[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Friday, September 27, 1996
.1034 
[English]
The Chair: We're back at work, and I want to welcome Bryon Doherty's northern studies class from Inuksuk High School, who have come to watch us work today. We are very pleased to have you here and have you participate with us. If you want to ask some questions afterward, maybe we could arrange that for you.
.1035
We now have interpretation of three channels. Channel one is English, channel two is French, and channel three is Inuktitut.
Our witnesses are from the legal aid program. We have Neil Sharkey, who is a defence lawyer, and...I'm sorry, I can't read this next name.
Mr. Josie Papatsie (Chairperson, Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik Legal Aid Clinic, Iqaluit, NWT): Josie Papatsie.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Papatsie is the chair of the legal services committee. And Mr. Piugattuk is also a witness today. I welcome you. I understand you have a brief presentation. Is that correct?
Mr. Neil Sharkey (Defence Lawyer, Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik Legal Aid Clinic, Iqaluit, NWT): It's very brief, Madam Chair.
The Chair: That's fine. The briefer the better. Parliamentarians always love to talk.
Mr. Sharkey: First of all, thank you for the invitation, Madam Chair. We are all very pleased that your committee is travelling to the eastern Arctic and to Iqaluit.
My name is Neil Sharkey and I'm listed on the schedule as a defence attorney. That is a job I do. You'll see that my familiarity with the act is less than you might expect, because despite the fact that I'm a criminal lawyer, I'm more of a supervisor these days.
Sharing my time with me today is the chairperson of our community legal aid board. It's an elected board that runs legal aid for the Baffin region's thirteen communities. This is Mr. Josie Papatsie beside me. We met yesterday as a board to discuss your trip today and what we might say to this group. Also with us is someone who deals every day with youth in trouble. He is our senior court worker at the legal aid office. His name is Francis Piugattuk. You may direct questions to any of us.
The office we work in is called Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik. Roughly translated into English from the Inuktitut, maliiganik historically was ``the way things were done''. Over the years, that word now has come to mean the law. In tukisiiniakvik, the ending ``vik'' denotes a place - igloovik means place of homes, Inuvik means place of man. Tukisiini is the verb for understanding. So it's Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik, our legal aid office, a place where people come for help with the law and to understand the law. We represent people in court who are charged with offences or crimes.
We also work on public legal education, and where we see deficiencies in the law we work together to try to get our respective governments to change the law. For example, many years ago there were no Inuit on juries. Our board lobbied the territorial government to change the Jury Act. Now every jury is predominantly made up of the people who live here, and they do the judging on juries.
As far as the Young Offenders Act goes, I expect the message this committee receives as it crosses the country is this. You'll hear from victims of crime in citizens groups and you'll hear the voices of legitimate fear more so in our cities, where the youths who commit crime are not known to the victims.
The same things happen here as happen everywhere else in the country. We have youths between the ages of 12 and 16 who carry drugs for drug dealers and do their bidding. Sometimes we have youths under the age of 12 who do that. We had a terrible situation here where a couple of 11-year-olds set fire to a young boy. Those types of things go on here.
And you'll hear the legitimate voice of fear as you go across the country. I'm sure you have heard it from citizens groups and victims groups, and sadly, I'm sure, from the parents of children who have been killed by other youths. You'll be urged to do something about this.
The concerns of the communities here are the same as the concerns of communities across the country. I think every community, when it comes to youth, wants two things: they want their community to be safe from youth crime, and they want the kids who are doing these things to stop doing them.
.1040
Now, much of the message I have for this committee is simply talk about money. As you know, the federal government cost-shares the administration of justice with the provinces, and especially in the area of young offenders money is transferred to the provinces specifically targeted for young offenders.
The Northwest Territories is also a recipient of young offender or youth justice moneys. I would suggest that you might tell your fellow parliamentarians and colleagues that perhaps some strings should be attached to those transfer payments, if possible, so that something can be done to stop the youth from reoffending.
Most of the provinces, if I can use this word, have dumped that money into youth jails. We have a fine youth facility here, but it's an expensive one and it gets the largest amount of transfer payments and proportionately deals with the fewest number of youth in trouble. It deals with the ones for whom there's no alternative, we think, but to incarcerate. And that's because there's no teeth to the other alternatives, and there's no teeth because there's no money.
The advantage we have here is that we know in these 13 communities who the offenders are. The RCMP know who they are. The members of the community know who the kids are who are committing the offences. We know their families. We know how troubled their families can be.
When I was a lawyer in the south, I would often encounter police attitudes that were directed toward punishing youth that were committing crimes, especially violent crimes, but I don't see that here. I see that all of the participants in the legal process here - police, defence attorneys, judges - all share the same common value, and that's because we know the offender. We live here. We're fortunate to live in a mostly one-culture value system. We live in an Inuit world here, and the people we live with and who are the victims of youth crime know the youth. They know them.
I've never been so surprised in my life as when I've acted in court for youths who have killed people, and I have spoken to the families. They've come to me, the families of the victim, to tell me that something needs to be done to help the perpetrator. I would never see that in the south. I would go to court in Toronto and I would be vilified and looked at with hatred by the families of a young victim, if I was defending a youth who killed their boy or their daughter. That's a very important difference between here and down south, and it's an important difference, because this is maybe one of the last places where there is a chance to break the cycle of youth crime.
