Mr. Speaker, we actually have contracts with accredited agencies located in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to provide these incredibly specialized skills. It’s not just specialized skills but it’s different skills. I mean, we have our residents who have really unique conditions who require significant supports, and we don’t actually have programs or the specialists to provide those skills here in the Northwest Territories for one person. Whereas, they have institutions in the South that provide it for similar causes or conditions where they’ve got a large number of people in there, so they’ve got economies of scale that they can administer these.
I, like the Member, am very concerned about these numbers, and this is something that I’ve asked the department to look into. Following on the recommendation of committee, the department did a thorough analysis. Honestly, we are hoping that we would find some like conditions where we could bring them together and utilize a northern facility with northern professionals to provide these supports for our residents. Quite honestly, we want our people home. We want our people in the Northwest Territories. But given a unique file-by-file review, there weren’t enough conditions that were similar that we could justify creating a unit or a function or a service in the Northwest Territories to provide those high-level services.
But it may change. As we continue to evolve here in the Northwest Territories, as patients are coming forward with new conditions we may find that there are conditions similar enough that we can house them, which is why we do the biannual review to make sure that we’re on top of these. Every once in a while we’re lucky where we do have an opportunity to repatriate individuals and we work with the southern institutions to develop great repatriation plans for the individuals who we can bring back, so we’re always looking for ways to bring these people home. We hate spending the money in the South; we’d rather spend the money in the North; but sometimes requirements are so different, so unique, we don’t have a choice but to work with one of our southern partners. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.