R.J. Simpson

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.

Thank you. In the past few years, we have had some increases in our court officers. Because it is -- they have been stretched prior to this happening. I'll tell you a tough area to get support in a budget is for administrative positions and, you know, court services are no different. So people want frontline staff. They want money for health care. They don't necessarily want people who work in offices with paper despite the fact that they can -- you know, some of the work they do is invaluable. So we try to balance where we put our resources, and we try to do the best that we can with what we...

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...

Staff lawyers. There's a higher expenditure on staff lawyers. Thank you.

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...

Thank you. When there's an influx of money, you can see an influx of crime. When there is an economic collapse, you can see an influx of crime. And so there's correlations in many different ways. I don't think we've seen the dramatic shifts in our economy that we would -- we could say led to an increase in crime at this point. That being said, I have not confirmed with the stats bureau on any type of correlation that there may be. Thank you.

I'd like to direct that to Mr. Bancroft. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think we're skipping ahead a couple sections this time, but I will say that in terms of the negotiations when it comes to the budget, I think that we can do what we need to do within the budget. I've been meeting with the negotiators. I've been talking to the departments. I've been expressing my views on how we need to proceed. And I've been meeting with Indigenous governments. And the department will be bringing forward options to try and get by some of these roadblocks on some of these negotiations. Thank you.

Thank you. If you could just give me one moment while I turn to that page, thanks.

Thank you. So I don't have a lot of detail on that, but one of the issues that has been identified is who is included in that definition under the Act. And so that's one area that we're looking at. And the other, we're also looking at other amendments. But I can get back to the Members with more information on that specific legislative initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate the Member's concerns about the lack of target. This document and the mandate were prepared almost simultaneously and so we were including items underneath each of the topics, and they aren't necessarily all fully fleshed out yet. But the idea behind this here is around integrating the services and ensuring that someone who needs access to services is able to get those services when they need them. Often, the root cause of a lot of crime is addictions issues, and so if we can support people in a way that will actually assist them, you know, get them out...