The act itself has lots of teeth already. Let's not get carried away when we hear that the Young Offenders Act is a joke and that kids are laughing when they walk out of court, and they talk among each other that it's just youth court. When we see the nervousness of a youth who walks out of court laughing because he got off, so-called, with probation, we shouldn't read too much into that.
The act itself has plenty of teeth. It allows for youth to be locked up for three years. That should probably be increased to four so it would cover the entire gambit from 12 to 16. If they commit an offence and it's a serious enough offence when they're 12, and the judge considers that they need to be incarcerated and also be given counselling while incarcerated for an extensive period of time, it should include the entire time that they are a youth.
.1045
Provision should also be made so probation can be extended beyond the time a youth is 16. I'm sorry, I mean 18. When he commits an offence while he's a youth, he should take a penalty into his adult life if he is near the 18-year-old limit. I said 16 earlier. I'm showing you how old I am. The act, of course, used to be to 16.
What we need is money, in this community and throughout this country, but specifically in this community and on this island, for full-time probation youth workers to work one on one with youth. The kid may laugh when he walks out of court, but if he gets into the hands of a competent, full-time youth worker, the youth worker can turn a kid around. The answer is counselling and working with youth before they commit crimes. We all know this as a matter of common sense. But it isn't happening. It's happening only on paper.
In this community we have an overworked social services department where they're already stretched in the areas of welfare payments, social service duties and child welfare apprehensions. At the end of their job description is ``probation officer for youth''. They cannot do it. They are not trained for it, and it's the last priority they have. So when the youth goes on probation he shows up once a week. Yes, we'll see you in a couple of weeks. How are you doing? Okay. This is pretty well all they have time to do.
We need money for proactive, full-time probation officers who can put teeth into a probation sentence to make it, in a word, a real pain in the ass for the kid, and to make him accountable to this probation officer. Then his laughter will turn. Initially he will be upset. But a full-time probation officer has the talents to bring a young property offender around.
This probation officer should have a budget to be connected to community groups such as, for example, at Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik, where we have a youth project. They're given to us by probation services and by the youth custody facility. We take youth out onto the land and they're shown a different lifestyle.
Some of these kids who are sniffing glue, breaking into places, beating people up, and carrying drugs have not been on the land any more than any one of you in this group. They've only seen the land from the hill. They've never had a chance to see a different lifestyle. They've grown up, as we all know, in dysfunctional homes. This is a chance for them to see a different lifestyle.
In this culture we don't need fancy, overly qualified probation services. We need qualified people to lead and to coordinate. But we also need to give a kid a chance to see a different lifestyle and just to be away from all the influences.
As part of our custody facility here, we used to have an outpost camp facility. I happen to know the reoffender rate for kids who went to this camp was very low. Most of the kids who reoffended were kids who didn't want to be there in the first place. We know of three or four who have stayed down there at outpost camps and others who have not offended again.
How do we prevent the kids from offending in the first place? Again, because it's one culture here, because they're receptive to good influences, just like bad influences, more so in the south, we need to put money and strings on transfers to the Northwest Territories.
Again, the custody facility on the land was closed because it was too expensive to run, but it was a worthwhile investment. It didn't have a lot of so-called inmates, but it was a worthwhile investment.
.1050
The answer to stopping youth crime is to get counselling services to youth in probation, so that when they first encounter the system at all they're grabbed up by talented people who can counsel them. We have so many kids who reoffend simply because probation is a joke, but it's not a joke because the act is no good. The act has more teeth in it than the Criminal Code. It has more sentencing alternatives already than the Criminal Code.
.1055
Look at section 20. A judge can pretty well order anything. But the judge's sentence becomes a joke up at the high school; youth court becomes a joke not because of what the judge's sentence is but because the resources for counselling and working one on one with kids is not there, because there are no outpost camps, because there are no strings attached to the transfer of youth offender money. One string would be that we don't have to build an outpost camp here. Enter into contract with the existing outpost camps and send kids down there.
Sometimes the people at the correctional facility for youth here will tell me that the sentences are too short for them to work with the kids. I have a number of thoughts about that. Sometimes I think they're right and all of us, including judges, can make mistakes. A judge can't sentence a kid to 6 months, 8 months, 14 months months of jail time for putting a knife in a tire.
On this island right now, in fairness, we are just starting to see the beginnings of change. There is a youth justice committee. You will speak with them here this afternoon. But they don't get very many cases. They are just starting to get a caseload. Their coordinator needs to be well trained. They have difficulty getting kids to cooperate, yes. That's because there's not a lot of resources and financial support behind them. They are operating on a shoe-string, and they have more of a potential to do good.
The communities and the RCMP are starting to refer even adult cases to diversion community justice groups and also to youth groups. But in fairness to the Mounties, sometimes they don't have confidence in these groups because the groups sometimes don't know what they're doing. The reason they don't know what they're doing is because there is no one thrashing the bushes at the police station, taking the cases down to them and working with the kids and getting the kids to the outpost camps. There are outpost camps in every community on this island that we could sentence kids to if contracts were set up. It would be a good influence on them. The RCMP would cooperate in every way to see that those sentences were carried out.
