Mr. Chair, the reason I ask is that the Tl'oondih Healing Society ran programs before on behalf of this government, but they had to break even based on the number of clients that they’ve run through that program. Their break-even point

was about $175 per inmate just for the program, for a two-week program. They were almost losing money. Just to maintain the program, you had to have, I think it was 16 people at each of those programs to make it economically viable to run a business. The business has to do it in regard to the number of intakes they take, making sure they’ve got a dollar value for each person in the program and you had to break even. We’re expecting the private sector, the NGOs to have to work on a break-even business plan. Why is this government not doing the same thing? Yet we’re the ones who are telling groups that we’re only going to pay you $175 per person per program and that’s all we’re going to guarantee. I think on that basis, that you know that the cost to run programs is being run a lot cheaper by the private sector than it is in the government. I find it kind of odd that you can have four inmates in a program which is costing $2 million with 14 staff, but cost per inmate based on four people, I mean, that’s a lot of money you’re spending to basically operate and functionally maintain that type of an operation.

I’d like to know...You know, the frustration that people have just trying to run programs through this government or even put in a proposal to this government to run a simple program like an alcohol and drug program or an on-the-land program, even when you talked about the wilderness camp program, these people are struggling just to provide that service because they have costs, but as a government we only guarantee them based on cost per person. I’d like to know is that a feasible way of running a business if we’re telling the private sector well, we’ll only give you so much per person but yet we’re spending a lot more money per person based on the cost to maintain and operate these facilities.