Alright. My next question is about the long-term facility in Norman Wells. I’m just wondering, has there been any construction started on this facility.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Beaulieu.

As per the schedule, the construction is scheduled to start in 2013.

My other question would be about the facility in Hay River, the health centre in Hay River. How long has that been on the budget of the Government of the Northwest Territories in the planning, and how long has it been on the budget as far as the planning of that facility?

We don’t have the history of when the planning originally started. We have the amount of money that was spent prior to this upcoming capital year that we are discussing. That is the detail we have. The building is scheduled to be completed in ’15-16.

The Minister obviously knows my concerns about the 10 long-term beds being removed from the current facility and not being replaced in the new facility, and I understand the department’s justification for that. My question is: Were the beds originally in the facility plans? Do they know that?

We moved from a Class C estimate in 2009-10, and there were no extended beds in that estimate as well.

I am looking for information from the department on when these 10 beds were removed from Hay River, basically. That’s why I was wanting to know when the budget was originally put in and if they were originally in the budget.

Currently, we’re going to be short 10 long-term beds in the community of Hay River. The two questions I had earlier talked about long-term beds. I’m just wondering about the department’s plans

and how they plan to fix the issue of long-term beds, from what I see is a mistake in the department’s planning when they planned to build this facility. They didn’t plan to do any upgrades to the existing long-term facility when they cut it from the department. I’m just wondering if the Minister could elaborate on future plans for those long-term beds in Hay River.

We are looking at the long-term care. Actually, there’s not a removal of long-term care beds from the Hay River hospital but, rather, the removal of extended care beds. I think what’s happening is there is some mix-up between long-term care and extended care beds. One of the solutions that we discussed was to actually provide more long-term care beds in the existing facility.

As a department, we’re looking at what we are referring to as a continuum of care for seniors. Within that, we’re looking at all of the beds that are available now, including the 10 long-term care beds and making sure that we have accommodations for everyone that’s in the extended care facility in the H.H. Williams Hospital. By the time that hospital is discontinued as a use for a health facility, we will have accommodated the people in extended care that are currently existing in there now.

My question, along those lines, is the accommodation of those individuals. Does that mean moving them to other communities where the services are being provided? Would they be moving to Norman Wells? Would they be moving to Inuvik? Would they be moving to other places where there are obviously long-term care facilities being planned on the budget? What is the plan, I guess, for those long-term care people?

Our philosophy is to try to house the people as close to home as possible, so that the facility that’s being built in Norman Wells really is designed and built to accommodate the Sahtu region and new long-term care expansion in Behchoko is designed to accommodate the Tlicho citizens. So along that philosophy, our intention would be to provide long-term care or extended care as close to home as possible.

So the people from the H.H. Williams that are in extended care, if they are eligible for long-term care as opposed to extended care, they will end up, first priority would be the extended care or the long-term care facility in Hay River. In the very worst case scenario, where there’s nowhere else to house them nearby, they could end up in another facility on an interim basis or a short-term basis, but the intention is to house the seniors as close to their home as possible.

Thank you. I guess the question that I’m trying to get from the Minister is how are we dealing with this shortcoming of 10 long-term beds,

acute beds, whatever you want to call it, that are currently in Hay River?

The facility is being built in the community of Hay River right now and the department has been selling, through communications, through press, that this is a facility for 50 years for the community of Hay River, but it doesn’t meet current needs in Hay River. Obviously, the new health care centre will, but they’re removing 10 beds from Hay River and there has never been any plans in the budget to add those, which seems to be a mistake for me, and from my thinking of the department that as soon as they decided to remove them, there should have been a line item on this budget, one of these capital budgets that included an expansion to the current facilities that are in Hay River to add those 10 beds somewhere else. So I’m just wondering where the department is going to come up with that plan.

The Department is willing to come back to the House to try to provide long-term care beds in Hay River to pick up the needs that are going to be created by closing down long-term care beds in H.H. Williams.

Right now we have an expansion to a facility, the closest facility that’s being expanded is Fort Smith. However, it is likely that those beds will all be used up by Fort Smith citizens, but it’s quite possible that we could use that as an overflow, if the beds were not available in Hay River. But the intention would be to make the beds available in Hay River if that was at all possible.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I’m not getting a straight answer from the Minister. My concern is that he talks to me about every other community – Norman Wells, Sahtu, Fort Smith – but my concern is obviously with the concern of this facility that it’s not meeting all of the needs of the community of Hay River right now and I’m looking for a when.

This facility is going to be completed around ‘14-15. I’m wondering when I am going to see a line item on the budget of the territorial government that these 10 long-term care beds are going to be replaced in the community of Hay River, the second largest community in the Northwest Territories.