Locking kids up when we haven't put real efforts into preventing them from offending does not work. I happen to be a victim myself of a kid out in Apex who's really getting on my nerves because every time he's free he spikes all the tires of all the vehicles. My wife and I have changed about 20 tires in the last three years. He won't stop. So all we do is warehouse him for a while and then he comes back to Apex and we have to have people watch him because we know he's going to come and do it. I don't want him to be locked up; I just want it to stop. I believe he would stop if we had someone to work with that kid and take him to an outpost camp. Josie would take him down on the land, I'm sure.
Proposals that suggest prosecuting parents for their kids...you're going to hear this down south: it's time we got tough on youth crime. I agree. Let's prevent youth crime and let's get tough the right way. Let's not create paper tigers and put amendments into an act that doesn't need amendment. To prosecute the parents of youth for the conduct of their youth sounds great on paper, but you're prosecuting the people who have the least ability to do anything anyway. They live in dysfunctional families. Their children have grown up outside the bar, watching their parents drink until 2 a.m. To prosecute them for what the kids do...they're the least able to do anything about it anyway.
.1100
Locking kids up doesn't work much. If you lock up a white, middle-class person or an Inuit person who has a lot of material goods in society, you're threatening their freedom, their ability to travel, to eat the kind of foods they like. It's a deterrent. But these kids have nothing. Locking them up doesn't make a difference. They have nothing to lose. But getting them early is the answer.
Respecting the age of youth, right now the act covers kids between the ages of 12 and 18. What about kids under 11? What do we do with those two 11-year-olds?
Right now in our social service legislation, a child who does something that would be an offence.... They don't have to commit an offence, because they can't commit an offence if they're under 12. But if they do something that is a crime and they're under 12, by very definition of the act they are a child in need of protection. They therefore can be seized by a social worker.
The social worker is allowed to physically hold them if they're out of control. The social worker can take them to a designated facility, and that happens to be not under the Young Offenders Act but under the social services legislation. There is nothing wrong with the RCMP allowing that social worker to sit in a cell with that 11-year-old if he or she is out of control. If they're completely wild and out of control, the mental health provisions allow for an apprehension and detention.
It might be a good thing to give social services and the RCMP a little more of a tool with which to hold and detain children under the age of 12 who have done very serious, outrageous acts, because the law has to have public confidence.
The act has already been amended in one important way. It's been changed. It used to be that if a kid committed murder, it was three years. That was it. All you could be locked up for was three years. I've always felt that if a kid commits murder...children here should know that they can be taken to adult court. There is already lots of teeth in the act for the right case. They can take it to adult court. Any child can be prosecuted in adult court if the Crown can prove that it belongs there, that the child has not responded before. But I see cases going to adult court where the reason he has a long record, the reason he hasn't responded, is that we've never given him any probation services that are worth a hoot. He's never had any real counselling. He's never had probation workers on his ass. If he fails then and we give him a chance, fine.
I had a case, a very sad case, where a youth - I'm not going to use names, of course - about eight or nine years ago killed a woman. That boy then was given three years in jail. We pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and all he could get was three years. He returned here and was working on the water trucks, and one of the things he said to me was, ``People are looking at me really weird.'' He came to my office. He had no reason for it - he wasn't in trouble - he just came there, and we were trying to put a plan together whereby maybe he could live somewhere else; that would be a good idea.
I've always thought that people were looking at him because they were still afraid of him. Even though they may not need to be afraid of him, they had this idea in their minds that he wasn't punished enough. I think he had that idea in his mind, too, that people were thinking he wasn't punished enough, that three years wasn't.... He didn't say that to me but.... You know what? He received intensive counselling when he was in custody and zero when he got out.
About a year after that, that boy killed himself. So I think it's proof in the pudding. I believe that if the kid had been given access to some probation after.... He wasn't even eligible for it under the act. You couldn't get probation. Once you had your sentence for second-degree murder for three years.... It was an idiotic sentence. It gave the Young Offenders Act a bad name and the Young Offenders Act had no public confidence.
.1105
The Young Offenders Act gets a bad rap right now, but it's an act that already has lots of teeth. You see, he could not be on probation afterwards because that was the law. As I read the act, right now the probation really is not designed to continue after you're finished being a youth. It should continue after you are a youth.
The amendments that have put ten years for first-degree murder and seven years for second-degree murder are good amendments.
The act needs to extend its three-year period of jail to a six-year maximum period of jail. I stand here saying that locking kids up is not the answer, that the answer is counselling, but in terms of the offenders.... Mike Mosley, who is a fine director at the centre here, tells me that for many kids they need them longer. They have the ability at that centre to change their custody, which they can't do for adults anyway. So the maximum sentence could be six years.
They should be allowed to have them during the entire time of their youth, and if during that time of intensive counselling we have services on the outside, the facility has the ability to let them go.
I agree with people at the centre that sometimes they just can't work with them. They get kids in there for property offences who should probably be at outpost camps, and they don't get them for long enough because it's not appropriate for the judge to sentence them to that long a sentence. So they can't do very much for them. So you get the kids in a peer situation where they play off each other and become big shots and they don't belong in custody anyway.
So I think those amendments on first- and second-degree murder will give back some public confidence in the law, give the law some some respect. It has to make common sense and be fair.
