Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For community health programs in the area of capital, I had indicated several times that I was looking for some sort of capital expenditure in Fort Resolution at Our Great Elders Facility. It seems to have more profile in the community. Recently an elder in the community was very sick and eventually passed away. He was being taken care of by the family. The family was first of all appearing in Yellowknife with the elder and also in Hay River with the elder.
I know there are some obstacles that we have to work around in order to do this, but what I was hoping the department would do is put a palliative care unit into Our Great Elders Facility. Right now, the facility can house four elders. It houses no elders. The building is basically now used by the home care group. There are six satellite units around the facility that are being utilized, but essentially utilizes nothing more than public housing with some home care support from the main building. However, at one time the unit was used for people in the community, not necessarily the most elderly, but for people that provided the most assistance, living assistance.
Ultimately, I believe that there's some sort of change in, perhaps, legislation or maybe it's a policy of the department that we're no longer supporting facilities that had less than 10 of this type of bed. I'm not sure of the level of care that the senior is under; however, it is this type of care that was eliminated at that time. I'm not really asking for that care to be brought back into that facility full-fledged, I'm asking that the Department of Health -- and I also recognize that building belongs to the NWT Housing Corporation, it's not a building that belongs to the Department of Health -- but what I'm asking is, there's a palliative care unit in Hay River in the hospital there which is a very good care unit for the last days of individuals and the family is able to be in a very comfortable environment. Also, the majority of the care, even in the palliative care unit in Hay River seems to be provided by the immediate family. This is certainly the case in situations where you have elders that are either unilingual or speak mostly an aboriginal language, and the family comes and talks to them and so on during those times, and also eating mostly country foods so that the family is already preparing the food and so on. This building actually has a facility for the family to prepare the food there on site and they have the room. Everything is there. All that has to happen is to take one of those rooms or two of those rooms and convert it into a palliative care unit. I want to ask the department to look at that possibility.
I think that there are a couple of good initiatives there, no question about it; however, I think that the department should have thought of that when considering that this has been an ongoing issue for two years and perhaps longer.
I don't know if the previous MLA had brought this thing forward to the department, and I'm not, you know, I mean, I recognize that maybe nursing could be an issue; however, there are two local nurses that work in Fort Resolution, there are two or three local nurses that work outside of Fort Resolution, from Fort Resolution, and there's also family support for any time an elder or a person that's very sick is in the palliative care unit. The majority of the support, as I see it, comes from the family. I'd just like to ask the department if they would reconsider this plan and add something in the plan to build a palliative care unit in Our Great Elders Facility in Fort Resolution. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't think the clock was started over as well. Anyway, I'll leave that for my first question.