Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess at the outset I should say that maybe I ought to declare a conflict of interest with this motion. However, I’m not going to.

I’d like to thank Mr. Bromley and Mrs. Groenewegen for bringing this motion to the floor. I think it’s a very necessary motion. The whereases in the motion capture pretty much everything that needs to be said, and there are a few things that bear repeating.

I’ve spoken twice to this issue as we’ve gone through the capital budget. I spoke once when we talked about housing; I spoke again when we talked through the Health and Social Services capital budget. As I stated then, I am concerned that the government seems to be placing the emphasis on an Aging in Place Policy and not placing an emphasis on infrastructure and on either enabling someone to build infrastructure or us planning for

the government planning for infrastructure which is desperately needed.

Somebody, just in the last little while, stated that the crisis is going to occur in 2030 or 2031. The crisis is now. There are no spaces available at the Avens Centre. The Aven Manor is full. The Dementia Centre is full. As is mentioned in the motion, it’s a four-year wait to get into the Dementia Centre. It’s an eight-month wait to get into the manor. Unfortunately, pretty much the only way you get into the manor or the way you get into one of the other facilities up there is if somebody passes away and that opens up a space and somebody can move in off the list. That’s pretty tough. That’s not what we want for our residents.

With the two facilities that are being built in Norman Wells and Behchoko, it’s going to take a bit of the pressure off, but those two facilities are going to be full pretty much when they’re finished, and it’s not going to make a big dent in the 200 beds, three times what we need. We need 200 beds come another 10 or 15 years.

When we talked about health, I said that I was dismayed about the lack of planning. We’ve just gone through the Health and Social Services capital budget and there was nothing in that budget that plans for long-term care facilities for our seniors, and at that time I said we know we need the beds, we know the spaces are required, we know we don’t have spaces right now, and yet I just don’t hear the words coming out of the Minister’s or the government’s mouth that says, yes, we’re going to get on that and we’re going to get on that not today but yesterday because we know it’s an urgent need, and by that, I was referring to infrastructure.

We have someone who is willing to take on a project for us, and they are not asking for capital dollars necessarily. I’ve heard concerns from two Members that this is asking for capital dollars. There’s nothing in this motion which speaks to a need for capital dollars. It asks for support, and the project can go ahead with support from this government that basically says in the future we will use your facility. That’s all that they want. They want a guarantee that the GNWT will use the facility.

We’ve got somebody who is willing to take on the project who is innovative. They will use partners from within the community, from outside of the community. They will, as has been pointed out already, be able to build a facility cheaper than what the government can, and that, in my mind, is something that’s a very positive thing.

The motion itself has two parts, and the first part I want to speak to is, as I’ve already talked about, the support. It’s asking for the support. The construction next spring is a very ambitious project on the part of Avens. They want to start next spring because they know that the need is there for the

beds and they want to be able to say we’re going to have beds in a two-year time frame, not a five or a six-year time frame. So, the support that is needed can be varied, and I want to state again it does not have to be capital support. I know that Avens is not asking for capital projects from other communities to be put back so that Avens can build their project.

The second part of the motion, it’s actually the first part, but that the government develop a long-term action plan for the provision of the necessary long-term care beds. That’s part of a lot of my concern, is I don’t see, I don’t hear that the department has a plan. It wasn’t in the capital budget which we just reviewed. I haven’t heard from the Minister that they have a long-term plan for long-term care beds, and it’s known that we need it. It’s known that it’s needed in Hay River where they’ve just built a new hospital without extended care. It’s known that we’re going to need it at Stanton which is going to be built without extended care, and it’s known that we need it in our regional centres, absolutely, and in many of our small communities. We need to get the Minister, the Health and Social Services department, the government to develop a plan for long-term care beds, and that’s what this motion is asking.

I can’t say much else that hasn’t already been said. I am totally in support of this motion, and I would ask my colleagues who can’t support the motion to reconsider, and if they can’t support the motion maybe they will abstain and let this important motion go forward.