Very quickly, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I think I’ve made my position, obviously, quite clear in the past five days. I think this is an excuse to close another facility out in the community and bring things into the central area, and I have a concern with that.
We built this facility a few years ago at a huge cost, and now we’re saying we have no use for this
facility. This facility provides good services not only to the clients who are in there but also to the community.
Again, I say at this time of restraint, when we’re talking reductions, we need to have a close look and utilize the facilities we have and not be looking at building brand-new facilities. That’s the reason I will continue to speak to the closure of Arctic Tern. It’s more than just a facility. A facility is just a building, but there’s a lot more to this facility than that. I’m afraid they’ll take the clients out of there and move them to the capital again. Then the act changes, and we’re going to have a need for a new facility. So where’s it going to go? In the meantime, they may have demolished Arctic Tern or whatever they want to do with it.
The reason I have an issue with this, Mr. Chair, is just that they use this as an opportunity to close the facility down, regardless of whether it disrupts any lives in there or not.
That’s why I’m more than happy to move this motion. It’s a recommendation to Cabinet and the department. I hope they’ll look at it very seriously, because we are quite serious about this motion.