Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank Mr. Bromley and Mrs. Groenewegen for bringing this motion forward before the House. I do understand, going through our capital budget, that there are a lot of projects on the go here. However, we also have to make decisions based on the needs and what we see as legislators as what’s coming down the pike, whether it’s education, in this case, or health or justice. But in this case it’s dealing with the high demographic of our senior populations of the Northwest Territories and to address that, the lack of infrastructure, to meet these needs.

I understand that there is support for the Aven Manor here in Yellowknife, and even though it is in Yellowknife, they do offer beds to seniors in the small communities.

When I was thinking about this motion, like I said, there’s the issue of lack of infrastructure in some of our regions, some of our communities. Obviously, I’ll be supporting this motion, mainly because there is an increase in the seniors population, and we’re seeing that over the years to come. But it goes beyond just beds, as I’ve mentioned before when we’ve discussed this.

A lot of our seniors go through things such as neglect. A lot of our seniors get abused in the small communities, whether it’s emotional, financial, psychological or physical. Our seniors need to get out of these situations that they’re in, and in some cases it’s not even the hardships on the seniors in terms of abuse and neglect, but even on the

families themselves when there’s no centre, no infrastructure for seniors to go to. Sometimes it does put a lot of responsibility on the families, which in turn affects their mental health, which in turn affects whether or not they can do their job fully. All those things need to be taken into consideration when we look at creating this infrastructure for our seniors.

That’s one part of it, but another one is currently in our long-term facilities now we do have issues where we have patients that have dementia that are roomed with seniors that do kind of live a pretty independent lifestyle. That could be a stressful situation on those individuals as well.

Like I said, I thank Mr. Bromley and Mrs. Groenewegen for bringing this motion forward. I will be supporting the motion based on the fact that I would like to see more opportunity for some of our community seniors getting some of these beds and having the opportunity to partake in the facility and be able to get out of some of these situations that they are in in the small communities.

So, as I said, Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you Mr. Moses. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.