Thank you. I appreciate that answer, and the modular construction certainly sounds like a good way to go ahead. So just to confirm, though, let's say the bed projections in 2025 come back and say demand is not going to be as high as what was originally projected, are you going to be able to scale construction down to reflect that so that we have right-sized facilities?

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that is part of the process of the planning and within Hay River, like the Member -- like the ADM said, is that we have the older facility. Those people will have to move into the new facility once it's decommissioned as it's at the end of its life. So all of that information will be taken into account.

Thank you. Before I go to Frame Lake, the Member for Frame Lake, Members, when you speak and when you're finished, can you just say 'thank you' so that we could give -- it's a technical thing so we could move on. So I'm going to go back to the Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for that reminder. I guess, finally, I really appreciate the Minister kind of clarifying that the planning process for the two other facilities that are referenced there in Simpson and Smith will have the opportunity to kind of benefit from the 2025 update. So I appreciate that.

So the last question is in the 2015 long-term care program review, the recommendations that it made spoke to funding to private facilities for construction of more units. I know that's something I saw in the -- in this -- that was something that was done in Hay River in the past, but is there a reason the department decided to go in a different direction from funding these existing facilities to expand and just decided to start operating its own facilities? Because the expansion option seems like a good one for communities where demand is growing more slowly than expected. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you. I will get the ADM to speak to stuff that happened in 2015. Thanks.

Thank you. I'll go to the ADM.

Thank you. Is there any other Members that want to have questions? I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So just following up on my colleague from Frame Lake's questions about the long-term care facilities.

Well, my first question is if we are expecting in 2025 to do an update on bed projections, why would we move forward with planning for, in particular, the long-term care facility being proposed in Fort Smith and Fort Simpson instead of waiting for the updated bed projections? Because the planning would proceed for a specific size of facility. It says the planning is for -- in Fort Smith, a 24-bed facility, and yet we see now that there's actually nobody on the waiting list. So why would we move forward this year and spend $2 million on a planning study when we -- the evidence we have now says that's probably not the right size or the right direction to go, and we're already going to update the data next year anyway? Why would -- why would we move ahead and not, say, push it back a year until we've gotten those updated bed projections? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will turn that over to the ADM.

Thank you. I'll go to the ADM.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess where I'm getting caught up is that a needs assessment is one thing; a planning study for a specific 24-bed long-term care facility is a big step forward from an initial needs assessment. And so what I would rather see is a budget item come forward for this is -- we're going to do a needs assessment this year, and it's going to include that data that we plan to get next year, but when we're asked for the next capital year to allocate $2 million to a planning study, that seems much bigger than a needs assessment, and it doesn't seem wise to package together the initial needs assessment with the planning study for the thing we've already decided we need. Is there any way to separate those two and budget this coming year for a needs assessment and not the planning study for the 24-bed facilities in Fort Simpson and Fort Smith? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you may see, the capital budget doesn't have amounts and so a lot of these things will -- you know, they're on here because we need to do the things that the Member is asking. Whether or not it allocates this amount or how far we go, but the planning study -- and to figure out how many bed facilities that is going to be required for that is going to cost an amount. So we need to be able to allocate dollars to be able to do that work. So, you know, it may not be what the Member -- or is saying, but there is an amount that will need to be able to -- so we could spend to do that work. We can't take it off if we don't -- like, we have to do the work. We have to do the planning study. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So given that currently we have nobody on the waiting list in Fort Smith and initially the estimated demand from the previous studies had been that there would be a demand of 33 people by now, it seems that that's pretty far off, and given that we're already moving forward more quickly with the long-term care facility in Hay River, where there's only six people on the waiting list and the plan is to build a 24-bed facility, is it feasible to think that perhaps people in Smith might be able to access a long-term care facility in in Hay River if there was -- if we were sort of overbuilding and building extra beds in Hay River that we didn't see an immediate demand for? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I hear what the Member is saying but, you know, these are -- these are people's homes, this is their end of life, you know, this is where they're going to rest. We don't want to move them -- we want to keep them as close to home as we possibly can. As part of that plan, you know, when we -- the Member says that there's nobody on the waitlist, we currently have, you know, people and family members that are able to care for members and they may be on the projections because they're heavy -- heavy clients for home care and may require in the upcoming years. Age of our residents, you know, within the next 10 to 15 years, we know that builds in the -- like, this type of a process is not going to happen overnight. It's going to be over multiple years. These long-term care facilities have been discussed as far back as I think early into the 18th Assembly where the beds projections have changed significantly, and that's why we do the work that we're doing as to making sure that we're doing the proper planning for these facilities. And, you know, at the end of the day, whether it comes back that, you know, there isn't -- there is a change in these needs, then, you know, we'll reassess the project. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.