much on the increase because of the judgement enforcement act and some of the other new initiatives that were (inaudible).

MR. SMITH: What has happened right now in terms of cooperation among the various jurisdictions in the country? In B.C., Harvey, we had an extensive meeting with a group out there as to what they were doing. They were being very proactive. That is two or three years ago now. One of the things there seemed to be a move towards was increased cooperation among the different jurisdictions. Does that in fact happen now? Has that improved?

MR. McCARTHY: That has happened and we are looking at other ways to improve upon that. As you are probably aware, we work very closely with the federal government in terms of attaching various forms of income that people receive from the federal government, and of course data banks have been developed over the years, so you can track defaulting debtors across the country. That is something that has been worked on for a couple of years and it is something we are continually trying to improve.

MR. SMITH: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Thank you, Gerald. We will turn back to Harvey for what he assures me will be just a couple of brief questions. Then I will ask any other members of the Committee if they have anything to clue up on, and pretty well clue up from there. Harvey.

MR. H. HODDER: My questions are again on Support Enforcement. Because Gerald and I had a lot of dealings with that when we were doing the Select Committee on Children's Interests. I should say up front, as I have said before, that we did not get a single complaint when we were doing the Select Committee on the professionalism of the staff in Corner Brook or anything like that. In fact, the people we talked to were very complimentary.

You can have a case like in British Columbia where they have it privatized, in fact. It is interesting that when the NDP government came in they did not change it. So there is a privatized system there which is working quite well, we might say, from the information we had at that time.

I have always felt that we probably don't publicize the necessity of fathers, in particular, carrying on their responsibilities towards their children. For example, when we had a great difficulty with, say, drunk drivers, the idea that we said was: You are going to be responsible. We have substantially curbed that by our aggressive public relations and the lack of tolerance for that kind of behaviour.

Likewise I feel, Mr. Minister, that we should be reminding everybody that when things fall apart in marriages or whatever circumstances evolve, there is a continuing responsibility of parents to support - and a high percentage would be men, but there are some cases where females are also paying support enforcement. When that happens I think we will have less court imposed enforcements. It would be done automatically and people would see it as normal acceptable behaviour, and we don't have to see the support enforcement people out there carrying on the law in the way that it is now.

Gerald asked questions on the increase in the money allocation. What are we doing to be more proactive in terms of prevention instead of being reactive in terms of enforcement?

MR. DECKER: I will let one of my officials address it. Before they do, that is one area, Mr. Chairman, where the department is very aggressive. Now, maybe we are not aggressive enough, but if I have to pick one issue where I get the most letters it is from men - I don't recall one from a woman - complaining that: I'm into a second relationship, I have children and I'm anxious to take responsibility for my children. However this is what they did with me, (inaudible) the support enforcement group.

I have every indication that they are a very aggressive group and they pursue the parent, whether it is the mother or the father. They use the full measure of the law. Maybe someone would argue that they are not achieving as much as they could, but I can tell you we have come a long ways in the past few years in going after deadbeat parents, shall we say. The letters which I have been getting, the calls from my own constituency, people phoning in - and I am sure all members would get them -, very rarely are there complaints saying: It is because I do not have to pay enough. The complaints are always: I'm paying too much.

MR. H. HODDER: That wasn't my question.

MR. DECKER: Is there something further you want to add to that?

MS SPRACKLIN: Mr. Hodder, the way I read your question was whether we have considered launching any sort of a publicity campaign, for lack of a better word, and the answer is no. Perhaps we should think about it, maybe in conjunction with some community agency. It is something maybe we should look at.

MR. H. HODDER: My point would be to say that the public out there at large should know that there are consequences, and there is an assumption. As society says, you must accept responsibility. Again, I go into the situation of children in court and how there are lawyers for everybody except for the child, and that kind of thing. What I am saying is that if we had more public awareness then we may reduce what the minister talks about, letters of complaint. We also might have more willingness on behalf of the parties involved to come to more of a consensual arrangement more frequently without the dark intervention of the court system. This is what I'm (inaudible).

MS SPRACKLIN: Certainly with respect to trying to minimize the need for a litigious or judicial imposition of the federal child support guidelines, we have now retained child support workers throughout the Province, which should facilitate mediation rather than adjudication of these awards.

In addition, as I say, Unified Family Court is developing a program for parents and has been delivering it, actually, I think for the last few months at least, aimed at focusing parents on children and their responsibilities toward them in terms of custody access and maintenance, trying to minimize the effect of divorce on children. From that prospective, efforts have been made but there has been no, let's say, publicity campaign as such.

MR. H. HODDER: I should just say that there are known cases of how far people will go to avoid having to give up their responsibilities. When we were in British Columbia we were told about a dentist, was it, Gerald, who has his pay processed in Scotland. In that way then he does not have the attachments for the Canadian system. Some people go to great lengths. That was one of the more outrageous examples that we came across. Again, I will just repeat to say that the people who work for us in Corner Brook are doing a commendable job.

That's it, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr. Hodder.

Are there any other questions from any members of the Committee? Not hearing any, I will say thank you, Mr. Minister. Thank you and your officials for your usual precise, comprehensive answers. (Inaudible) to be getting all kinds of advice from individuals. Thank you once again for coming, and we look forward to meeting you later on in the week at some local establishment.

MR. DECKER: Thank you. Are we excused, sir?

CHAIR: You are. With that being said I will ask for a motion to approve the heads.

On motion, subheads 1.1.01 through 4.2.02, carried.

On motion, Department of Justice, total heads, carried.

CHAIR: Thank you, gentlemen and ladies. The next meeting of the Social Services Estimates Committee is next Tuesday morning.

On motion, the Committee adjourned.