In the average person's mind right now, the perception of the Young Offenders Act is that it's a joke, but I can tell you respectfully that in my view it isn't a joke. It has lots of teeth, and to make it tougher on paper will create a paper tiger.
I think I've made my point. The answer is not locking them up, the answer is counselling services. A few fine-tuning amendments in the area of how long they can stay in jail and maybe a fine-tuning amendment that would help social services and the police have a legal basis for detention of kids under the age of 12 on a short-term, temporary basis before a foster placement is found for them would be good things to do with the act.
Aside from that, the act has lots of teeth, but it doesn't have the teeth where they are needed, which is in the area of real money to be transferred to youth probation - proactive, full-time probation officers who work hand in hand with community justice groups and who feed those groups cases and get people one on one to take those kids here out on the land.
I could end with what I began with. We know our offenders. It's different from Calgary. It's different from Toronto.
My dad lives in Toronto, and when I was a kid growing up we used to sleep out on the side veranda, but now we're afraid, so we lock all the doors. We lock the doors here for other reasons. Even Inuit lock the doors now. Nobody wants to be bothered by drunks walking into their house.
We know these kids. We know their families. We know that here, if money is put into probation, reconciliation can work. Full-time probation officers can go next door and talk to the victims and can get the kids and the victims together, and they will get together. Most of the victims are people who know the kids also, and that's a big difference.
It means that because we know the offenders, because our population is so small, it's one of the few places where, if we put those efforts and get those financial resources in that direction, youth crime will go down.
Actually, statistically it has gone down.
.1110
Quebec is one of the provinces that has taken the money, not in the north but in the south, and put it into counselling. It hasn't dumped it all into jails. I think you'll see that it makes a difference in crime statistics in southern Quebec.
I've taken much more than my time. Sharing my time with me are Josie Papatsie and Francis Piugattuk. I know that youth who get into trouble don't listen to me very much, but they would listen to someone like Francis and they do listen to Josie.
Josie told me the other day about some experience with kids he was taking out on the land. These were so-called bad kids who were very helpful on the land. Because we know them, we know they have potential.
I will take direction from you, Madam Chair, as to whether I should pass the microphone over or whether you or your colleagues wish to ask questions.
The Chair: If Mr. Papatsie has something to add, we'd like to hear it.
Mr. Papatsie: [Witness speaks in Inuktitut]
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Papatsie.
We have a limited amount of time for questions. Mr. Ramsay, five minutes, please.
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Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I thank you for coming and speaking to us. It's unfortunate that we have so little time to ask you questions and get the information that your experiences and your understanding and wisdom would allow us to accumulate.
I sense in you, sir, a degree of frustration with the system. You referred to the act as a good act. Yet it's considered to be a joke because there aren't the resources to enforce the powers under section 20.
I once was told by a person that the Soviet Union had one of the most democratic constitutions in the world but that it simply wasn't used, it wasn't enforced. It's like giving someone a rifle and telling them to go hunting without any ammunition. I share that with you.
I have only five minutes. I have many questions I'd like to ask you.
The first question that came to mind as you were speaking to us was this: do the cultural differences here offer opportunities that may not be offered in the southern communities? In other words - you touched on the cultural differences - do they provide opportunities here that the act is not recognizing and that are being missed? Could you comment on and expand on that within the five minutes I have?
Mr. Sharkey: The short answer is yes. It is not directly related to the act. It is presumptuous of me to speak a little bit about Inuit culture. The longer I live here the more I realize how little I know. But the short answer is yes, because the majority of the population is one culture. Because within that culture we, Inuit and non-Inuit, know the offender and we know his family, we believe that the offender will respond more readily to probation if he's committing offences that are his first offences and he's very young and hanging around with the drug dealers and stuff like that.
He might not respond well to the qallunaaq or non-Inuit probation officer right away. He may go out of court laughing at the judge's sentence, but the judge's sentence is designed to get him to stop hanging around the drug dealers.
The probation officer will know that. If the probation officer has the time and the resources to refer that boy and require him to go and live at the camp for a while, we believe that when the boy gets to the camp or he's told to spend time with certain Inuit that the probation officer thinks will do him good because the probation officer has talked to his family and his father said, ``I've got no influence on the boy; maybe he should go down to the camp for a month with Gisa'', it might make a difference.
We believe that because it's the same culture - and obviously there are understandings among people that I don't have.... Because of that shared cultural value, because he's put under the supervision of someone he knows, not a stranger from a different culture.... The person who takes him to the camp under the direction of the probation officer knows the boy's family and knows the troubles the kid has had. We think that's the equivalent of a very high-performance drug and alcohol program as you might see in some of the movies, where the counsellor is very talented and can get to the bottom of the problem.
I think the RCMP would agree with me that there's more chance that this kid is going to respond if he's taken away from the environment and if he's with people of his own culture and sees a different life that he's never seen before.
.1120
The short answer is yes. Because there is one culture there's more chance of success, and because we're a small population we know everyone.
In Rankin Inlet, as I'm sure Mr. Anawak would agree, a young offender who's sniffing a lot might need help to stop sniffing. But if he's sent to an outpost camp for a long period of time and his head clears out, he has a better chance of not sniffing again, just by spending time with people there, just by seeing a different lifestyle. That's something I think we don't have in Toronto or Vancouver, even though he's closer to the crime. I mean, when he comes back to town he can't escape staying around the drug dealer places. They're going to be around. Those same influences and those same friends are going to be there. But he's seen something different and it's a little easier for him to break the cycle.
