Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won’t really get into the whole seniors and long-term care facilities in too much detail; we heard quite a bit over the last little while. But I think in terms of just looking for beds, a lot of discussions have been around beds. You’ve got to take it into consideration that we’re talking about beds, but we’re also talking about a safety issue for our elders, especially the ones in the small communities that might be enduring or experiencing things like neglect, elder abuse, financial abuse that we don’t see at the forefront. I think in some cases
when we don’t have those facilities in the small communities, we do need to find them somewhere. Not only that, we do have a long-term care facility in Inuvik and it’s been fully utilized. What we don’t have is a dementia facility. So when we put our senior citizens into such a facility where now they’re dealing with people with dementia or other areas of mental illness, it does have an effect on these individuals that do try to live a more independent lifestyle. To have those beds or areas such as Avens, if they opened it up to more beds territorially, then that’s something we can look into supporting.
Just further on, there’s a lot of talk here around senior citizens, but something that I’ve always been pushing for and have a strong interest, obviously, is in the treatment area. I’ve made comments to the Minister about trying to find something pan-territorially that we can either use some kind of existing infrastructure to provide those programs and services not only to the Northwest Territories but to Nunavut and to Yukon as well. Within those treatment centres or even within the hospital that we have, detox beds are also, I think, very important to have in terms of helping people with those medical conditions when they’re coming off some very strong addictions.
We did get a tour of Hay River not too long ago and looked at their planning studies in the hospital there, and it was brought to my attention that they’re going to have two seclusion rooms in the hospital, which was great to hear. I know we were looking at getting one in Inuvik. I’m not too sure where that is, so maybe I could get an update on that seclusion room in Inuvik and whether or not that was something that was put in place.
One thing that hasn’t really been brought to our attention, but just in terms of our medical equipment, we send a lot of people down south for screening, for tests. I don’t know if the Minister did an inventory or looked at what kind of equipment we have here in Yellowknife or in the communities and looking at what we can do to modernize some of our equipment, whether it’s for screening, whether it’s for other medical purposes and trying to get those up to date, and that way maybe we would save on some costs on sending people down south. That’s something that’s more common.
He did mention infection control standards. Obviously, we have a dental office in the school in Inuvik that’s out of commission because of the new standards that were developed. I don’t know if you want to provide a list or look at the list of the standards that have been changing and doing an inventory across the territory to see how that’s affecting other areas of service that we do provide, whether it’s in the communities, regional centres or even here in Yellowknife, and whether that was
addressed in this capital budget in terms of having to fix buildings up.
Lastly, just the sanitation components are something… I know the hospital was shut down for operations a couple of years ago for a lengthy period of time and people were put on long waiting lists. So just when we’re looking at infrastructure, whether we are building it or not, that it be taken into consideration.
One of my colleagues tabled some photos earlier today of a health centre, and I think that as we look at these standards, this government take a hard look at our sanitary practices in our health centres and in our regions and even here in Yellowknife. The Minister talks about giving the best care and treatment to our residents and, obviously, it looks like we are failing in one community already, and I think that’s something that needs to be addressed. Obviously, it would lead to more illnesses and sicknesses and something that we need to take into consideration when we’re thinking about our patients here and residents.
Just a few comments. I really don’t want to get too much into the seniors homes, but it’s a bigger issue than just beds. It is safety; it is neglect; it is abuse; and when we are looking at best care and services for residents of the NWT, we don’t look at it as a building, we don’t look at it as a room or a bed, we look at it as a resident, the person itself. Thank you, Mr. Chair.