Ms Pastoor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday the Solicitor General was kind enough to provide some responses regarding questions about the Kainai Community Corrections Society. 

I’d like to follow up today.

To the Solicitor General. This government has worked to scale back conditional sentencing and keep offenders in correctional facilities. Won’t tougher laws, the prospect of new minimum penalties, and relying on prisons as a deterrent lead to a larger custodial population?

Mr. Oberle: Well, Mr. Speaker, I suppose that’s a possibility, but these are issues under federal jurisdiction. I can’t really comment at this time what the impact will be, but certainly we will respond to whatever impact is imposed upon us. In the meantime I have to provide the facilities to house the inmates that we do have.

Ms Pastoor: The Solicitor General noted that the Kainai facility’s utilization rate was too low and that economically viable solutions needed to be found elsewhere. Did the minister or the department consider other options to closing this facility such as reclassifying the institution to hold medium security prisoners? Has anyone from the ministry ever discussed other options?

Mr. Oberle: Mr. Speaker, this is a minimum security facility; it’s not a medium security facility. The province doesn’t own the facility. The province already owns facilities that are adequate to house these inmates. Unless this is a spending day, I think the member would agree with me that I need to utilize those facilities.

Ms Pastoor: The Solicitor General wants us to believe that this is a purely economic decision not to provide funding for a facility that is an essential part of its community aimed at ameliorating the overincarceration of aboriginal offenders. It may sound like good fiscal policy, but in the long run is it really a good social policy?

Mr. Oberle: I believe it is, Mr. Speaker. I don’t see how a facility designed to house inmates in that community or any other is going to change the cultural issues around incarceration. We are providing facilities that are culturally sensitive, and I’m required to utilize those facilities to their maximum.

Alberta Hansard, March 11, 2010

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