In the bigger cities, if he's taken into custody for a while and then comes back to his community.... For example, the probation officer where I worked in Saskatoon can require that he live with a family at the other side of town, like a social service placement, so he gets away from his old friends and goes to a new school. That increases the chance that he will not reoffend, but it's not as good as being among your own, having your own work with you to change you. We know it has worked from the outpost camp. We've seen it. But the camp was closed down.
It's a long answer, but that's my answer.
The Chair: Mr. Gallaway, you're sharing your time with Mr. Anawak.
Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): I have just one quick question regarding the outpost camps because, as you're aware, there are certain cries in this country for boot camps. I take it that an outpost camp is more of a time out, if I can sort of use some of the jargon of the psychological world. It's a place where you integrate people back into the values of the society. I wonder if you can describe to us, then, the difference between an outpost camp and a boot camp.
Mr. Sharkey: I think that at an outpost camp a boy - mostly it's boys - gets a chance to see and watch a different lifestyle that he's only heard about before, maybe from his grandfather, which of course he laughs at now anyway. But he's never seen it, has never been on the land, because his mom and dad drink a lot. He gets to see and observe.
I have only been at outpost camps and camping half a dozen times in the ten years I've been here, and I'm amazed at what I do see. You see an entire learning process going on with very few words spoken. Josie Papatsie took some kids out a couple of weeks ago and he told us they are very helpful kids. They help with the ropes. They help on the boat. They do a lot of stuff.
A boot camp, I happen to believe, is probably - again, it doesn't need changes to the act - a good idea in the south for, I think, especially kids who actually want it. If you go to a correctional centre in the south and you take some of the offenders who are locked up in youth facilities and they're 15 or 16 years old - they've been stealing cars and supplying stolen cars to stolen-car rings, small-time trafficking, that kind of stuff - and their parents are probably petty criminals as well, they really want something different. We all know that. To give them this option, this artificial structure of something.... You're in jail but we're going to give you a uniform. We're going to give you a chance to prove you're somebody. This is a military-type challenge. I think it's probably a good idea.
I don't know if it will work as well if you take all of the offenders and turn a facility per se into a boot camp. I'll bet that if you make the boot camp aspect voluntary, you'll see a lot of kids go into it. With those who do there's a chance they will not reoffend. But there is some proposal in Ontario to pretty well turn all the facilities into boot camps, and I think that is probably a mistake. But they're far different from outpost camps.
.1125
One of the good things I can tell you they did in Ontario was to pull the plug on cable television. I was at the adult correctional centre here about four years ago. I don't go there very often. I was there over a lunch hour and I was in the remand centre interviewing a bunch of prisoners. The remand centre is a place where there's no program. I walked from the little area I was in to the next prisoner. I was sort of locked up with him, but I had a little room. Do you know what they were watching on TV? They were watching a girl getting stabbed and raped - on television, on the cable.
.1130
Insensitivity - it's a terrible thing. Because of cable TV, we now have the first copycat crimes on the island. I don't know if this committee has the legislative power to pull the plug on cable TV.
The Chair: [Inaudible - Editor] ...personal goal of pulling the plug on cable TV.
Mr. Anawak.
Mr. Anawak (Nunatsiaq): [Member speaks in native language]
The Chair: Thank you.
Thank you very much for taking the time to come to join us today and give us your assistance. We appreciate it.
We'll rise for a minute while our next witnesses come forward.
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.1145
The Chair: From Health and Social Services alcohol and drug treatment centre, we now have Dorothy Kunuk and Kevin Mason.
Welcome. Did you have a presentation? Go ahead, Kevin.
Mr. Kevin Mason (Baffin Regional Treatment Centre, Department of Health and Social Services, Government of the Northwest Territories): Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to present this morning.
The Chair: Thanks for coming.
Mr. Mason: I've been invited to come to give the committee a little information about alcohol and drug referrals in the Baffin and what we have available to us as resources. I work with the Department of Health and Social Services at the regional office in Iqaluit. I'm responsible for working with the alcohol and drug projects. We have 10 of these in the Baffin communities.
The community projects will see prospective clients and make a determination in consultation with me about who is a good candidate for a drug and alcohol program. Now, I'll let the committee know that at present for young people in the Baffin we don't have anything we can refer to that will be culturally appropriate and in the Inuktitut language. All we have right now for referrals for young people for any kind of solvent, drug or alcohol treatments would be Northern Addiction Services in Yellowknife. They offer a really good program in Yellowknife. But again it's in English and it's not in a cultural environment appropriate for young Inuk youth from the Baffin.
Occasionally we'll refer south, but southern referrals don't happen very often. We're trying to utilize beds we have in northern treatment centres as often as possible. We're lucky enough right now to have the treatment centre in Apex, but at present they don't have a component for youth, although Dorothy will discuss plans that may address this.
It is expensive for a youth from the Baffin to go to a treatment centre either in the south or in Yellowknife. I just gave an example on my handout here that to send a youth, for example, from Pond Inlet to Yellowknife for treatment could cost up to $2,700 compared to what it would cost if we had a facility to refer to in Iqaluit, which would again be more appropriate referral. Even for a referral to a Baffin treatment centre, the cost is much less than half. Again, hopefully this treatment could be done in Inuktitut and in a cultural environment that would be more conducive to proper treatment for youth from the Baffin.
