Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I will say that this is not an easy -- this was not an easy decision. This has weighed heavily and continues to weigh heavily on me and my Cabinet colleagues. This is not something anyone wants to do. There are 15 full-time positions that are being affected. There are 17 relief positions as well. We have committed to do everything we can to ensure that there are opportunities for these individuals in other GNWT positions. There have been -- Cabinet is making efforts to determine how we can utilize the existing facility in a different capacity. The MLA for Thebacha, as well as one of our Cabinet colleagues, has had discussions with the leadership in the community and relayed that information. We are working right now to come up with a bit of a plan to move forward, and then we'll be reaching out to leadership again directly.

The correctional -- the numbers of inmates in the correctional facilities has dropped essentially year after year for the last five years. And there was a significant drop about four or five years ago. We are now sitting at around 80 or 90 inmates in the facilities, on average. I believe that's about 30 percent capacity -- sorry, 44 percent capacity right now. So the capacity is for 228 offenders, and we have a hundred right now. So it's hard to justify spending public funds housing offenders in facilities that are mostly empty and so we want to make a better use of those funds. And we understand the impact this is -- would have on the community, and we want to do what we can to mitigate that impact. Thank you.

Thank you. So this is -- this funding was recently introduced. That's why we don't see anything for the 2022-2023 Actuals. It is part of the therapeutic community model. And to the Member's comments about the measures, I've said this when I was in front of the Members before, I am happy to take feedback on the measures. I have some that I brought to the department's attention myself, and so I know that in the next iteration of the business plans we will have measures that are a bit more -- that will allow us to really quantify how we're doing. Thank you.

Thank you. With me, I have Charlene Doolittle, deputy minister of the Department of Justice. And James Bancroft, director of corporate services. Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's no hard feelings if Members don't want to provide questions in advance or give Ministers a heads up about what they might be speaking about. Since my very first day as an MLA, I've been very strong on the topic of MLA independence. As a Regular Member or as an MLA representing my constituents, I don't allow anyone to tell me what to do except my constituents. And I'm not telling the Regular Members what to do, and if I tried I wouldn't expect them to listen to me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. And I'm not sure what the Member was listening to, but I never said that the Members are here to set us up to make us look good. There is an expectation that Ministers do know their portfolios. Here in the Northwest Territories, we have a relatively small Cabinet yet we still are expected to deliver all of the programs and services in all of the same areas that they do in other places in Canada where they might have 10, 20, or 30 Cabinet Ministers. I personally, in the last government, I think I had 14 or 15 different FPT tables that I sat at - that's federal, provincial, and territorial tables, whereas that's pretty uncommon across Canada. In the smaller jurisdictions, it is a bit more common but there is a lot to know. And while there is an expectation that Cabinet does have a good grasp on their portfolio, I don't think it's reasonable to expect the Ministers to have a photographic memory for each of their policies, each of the pieces of legislation that they're responsible for, every staff that the department produces. And so if the Members don't want to provide questions, that's their right. I've never hounded any Member for their questions. If a Member says I'm not going to let you know what my questions are, that's fine. We come to the House, and we give the best answers that we can. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And no, that is not the policy. It is just the way that we like to do business is by cooperating and communicating. And for the past eight years as I've been an MLA, that has been common practice. In the last government, the Regular Members would actually share the -- at least the titles of their Member's statements and their questions with Cabinet early in the morning. So it's just we're just all trying to get along here, and we want to make sure that when Members have questions that, as Cabinet, we can provide good answers. We don't know everything, all the ins and outs of all of our departments. It's not all on the tip of our tongue or at the top of our mind. Sometimes we'll need to go and read a briefing note to refresh our memory about something that maybe we haven't dealt with in a couple weeks or a couple months. And so the rationale behind asking a Member, hey, what are you going to be asking me today, is so that we can come back, do our homework, and give good answers for the Members and for the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize my former colleague and current friend, former Minister Pauline Chinna. She always created a lively atmosphere in Cabinet, and we miss her. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Again, this is another federal program and so we had an agreement with the federal government to receive funding through the Guns and Gang Strategy. The federal government discontinued that strategy but we have recently confirmed that that money is being reprofiled to the same end, but in a different program and so we are awaiting details on that. But we hope to be getting into discussions and signing it as soon as possible. Thank you.