Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe the motion that’s in front of us is clearly there for a reason. We have a lot of facilities that we’ve built in the Northwest Territories — young offenders’ facilities — regardless if it’s in Inuvik or Yellowknife or another place in the Northwest Territories.

We have to, at some point, assess what the use of those facilities are, what alternative uses we can get from these facilities, instead of building facilities for the sake of building facilities and then we find out later, “Well, sorry, you don’t have the numbers we want. We’re going to clean house, get rid of the whole staff, and then we’re basically re-profile it for something after the fact.”

I think as a government we have to determine usage of public facilities. We’re spending millions of dollars on public facilities, and we’re finding out after the fact that we can’t use them. Somba K’e Lodge is a good example. The Arctic Tern facility in Inuvik is one.

There’s no reason that this government should have the ability to re-profile facilities when we realize that we either are forced to by federal legislation or by way of changes, by needs.

I think it’s great to see fewer people in our facilities. This shows that fewer people are in our Justice correctional systems, and if anything, it’s good to see numbers go down.

But again, Mr. Chairman, I think it’s crucial that we as government stop spending money to the tune of, you know, $70 million for a brand-new jail to $12 million for young offenders’ facilities. Yet we have empty facilities that this government has spent tens of millions of dollars on sitting empty, and we’re not using them to the best use of the public funds. That’s the point that we’re talking about under this motion.

So with that, Mr. Chair, I will be supporting the motion.