This is really all I had to say. I would certainly like to answer any questions, and Dorothy will talk more about what is available in Iqaluit.
The Chair: Thanks.
Ms Dorothy Kunuk (Executive Director, Baffin Regional Treatment Centre, Department of Health and Social Services, Government of the Northwest Territories): Good morning. My name is Dorothy Kunuk and I'm the executive director for Inuusiqsiurbik, the Baffin regional alcohol and drug treatment centre here in Iqaluit.
Inuusiqsiurbik is incorporated under the Societies Act of the Government of the Northwest Territories and is funded by the Department of Health and Social Services. It is dedicated to providing effective six-week treatment appropriate to the culture of the eastern Arctic for alcohol and drug-dependent individuals.
Effective October 2, the treatment centre is to open officially as the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centre. The centre is only two years old. There has been some upgrading of program staff as well. We are pleased to offer treatment for anybody living in the eastern Arctic and for people from Ottawa, or from Montreal, or from another southern community who are Inuk and eligible to get in for a treatment program.
In the future we are planning to set up different programs such as youth treatment programs. We are looking into substance abuse, alcohol and drug treatment for the young people within the Baffin, because we don't have those resources available, especially in the Baffin. Kevin mentioned the big cost for a young person to be sent, for instance, from Pond Inlet to Yellowknife.
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One of the goals the treatment centre is looking into is to have other services available for adults, maybe for survivors of sexual abuse, and other programs we can look into, depending on what will be needed in the north.
We still upgrade staff performance in terms of education. We have some training available to the staff from the Arctic College as well as other possibilities out of the community for the staff to get further training. We also have the social work program and alcohol and drug certificate program at the Arctic College that we can access as well.
You are given the information about Inuusiqsiurbik. It's not quite updated yet. This is the first one that came into effect not too long ago. It is a 14-bed alcohol and drug treatment centre.
Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you very much, Dorothy and Mr. Mason. Do you have the authority and the resources to work with the parents of young children that you find in need of assistance? Is there the authority to involve them? Second, do you have the resources to do so?
Mr. Mason: Perhaps I could speak to that. In the community the drug and alcohol workers work very much in conjunction with the local social worker. For a young person who comes in.... Usually, the referral to the alcohol and drug worker will come through the social worker. So the social worker for the young person would have the authority to work with the parents and include them in the treatment plan. That's the way it would go normally. As far as the drug and alcohol worker is concerned, most of his or her authority would come from working with the social worker.
Ms Kunuk: Within our centre right now we have qualified staff who are certified in the area of alcohol and drug treatment. In the long run we are planning to have family counsellors to be able to work at the treatment centre with a view to getting family programs in place as well.
In the south, if anybody goes to treatment centres for treatment there is what's called a family program within five days. We don't have that resource available at this time to give to Inuusiqsiurbik, but it is something we are looking into.
Mr. Ramsay: Maybe this is not the proper question for you folks, but I have always found it amazing in isolated areas like this that drug trafficking cannot be eliminated. The drugs can come in only through limited sources, yet there doesn't seem to be an ability for the authorities to reduce or stop it. You'd think it could only come in by plane or perhaps sometimes by boat.
Do you have any thoughts on that? If we could stop the drugs from flowing in here it could make your job an awful lot easier and would certainly enhance the quality of life here if drugs weren't being used and abused. Do you have any thoughts on this that you'd like to share with the committee?
Ms Kunuk: I don't think you can really do anything to prevent those drugs from coming into the community. The only way I can see for the treatment centre to help is to educate people about the effects of the use of alcohol and drugs and what they do within their system. By doing that there will be more awareness given to the people, especially to Inuit people, for them to be aware of it. Even though you limit it and even though you might apply all the resources available within the community to stop alcohol and drugs getting in, there is still a way for them to get into the community.
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Mr. Ramsay: You feel that any resources directed at trying to eliminate or reduce the flow of drugs into this area ought to be directed elsewhere because of the difficulties encountered in doing it, that it is an impossible task. Do you feel it's impossible to do that?
Ms Kunuk: As for exploring existing options, I think there might be a possibility, but I think it's for the government or other people in the helping professions to come up with ideas or solutions for that, because as a centre and as a helping profession you can only do so much to help another person in need.
Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Mason, do you have any thoughts on that?
Mr. Mason: I'd like to speak to that. Prior to living in Iqaluit I was lucky enough to live in the communities in Baffin for a number of years as a social worker. Doing social work in the communities, that was always a frustration.
What we found by working with community groups in Baffin was to try to put as much responsibility for that part back on the community, that the community had a lot of knowledge and a lot of resources for knowing what was going on. We felt that if the community wanted to heal itself and become a drug-free community, they had to work with the RCMP and with the social services as a whole, that it couldn't point fingers at this as an RCMP concern, a social work concern or a nurse's concern, or whatever, but the community as a whole had to own that. I think in some of the communities in the Baffin we're starting to see that happen. That is the way it's going to happen. From my point of view, pumping more territorial money or resources in.... I think the resources are in place and communities have to work as a whole to help one another for community wellness and for the community to move along.
