Thank you. I'm going to go back to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you. And that's fair, and I will be less pointed about the hypothetical wellness centre that is not before us, Mr. Chair.

So for those positions, what is the current plan? The Minister did speak -- or the Premier did speak to how they want to minimize any impacts to employment. But what is the current plan with these? Because they are specialized roles. So are they going to be transferred to other correctional facilities? Are they going to be laid off? Do we have a human resources plan to -- for these individuals who have affected -- who will be affected by this closure? Thank you.

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

Thank you. The GNWT has a staff retention policy in situations like this. The Minister of Finance would be the expert in that -- on that policy, and so I'd prefer not to comment. But I know that the department will be working with those employees directly as they make their way through this process. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nothing further at this point. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from the Deh Cho.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question is can the government better use the facility to make Fort Smith's facility more useful in corrections?

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

Thank you. So the facility is -- as I stated, the capacity of the correctional system far exceeds the need and so -- I mean, we could have infrastructure improvements to the building, but the fact remains that we have excess capacity. And that's in all of our facilities. You know, we have one or two or three women in the women's facility, and I believe the capacity there is 24. We have between one and two and three individuals in the youth facility, and the capacity there is significantly higher than that, at least a couple dozen if not more than that. And so to repurpose the correctional facilities as other kinds of correctional facilities is not something that we're currently looking at. We do have one correctional facility that we did try to do that with, that we tried to change the model, so it's a different approach, and that is the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from the Deh Cho.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So there's going to be, like, 25 to -- about 25 jobs lost that are going to be -- people are going to lose their jobs there. And some of them -- so can you completely shut down the youth facility in Yellowknife instead of the one in Fort Smith?

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

Thank you. By law, we need to have a youth open and secure custody but we may be able to shut that down and send them to another jurisdiction. We may be able to shut the women's facility down, send them to another jurisdiction or to the youth facility. We could shut down a few more correctional facilities if the Members really wanted to, but that's not what we're doing. We understand that that's a massive impact that we don't want to have on the communities. And this is -- as I said, this is not an easy decision. And we could keep it open and keep spending that money, or we can try and save that money and put it towards our other efforts. Thank you.

Thank you. Next on the list to speak, I have here the Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So still on the topic of corrections in Fort Smith but maybe corrections more generally, could the Minister tell me what the drop of inmates is attributable to? I'm asking this because he was the Minister of Justice in the last Assembly and should have a little bit of handle on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

Thank you. So the drop in numbers is due to a number of changes to the Criminal Code and decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada that changed the rules around bail and remanding prisoners. We used to have significantly more remanded inmates in the facilities. That is one of the issues. Perhaps I can hand it to the deputy minister for some more detail on this. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the deputy minister.

Thank you. I'm going to go back to the Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the department and the Minister for that. On the flip side of that, if you read the mandate, if you read the business plan, it sounds very much that the Minister and his department are seeking to increase the tools that would possibly allow for the courts to better pursue folks who are, for lack of better words, you know, ripping at our smaller communities and, indeed, the community of Yellowknife with the drug trade. So on the flip side of that, I'm very excited that, you know, folks are getting better options to them than just putting them in jail, but if we are looking to increase the tools at our disposal as the government to go after folks who are in the drug trade, do you expect have more inmates in the future? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

Thank you. Well, that's hard to predict but we -- even if we have more, it's highly unlikely that it would be enough to put us close to that full capacity of our facilities. Thank you.