Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, with respect to the Inuvik facility, it is not my understanding that there was a change to the Act, but rather a challenge with terms of the actual structure of the building itself and challenges in terms of staffing it.
With respect to other facilities that remain underutilized, the Trailcross facility in Fort Smith is also underutilized, and the community is looking at an opportunity to have that rendered as a surplus. So that is also a facility that comes from a correctional background, but the community is actively already engaged in what they can do to possibly have an opportunity to see that declared as surplus by the department and then sold to the community.
Similar conversation happening in Fort Res. There is a facility, there's an asset, there is a structure there that the community's engaged in active conversations as to whether it can be declared a surplus.
We are in a situation, Mr. Chair, where the Government of the Northwest Territories has very limited sources of incoming revenue and therefore makes it difficult to build big things that cost lots of money as we have gone through this supplementary appropriation requesting lots of money to build big things but, Mr. Chair, that leaves us with trying to find ways to be bold and creative as we have been ever so clearly directed over the last few weeks. So we come forward, and we have to let our staff know in advance, of course, when there's a change of the magnitude of closing a correctional facility, but this is not a situation where we had months, let alone years, in order to plan that transition. What we have identified is there's a facility where there is a significant underutilization of government asset, of government resources, and we've targeted, therefore, a closure, but doing so in the context of hearing repeatedly the need, for years hearing the need, for some sort of wellness facility or wellness sort of institution.
So there's, over the last few years, significant dollars have been incurred, largely incurred in prior years, to a security upgrade for an existing asset only to now to determine that, in fact, this is not the best use of dollars going forward. It is not the best use of public funds going forward to maintain this. And so what we are doing instead is saying, look, we're going to close this facility but work with the community having heard so clearly that we should actually be using public dollars in a better way. It is, in fact, frustrating when there's additions being proposed or suggested at the last minute in significant sums in a way that is unplanned and uncosted. This is not -- what we are doing is taking money out by closing the facility, not adding significant dollars in, but completing a project that was already there. The hope is that because we have invested money into this community, into this facility, and into the staff that are there, that when we say we are going to close it because it is a bad use of public dollars to keep it open, we're not just going to walk away from it, we're not just going to walk away from the staff, we're going to find a way forward with the community to actually turn this into something useful. Thank you, Mr. Chair.