We’re talking and we keep being referred to Behchoko, Fort Smith, Norman Wells. So all these other communities are talking about their facilities, long-term care facilities; however, we’re not being included in the planning, and they keep telling us that they want to put us as close as they can, but I want to know when from the Minister that we’re going to be seeing a line item in Hay River that

replaces those long-term beds that are being removed from the community.

Thank you. What we have available in Hay River, if we’re not talking about any other communities, would be the current long-term care beds at H.H. Williams, and unless we’re able to come back to the Legislative Assembly to get long-term care beds added to the long-term care facility of Woodland Manor, then we would keep the long-term care beds at H.H. Williams open until that addition, I guess, would be added to Woodland. It’s just that if we are not to use any facilities outside of Hay River to house the people that are in long-term care beds, then we would have no option but to keep that facility open until something new was built in Hay River.

Also, I think that a few of the people in extended care or long-term care in the hospital in Hay River are from outside, and at least one individual from Behchoko would go back to Behchoko. I’m not sure about some of the others. I think there’s someone that may be actually from Fort Smith there as well. But I don’t have the details, so it’s difficult to get that type of detail provided to me, because we need to have consent from families. So in order for me to get that kind of detail of who is actually in there… But if you’re just looking at the beds and where the people are currently located – and we can’t talk about anything outside of Hay River – our only option would be to keep that wing of the H.H. Williams open until Woodland had an addition or something was built near there that could accommodate people coming out of long-term care in H.H. Williams.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Bouchard, your time is up. If you want to come back on the list, just let me know. Moving on we have the Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to comment on what isn’t in the budget. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, there’s a big demand for a long-term care facility in the Mackenzie Delta, yet I don’t see anything in the budget to accommodate that. I just want to stress the importance of having our elders in our communities. We owe a lot to our elders and I think we should be treating them with the respect they deserve.

In the future years I’d like to see a health care facility within the region, within the communities like Aklavik or Fort McPherson, for example. Not everybody is very comfortable moving to Inuvik to a long-term care facility. I just wanted to stress that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Although there is no plan to build a long-term care

facility in Aklavik or Fort McPherson, we will continue to work with the Housing Corporation. We’ve done some initial work with the Housing Corporation in trying to provide assisted living to individuals to remain in both of those communities. I think that the Housing Corporation does have money to renovate the Joe Greenland and also to provide a stand-alone building that they would call assisted living. What Health has to do is to find the O and M to support the seniors that are going to be in there. So we are in the process of pulling all of our continuous care for seniors programs together right across the Territories, and we’ll come to the government with one block under O and M on how we wish to support the various communities and to allow seniors to remain independent, if possible. That will include Fort McPherson, working with the NWT Housing Corporation, and Aklavik, also working with the Housing Corporation on facilities that would be owned by them.

Thank you. Long-term care, I feel, is the department’s responsibility and I’m very glad for what Housing is doing, but I’d like to ask the department to actually put it in their budget for next year’s plans to do a capital infrastructure for an actual elders facility.

We’ve had this discussion over an extended period, a long time period here, discussing those types of needs. It would be good to be able to provide this official long-term care in all of the communities so that no one ever has to leave their communities, no elders will ever have to leave their community. It’s a matter of money. It’s a matter of funding in order for us to provide a long-term care facility.

Let’s just look at one community that I have a few numbers on, Aklavik. Aklavik is a good one to go to. In order to operate the facility that’s available in Aklavik as a long-term care facility, a fully functioning long-term care facility like we have in Inuvik, Fort Smith, and Hay River, we would need to have at least four nurses. Actually, the position is four and a half nurses. When we went into Aklavik, the community was not looking for long-term care to that extent. They were saying they wanted… What they were discussing was more like assisted living where they would provide home care services. I think they had actually indicated that maybe the department could go back into the O and M budget to try to get at least an additional nurse out of it, but to beef up the home care and home support services and then doing some work in the building to make the building more barrier free. It was more targeted to seniors who had a bit of mobility issues and not really a facility for dementia.

Long-term care is largely an area for people with serious mobility issues, and dementia and other types of brain injuries. If we go into a long-term care facility in every community with the staffing and

everything, we would not be able to afford it. That’s what the issue here is. So we need to try to provide accommodations to the community as best we can with the resources we have available, plus some extra resources that we’re prepared to put in to try to keep people as close to home as possible and as independent as possible as well.

I thank the Minister for his answers there. I look forward to working with him on an ongoing basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Moving on with questions. We’re on page 6-4. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.