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.