Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I talk about the Yellowknife Correctional Centre once again. It is with a heavy heart that I heard about this decision, Mr. Speaker, by the Minister of Justice. Ultimately it was the Minister of Justice that sent this proposal forward to Cabinet and his Cabinet colleagues. They in their wisdom decided to build a new facility in Yellowknife, not to renovate an old facility but to build a new facility in Yellowknife. It is also public knowledge that the majority of the dollars are going into Yellowknife at this time. Everything announced recently coming out of this government has been Yellowknife, Yellowknife, Yellowknife. Yellowknife's economy is bad, so they have to shore it up with a housing program. Yellowknife's gold mines are being threatened, so we have to help them out. Yellowknife's diamond polishing needs help, so we help that out. Now we take the government money and we spend it in our great city of Yellowknife again. I wonder whatever happened to places like Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution. Maybe they do not exist anymore. Maybe because they are outside the boundaries of the city of Yellowknife, they are not qualified anymore to put in proposals to this government. This government has shut the door on other regional centres to even bring forward a proposal to build a new correctional centre for the Northwest Territories. They have shut that door. They never even had the door open. The Minister in
his wisdom felt no one else was qualified. It is here. We will keep it here.
They even carried on further, Mr. Speaker. Before the money for that budget was approved in this Legislative Assembly, they put an ad in the Globe and Mail. That was a week ago today, an ad in the Globe and Mail. I tabled that in this House. I checked through all the newspapers in the Northwest Territories. Now they are shutting the door to northern businesses because they have not even put an ad in a northern newspaper. They have given southern businesses a hand-up against northern businesses. Maybe there are no northern businesses qualified. Maybe they have made that decision already. I do not know. But what I do know is that the government of the day and especially the Minister of Justice has forgotten that anything exists outside this Legislative Assembly and Yellowknife. They are a government for Yellowknife, not the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
--Applause