A lot of times people are afraid to talk. They don't want to say what's going on, but people in the community know what's going on. They know who is doing this and maybe how to bring it to an end. But unless the community works as a whole, it's not going to happen.
Mr. Ramsay: It's not really the result of people in the community not wanting to do it. It's just a matter of a full community effort directed toward eliminating that kind of trafficking within the community. Is that what you're suggesting?
Mr. Mason: Yes, from what I've seen. And individuals have to realize that they're not alone in this, that if the community as a whole is supporting this, I think they're going to feel freer to talk and to help resolve the problem.
Mr. Ramsay: So really in order to eliminate drug trafficking and drug use, it has to have the cooperation of at least key people within the community.
Mr. Mason: I've seen that from my experience in the community, working with child welfare, with young offender offences, with all these things. When the community gets mobilized to help as a whole, a lot of good things happen. But again, if you're just going to leave it to two RCMP members in a big community or one or two social workers or a few people, it is not going to happen. But when the community itself gets mobilized and says it is not going to put up with this, that they need to help solve these problems and work with the specialists involved, I think a lot of good things happen.
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Maloney, did you have any questions?
Mr. Maloney (Erie): I'm a little confused. In your treatment program, you have 14 beds. Is that strictly for adults and you hope to get into the youth treatment?
Ms Kunuk: Yes.
Mr. Maloney: How about the referrals? How do you get new residents, your clients, your patients?
Ms Kunuk: We get the referrals from the community's alcohol and drug counsellors. We get referrals from other places. Kevin looks after those referrals. They have to go through him in order for any clients to be approved within our centre. But we also have the possibility for clients who are interested to get into the program to have a direct contact with the centre. So we do an over-the-phone assessment, but all the referrals have to go through the regional office.
Mr. Maloney: And they're six-week programs.
Ms Kunuk: Yes.
Mr. Maloney: How successful is your program? What are your recidivism rates, your failure rates?
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Ms Kunuk: The centre is only two years old. There is a lot of education going on by letting that information out to the public, because at this time that centre is only for alcohol treatment for the six weeks. There is no family program involved in that. So we're getting lots of information out to the public to make them aware of the centre and to let them know about our future goals. Lots of the things are in process, because the centre is quite new.
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Mr. Maloney: You don't have family treatment, where mother and father and child could all come to your centre for substance abuse problems?
Ms Kunuk: Not yet. We don't have any new treatment centres here in the Baffin. That is one of the things we are looking into. In the new year, maybe in the summertime, we are planning to start a family program where the spouse will be coming to the treatment for maybe five days, less or more, depending, and we will have the spouse more involved within the treatment centre. Then later we would have youth program treatment going on, and then, in the long run, have survivors of substance abuse be able to get help at the centre.
Mr. Maloney: As an interim measure, is there alcohol abuse treatment in the school? Is there any counselling of any nature? Is it a subject matter that's dealt with in the schools, in the education centres?
Ms Kunuk: Each school has a school community counsellor. Those are the key people we can make use of, and I am sure that the school community counsellors are giving information to the students at the schools about those things.
We are asking the public and we've been having meetings with different agencies. We have invited medical doctors to go out and see the centre when we don't have any clients, and the centre has been getting more publicity lately.
Mr. Maloney: I have no more questions, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Mr. Anawak, do you have any questions?
Mr. Anawak: I'm sorry, I missed part of the presentation.
With the centre doing what they can, is there a waiting list? Is there a need to expand? I believe there is, because your centre serves the eastern Arctic. For us, there are a lot of people, but in comparison to the south it's not a lot. Is there a waiting list for people wanting to get into the program, not just from Iqaluit but from the eastern Arctic?
Ms Kunuk: Because our treatment centre is new, at the moment we don't have a waiting list, but in the near future we are expecting to have one. It will depend on what kinds of services and programs will be available at those times.
Mr. Gallaway: Earlier this morning we heard from a witness about the magnitude of substance abuse. In the opinion of the witness, that has occurred for a lot of reasons. One is unemployment; another is perhaps lack of things to do, lack of recreational facilities; and in many cases it might be tied to what is called post-traumatic stress. This is a harsh environment and sometimes people have had great problems in their life and now they're trying to drink just to forget the past or some particular occurrence.
I'm wondering what you can do in a six-week period with someone who has taken to substance abuse for very profound reasons? Can you in fact end their substance abuse problem in six weeks?
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Mr. Mason: The whole thing with the treatment centre in Iqaluit, or any treatment centre, the projects in the communities I am responsible for - and I spend most of my time working with the alcohol and drug workers in the community - is that the pre-treatment part of any program is vital. So you work with the client for a number of sessions or a number of months before you identify whether this person is indeed ready for a treatment program. The mistake that has been made for so long is that it is like a service station: you drive in one end and after six weeks you drive out the other end and you're completely cured.
That's not the way it works. I think a lot of people are pulled into that thing. They won't do any work beforehand, but they think that they'll come down and six weeks later they're going to be all cured and will go back and everything will be great.
We're trying to make the projects and the alcohol and drug workers in the community understand that the work we do in pre-treatment will ensure what kind of success they will have during the six weeks at the treatment centre, but when they come back to the community, the post-treatment, the follow-up after that, be it AA or whatever, is vital for a number of months or even years to keep that person sober or whatever. The whole package goes together.
