I believe the other two projects that we were looking at, were talking about realizing that we were in a financial crunch when it comes to capital projects. One of the initiative
we were looking at was a P3 process to look at some of these projects. But in the case of this project, it was going to be a retrofit of $4 million spread out over a period of time of $24 million, but for myself, I support the initiative of renovating the existing facility and also realizing that we are limited on the amount of capital projects we would like to see in the Northwest Territories. But for us to put all our eggs in one basket, I do not find that being fair to the other regions or communities in the new Western Territory.
We sit here, we talk about community justice and also trying to get communities more involved in the justice systems in our communities and trying to deal with those problems at home. But I believe that the amount of money that is going to be spent here, all we are doing is basically entrenching the concept that there will be a trend that is starting to institutionalize people instead of trying to help them and deal with their problems in the communities and also deal with the problems with the families and finding new mechanisms. There was a report in the past where it talked about on the land programs to get people housed in facilities.
There were two areas located, one was in my riding of MacKenzie Delta and Aklavik. There was supposedly $500,000 that was going to be put into that project, which was $50,000 put into planning, and that was the end of it. We talk about trying to find new ways and new methods of dealing with our problems. I believe we have to put more emphasis in the area of prevention than basically institutionalizing people. I would like to ask the Minister, is that opportunity still going to be available to other regions and other constituencies to consider those community correction programs to look at on the land programs to house people in camps and whatnot than have them put in all this facility?