This is an extremely elaborate facility to be built. I don’t know what it topped out at — $50 million or so. There were things designed into the building for meeting together. I definitely know there was an aboriginal healing meeting room component. I toured the facility; I saw it.

If you’ve got this kind of money to throw around, I would rather see it go into some kind of programming. It isn’t about the stones and the bricks and mortar. That isn’t what’s going to heal people. If you want to bring people in and have elders come and talk to the people, put the money into programming.

SMCC in Hay River has an area out back of the facility. We were just there; we had a tour of it. The Minister was just down there. The Minister of Public Works was there too.

They have an aboriginal healing and spiritual program area. Just about everything in there was donated. They have a tent frame, furniture, a big wood stove and different little cabins and stuff. People actually became resourceful and put some materials together. They built a very interesting area where the inmates were involved in actually building this, and they take some pride of ownership in this.

I don't think we need to put this kind of capital money into something like this. There are all kinds of different ways of accomplishing some infrastructure, if that's what they need. There’s nothing stopping them from getting materials and building something that they want. That's entirely what they did in Hay River. There's a tent frame, a tipi, a cabin, and a coordinator. They take road trips; they go to communities. They do all kinds of things. It’s all about programming.

So to spend over $200,000 on infrastructure, no, I can't support the expenditure. I'll be voting in favour of the motion to delete.