In many ways the Member’s question about Smith and Hay River is related to the work that we are doing in Stanton. Going forward what we need to do not only in programming but especially in the capital plan that’s before us, is that we need to have a system-wide plan and work on facilities, because facilities are built to support the services. What we need to do is make sure that Stanton becomes a true territorial hospital; a true acute care, tertiary, the only acute care facility. Inuvik will be the secondary, second level, high-level care facility. Sort of the hub-and-spoke model is the picture that we want to imagine. In that picture, Hay River, Fort Simpson, Fort Smith and Norman Wells will become regional health centres to support Stanton. All those facilities have a role to play.

We hear daily from Alberta and nationally that the health care system is under pressure. We need to be able to respond to demands that are going to be placed on our system, because as Alberta is under pressure, we’ll be asked to take on patients on short notice.

It’s really important that our regions have facility and system support to support our patients who don’t have to be at Stanton. In order to do that, we need to upgrade and modernize the facilities that we have in Hay River, Simpson, Smith and Norman Wells, along with Inuvik. We are working to make

sure they all flow. It’s not necessarily duplication, it’s necessity to make sure we have these places in our regions so that we don’t send everybody to Stanton and we rely less on southern facilities.