Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since being assigned to the portfolio of Justice at the end of March, I have looked at this issue. The Members will be aware that in June of 1998, the Cabinet of the day decided to locate a new young offenders facility in Yellowknife based on recommendations from the departments in a report. The decision to locate a new facility here in Yellowknife was made in June, 1998. In the fall of 1998, in September, the Financial Management Board approved a submission by Justice to undertake major renovations to address the severe crisis at YCC, namely the overcrowding and the substandard conditions to which inmate and staff were faced with.

Since the beginning of April, I have reviewed this file on request from some Members who wondered why the previous year Cabinet had decided, without much discussion or input from Members to locate the young offenders facility in Yellowknife. I spent a number of months looking at this issue debating and discussing with the staff the merits and pros and cons of that. I also discussed the phase renovations, seven years planned renovations to YCC and was advanced the suggestion that we could save considerable money, time and disruption to staff and inmates by taking a new approach of just, as somebody said, instead of replacing your car bit by bit, just buy a whole new car. I bought the suggestion that we should just go for a whole new building of the adult correctional facility and combine that with the young offenders facility. In response to the Member's question, as the Minister responsible, I have reviewed the options of looking at relocating. It is not cost-effective. There is very little, in fact, no time left to consider other options. The Cabinet stands by the decision made. I would note under the previous Premier and previous Ministers to locate the young offenders facility here in Yellowknife and to not address relocating or building a new facility at that time, but simply keeping the adult facility here as well. There are many, many arguments to be made as to why, in the interest of the public and of the inmates and the staff of this government that the adult facility remain here and that it is the most logical location for the facility. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in a letter to the chair of the Standing Committee of Government Operations on July 27th, the Minister responsible for Justice indicates that consultants have advised that by integrating the two projects, $1.3 million could be saved in capital and $262,000 in ongoing operations and maintenance. This would also mean the young offenders would have access to better facilities such as a gymnasium and a carpentry shop. Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister is, since they brought consultants in and reviewed this from a cost saving for capital and this looks like a very thorough undertaking, it looks like a comprehensive review of things, but in that comprehensive review, did they not consider the potential further savings by relocating the facility? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department considered and continues to consider all aspects of initiative. For instance, there is an agreement to continue to take inmates for the territory of Nunavut. It means that we have to, as quickly as possible, provide adequate accommodations in an institution that we can with some dignity offer to provide to Nunavut. We are compelled by the fire marshal to provide new facilities to the young offenders within two years.

We are compelled by the shrinking financial resources of this government to look at cost savings every way possible. We look at the services that are required by the inmates. We look at the need for inmates to have some means by which family, relatives, friends can have access to the inmates by way of visiting and support. We have looked at the kind of services that are available in Yellowknife that are not available elsewhere. We have looked at a number of elements to these. Based on those, I have decided that the original Cabinet's decision to locate the young offenders facility here in Yellowknife should be honoured and not revisited. As far as I am concerned, the adult facility is located here in Yellowknife. Whether we do a major renovation or replace an existing facility piece by piece and then in the end have a whole new building, is not really that much different from doing a whole new capital project, but technically people can argue that it is but, in fact, the location of the adult facility has never been an issue and if it was, it certainly was not visited by Cabinet in June and September of 1998. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Based on the premise then that the $30 million one-time capital expenditure for the adult facility makes more economic sense than the $4 million or whatever per year over seven years and doing a piece by piece fix, let us just assume that the adult facility is here and it is going to stay here and that is a more cost-effective way of doing it on a one time as opposed to a spread over several years.

The original young offenders facility was anticipated to be P3 project, which would have not put the same amount of stress on the government's capital budget. That was the whole underlying concept of the P3 was to amortize or spread this over a longer period of time. So, why does the young offenders facility now have to be taken out of the P3 and I am sure it has to represent $5 million or $6 million regardless and put this permanent facility in here when it is still a possibility to locate a P3 project independent from this someplace else. Is the construction of a new adult facility now reliant on this P3 being pulled back and capital funds being spent on this? I am just wanting to get a better understanding of the rationale for this new multi-million dollar megaproject here in Yellowknife.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The technical aspects of the accounting can be answered by the Minister of Finance, perhaps through discussion in the standing committee. But I do know that the government has budgeted a little over $6 million for a young offenders facility and that originally $30 million was budgeted by the government in FMB. That was the amount that was decided by the Financial Management Board in September, 1998. That was not a decision based on detailed costing. When we undertook detailed costing of what it would entail to do major renovations to the adult facility over the winter, it came to light that, in fact, we would be looking at a total cost for major renovations to the adult facility at over $35 million. This was part of the reason that we looked at how we could still deliver within the financial scope of the project, how we can still, within the resources allocated, provide both a renovated facility or a replacement facility and a young offenders facility in time to meet the requirements of the fire marshal, plus, as we found out, we can do, instead of budgeting over five years and waiting to renovate, a great disruption to the staff and the inmates in the adult facility, we could do it in four years by integrating to two. This was how the work unfolded. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the original young offenders facility under a P3 was to be amortized over potentially 20 years. The renovation to the YCC was to be amortized over seven years. Now, we are going to build this $30 million project in one year. What other capital projects is this going to impact? Thirty million dollars is a megaproject by any other community standards.

Yellowknife is also talking about a new courthouse, which is another $30 million. I mean, one department alone with a $16 million capital budget from one department, even in a five year period, when in a community like mine, a $2 million project is something to celebrate, is not acceptable. I do not know how this Cabinet and how this government could rationalize that kind of infrastructure. Going back to the fact that the P3 and the renovations were going to be amortized over a longer period of time, what impact is $30 million in one shot going to have on capital projects in other communities now? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I have said, the technical information about how we are going to borrow and amortize and finance these projects that have been approved will be answered by the Minister of Finance. I do know that we have decided the young offenders facility, which was identified as a potential P3 project, was no longer considered to be viable as a P3 project by the department because we know it takes an extensive amount of time to get approval and to get these types of arrangements in place. We are compelled by the fire marshal to provide a new facility in very short order. We are also compelled by the fact that we are now integrating two facilities, one which would be a government-owned facility and it no longer lent itself to be compatible with the P3 project. That was the reason we decided not to advance the young offenders facility as a P3 project. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. In regard to the constituents I represent, there are two diverse languages, Inuvialuktun and Gwich'in, which are taught in the community of Aklavik. Yet, there is a real shortage of funds to implement these cultural programs in the educational

system. The district education authority of Aklavik has been hiring language and cultural specialists to teach local languages programs throughout the year with limited resources. Under Section 118, subsection (K1), the Education Act allows the education bodies to hire teachers or persons who are not teachers for the instruction of local programs. Can the Minister clarify if the language and cultural specialists fall under this program?