We haven’t done necessarily a cost-benefit analysis, but the department has a mandate to keep its offenders in the Northwest Territories close to their homes and close to their family, close to their culture where their family can get to them and visit them. There are other things that we have to factor in, as well, as in will other jurisdictions take our offenders.
Most jurisdictions are faced with exactly the same challenges we’re faced with, which is overcrowding. For us to try to go to other jurisdictions and stick some of our offenders there can prove to be quite complicated. But the main reason we haven’t done the cost-benefit analysis like the Member is talking about is our mandate, is let’s keep our Northerners close to home; let’s keep them in programs that are culturally relevant; let’s keep them in programs that are specific to the Northwest Territories geared for residents of the Northwest Territories. Those are important aspects of our mandate and we want to maintain that, recognizing, as well, like I said earlier, will other facilities in other jurisdictions be willing to even take our people when they’ve got the same issues we do, which is overcrowding.
The facilities that we have, the youth facility here in Yellowknife has greater capacity than we currently are utilizing, and if Bill C-10 comes, we imagine that some of those spots will disappear, so that facility will likely be used to a greater extent, which is another motivation for building the facility in Fort Smith, which is to help us get the youth female offenders out of our facility here in Yellowknife and back to Fort Smith.