Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find Mr. Dent's responses to some of the Members very interesting. I want to say I appreciate the comments of the other Members, specifically with regard to one area which is of importance to me; the remand closure in Hay River. I do appreciate the comments that were made.

The Minister keeps saying, on the transportation costs, that the RCMP says it's not going to cost any extra; therefore, it is so. Well, they told it to the Audit Bureau, so for sure it's not going to cost any more. I think that is a very shallow response; the Audit Bureau said that. There has been no good analysis applied to that question. To just keep saying well the costs aren't going to go up; I'm sorry, that is superficial, it's not satisfactory.

To the other issue, Mr. Chairman, that we could realize all the savings right now if we just did away with the 5.5 jobs. I think the Minister needs to look at this in the context of the operations of the department for which he is responsible.

Don't do me any favours; just look at what works within your own operations. That is what I would suggest. I would also suggest that hauling people from every community south of the lake to be remanded in custody in Yellowknife is not a very practical thought, for a lot of reasons, Mr. Chairman.

I haven't heard one Member from this side of the House speak in favour of that. The Minister talks about consultation with communities. He says that they didn't need to do consultation with communities because he is consulting with the MLAs. What did the MLAs have to say? The MLAs said leave it alone. We have a billion-dollar budget here and the MLAs said leave it alone. I don't know what it's going to take to get that message through to Minister Dent, in terms of targets for reduction initiatives, whatever it is that he is trying to spend.

A lot of things were in the business plans, Mr. Chairman, which didn't get carried out or acted upon, because the Members said no. Reinvest, spend money in this area, this is important to us, we represent the people, this is our input, this is our opinion. Most often, the government responded accordingly, but not in this instance; they did not. The fact that we even had to have the discussion around the Hay River and Inuvik court registries was an exercise that never should have had to take place in the first place. Here we are talking about a $41 million court services building in Yellowknife, and we just barely saved our courthouse in Hay River and Inuvik. How regressive can we be when it comes to regional services and delivery of programs and services and jobs close to where the people are? It just frustrates me that we even had to have that discussion. But we did, and we managed to salvage those services in those communities which, I suppose, I should be grateful.

It is not about us. It is about the people we serve. The services should be close to the people. You have a great piece of infrastructure in Hay River with the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. People serve sentences there. People do remand there. They are close to their families. People come to Hay River for other reasons. They come there to have their vehicles serviced. They come there to shop. If they have family members in SMCC, they might go see them, and it maintains a tie for those people with their families in their communities.

For some reason, for which we will never have an accounting, the North Slave Correctional Centre was overbuilt. We put too much infrastructure in the capital. We spent too much money on it. The cost overruns were enormous. And yet, still, we are going to keep paying the price for that in the communities. It was bad enough. It was offensive enough in the first place. But now we are going to suffer these losses in the region on top of it, which just even makes it more untenable. I would like to know where the accountability is for the management of this department. Here we are, as well, shutting down the Dene K'onia, Mr. Chair, to bring our young offenders up here and put them right beside an adult facility; open custody young offenders being incarcerated right next to the big house, so to speak, the maximum security corrections facility in the Northwest Territories. What kind of message is that to open custody kids? I argued about this before it was built. I just don't know what the thinking was that went into that. If we wanted to argue for economies, we would put everything in Yellowknife. We wouldn't bother putting anything in the regions. We could just build this super jail, this super courthouse, super educational facilities and a super college. We would just put it all right here. But I thought our government had a philosophy of offering services and programs close to the people in the regions that we serve. If we don't have that, well, I guess we should just say so.

From a dollar and an economies point of view, now that we have overbuilt this monster thing here in Yellowknife, now we have to feed it. Now we have to put people here to justify it. For a small amount, really, that we are talking about, because the Audit Bureau came back and said if you are not going to eliminate the 5.5 positions, you are really talking about $267,000. Like I said, I still challenge that number because I don't believe that transportation costs are $18,000. I don't care what the RCMP said about it, because nobody has shown me the numbers to prove that is the truth or the facts. It says there was no

historical data examined on which to establish that fact. The Audit Bureau report says that. So I am just amazed, Mr. Chair, at the lack of responsiveness to what the Members are saying here. This is a minority government, I guess. We choose from amongst ourselves. We put people in charge of certain areas of operation, and it is a system that we try to make work. I have a hard time to justify the lack of attention to what the Members are saying on this one.

Mr. Chair, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions. On April 1st, how exactly are the casual employees of the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre going to be dealt with with respect to their employment? Thank you, Mr. Chair.