In a six-week program, as good as the treatment centre may be, all of the components go together to make some success for the person. Right now we are having a hard time doing the pre-treatment and the post-treatment. Dorothy and the centre are trying to do their best in six weeks, but we have a lot of work to do on both ends - if that is any good to you.
Mr. Gallaway: It was.
Mr. Ramsay: I want to follow up on Mr. Maloney's question about awareness in the schools.
When my one son was in grade 6, he had a teacher who used to tell the kids about the dangers of smoking and drug abuse and alcohol, and so on. He used to bring in pictures of a healthy lung and one that wasn't so healthy - and if ever I can get my hands on those pictures, I'm going to give them to Roger Gallaway. My son told me that it had such an impact on him that he knew of the dangers. He was very aware of the dangers. At least he had that awareness. Whether he ever will indulge in smoking, or whatever, later in life is another matter; but he was made very aware of the dangers to him, and so were the other students.
Would you recommend that this kind of information should be part of our educational system?
Mr. Mason: Certainly. The alcohol and drug projects in the communities to which I keep referring are funded by a contribution agreement from the Department of Health and Social Services. So when I get a proposal from the community, they spell out to me what they're going to do for the next fiscal year to warrant my funding their projects. Much of it is an education component, where they're going to do some work in the schools, they're going to do some community awareness nights, they're going to participate in the National Addictions Awareness Week in November, and so on.
A lot of this is done at the community level - in the school, in the community - so people in the community are having whatever is done in the school for the education program. But in 10 of the 14 communities in the Baffin and most of the communities in the Northwest Territories there are projects funded by Health and Social Services, who have an education component in their contribution agreement, to go out into the schools and into the community and educate.
A lot of our young people who come before us are in trouble with the Young Offenders Act. A lot of them are committing crimes as a result of abuse problems. So that education component is very important. The schools recognize it and are doing something with it, but also the alcohol and drug centres I'm involved with are certainly trying their best to address it.
Mr. Ramsay: I'd like to ask another question.
My son's grade 6 teacher simply took it upon himself to teach our kids against the effects of substance abuse, but it's not part of the education program. You answered my earlier question about eliminating drugs from a community; it takes the whole community to do that.
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Most parents do an excellent job of raising their children. Is it because the problem that we're discussing is really a relatively small problem? It's serious but relatively small in terms of being in a minority position population-wise. Is that what we're battling, a lack of concern in the minds of the majority who do not see this as a problem because it's not affecting me right now? Yes, I might go out once every year and find my tires slashed. I'm upset for a day or so and then I move on to other things.
Do you find it a problem that we're not emphasizing this in the schools, that it would be an excellent preventive program to emphasize substance abuse in the schools by the teacher, not by some stranger? We heard this yesterday, I think, where you need the teacher - the teacher is a friend of the student - to tell the student about these dangers. Do you think we should be emphasizing this within our educational system? Should it be mandatory that teachers be trained in order to do this, so that at least our children are warned and they're armed with that information as they move into their older years?
Mr. Mason: I certainly agree with that. I guess I'm a little bit at a disadvantage here. My oldest daughter is in kindergarten this year. I thought the school was doing more in regard to this. I know what my alcohol and drug workers are doing to carry this out in the community. But I thought there was a component in the school already doing that stuff. But if there's not, there certainly should be.
Mr. Ramsay: Not in my area.
Mr. Mason: I think that certainly is a benefit.
Mr. Ramsay: Dorothy, do you have anything you'd like to add to that?
Ms Kunuk: I just wanted to say that we have a bunch of kids in grades 4 and 5, 14 of them who visited the centre this morning before I came here. It's something that the children themselves had asked about. What is this colourful place? As you can see in the picture, it's very colourful. The Apex school is very close to this building. The children have never been inside. They are curious to hear what the centre is all about, so they came in for a tour this morning. Then we explained what it was about. They were introduced to some of the staff, told a little bit about what they did, and so on. I answer any questions they might have.
To your question, part of the answer that I can give from my own perspective is, if those educational things are to be done within the school system, there are adults who do not believe in treatment for alcohol or educating children on how to use alcohol or drugs. Some of them grew up seeing their parents drinking or using drugs, and for some children that might have been a normal life for them to experience. So if I'm a teacher who doesn't believe in treatment, how effective am I going to be as a teacher to teach the children about those things?
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you.
The Chair: Are there any other questions?
Thank you very much for coming to tell us about your agency. You're a help to us, and we appreciate it.
Yes, Dorothy.
Ms Kunuk: I forgot to mention that the treatment centre has been asked about the accreditation. Within the NWT government there is no such thing as an accreditation policy. It doesn't exist yet in the north. So at the treatment centre in Apex we are able to offer different treatment plans for young people, for adults, or for anybody. We can do those things as long as we don't have the proper guidelines to be accredited within the NWT government. That's one of the things that should be clarified to the people, because if you have a treatment centre in the south you have to be accredited. That's what your government says. But up here it doesn't say that. The Government of the Northwest Territories is in the process of making those policies. So once they come out, we will see what they say and we will follow those to have the accreditation to be a treatment centre of any kind.
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The Chair: Thank you very much.
We'll rise now until 1 p.m.