Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to speak again today about Stanton Territorial Hospital. On Friday I had the opportunity to make a statement and ask questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services about the condition of the hospital. Today I’d like to follow up on that.
I believe that the government and Minister have some explaining to do. On Friday, page 17 of unedited Hansard, the Minister states that the 2004 technical assessment had a price tag of upwards of $250 million. If this was indeed correct, then why did subsequent capital plans every year peg the cost of the Stanton Master Development Plan at roughly $30 million?
The Stanton Master Development Plan, over the past five years, has gone from important enough to put in every capital plan up until 2008-2009. In the last year’s capital plan the project’s name had even changed from Stanton Master Development Plan to Stanton Territorial Hospital Technical Upgrades, at a total value of $28 million. Now it would appear that neither the Stanton Master Development Plan nor any substantial money for technical upgrades is included in the government’s most recent capital plan.
On Friday I spoke of the 2004 report, calling into question the state of several building components that had to be upgraded within five years to ensure the asset life of the facility. The report also identified areas of non-compliance with current codes and issues of health care delivery standards. Here we are five years later and where is the money and the Stanton Master Development Plan? According to the Minister, it’s still in the planning stages.
I believe that it is completely ridiculous that after the work began in 2002, the report came out in 2004, that all the Minister and department can say is sorry, it’s not in the capital plan, we’re still working on it. It’s no wonder the Department of Health and Social Services gets the label of the Department of Perpetual Planning, and now here we are on the verge of approving capital expenditures that again do not include Stanton Territorial Hospital, even though the department has had over seven years to
do it. If the Department of Health and Social Services can’t get the planning right, then, please, let’s get somebody in there who can.