Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the children, the numbers have stayed quite stable since 2004-05. The average number of children in care back then was 39, the next year it was 39, and the year after, 36. We are projecting for 2009-10, 35. So those numbers have stayed the same. The number of adult placements has increased over the last number of years, but it was 27 in 2004-05, then 29 the year after, 35 in 2006-07, the year after, and then 48 in 2007-08, 51 in 2008-09, and 46 is projected.

Mr. Chairman, the people that are placed in these facilities are usually from either severe disability and who require care that we cannot provide in the North, or mental health disorders and other behavioural issues. I can assure the Member that we don’t know exactly why the numbers are increasing, but much of the cost has to do with not so much the number but the cost of care, because lots of these institutional settings have increased their rates. Also, we do review every file and, in fact, when we opened the Hay River assisted living facility we reviewed every file that was down south

to see if we could repatriate them. We have repatriated some of them and since then we have been able to avoid placing adults down south because we were able to direct them to Hay River.

This is something that is under close scrutiny in the department to make sure that we don’t use out-of-NWT placements unless we absolutely have to. Thank you.