Mr. Speaker, there is an agreement, as I indicated earlier, that we have signed with the federal government. The federal legislation says, in so many words, that as much as possible the people who are to serve time in a federal institution should serve time as close to their home community as possible. We have difficulty with that in the Northwest Territories. We have limited bed space for inmates who require a certain level of security. In the case of inmates who are unilingual, for instance, inmates who are not considered to be a threat to the community or other inmates, in the opinion of the federal government, are best served by being placed in the Northwest Territories. We have agreed to a maximum of 30 units per year to take those inmates on behalf of the federal government and have them serve their time up here. There are many inmates here who serve almost double of what we have agreed to. We have gone beyond what we have agreed to take from the federal government, so there is some discussion on updating this agreement. We had discussions with the Solicitor General about one month ago in Ottawa regarding that particular agreement. That is what the policy of this government is.
My intent, as a Minister, is to come to some agreement with the federal government to take all federal inmates from the north, who are spending time in the south, who we can handle. We would be very interested in pursuing this and I have indicated this to the federal government. We would be interested in negotiating some arrangement with the federal government so that all federal inmates, except for the exceptional cases, should be brought home to serve their sentences in the Northwest Territories. We should, as a government, look towards making the type of facilities they require available as soon as possible. Thank you.
