Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues, for allowing me to speak to the motion.
I spoke on this issue last week, and I felt it was deserving of a motion to speak about a wellness centre to be included in the Stanton Renewal Project.
I think at that time, too, Mr. Francois Paulette, the chair of the Stanton Elders’ Council, had been calling upon the Department of Health and Social Services to include a wellness centre at the Stanton Territorial Hospital for about eight years, and now the Stanton Elders’ Council is in full support of designing a facility like that.
I’m pleased to hear that the Department of Health and Social Services is supportive of the concept and has identified and set aside land at the Stanton Territorial Hospital, but, regretfully, there are no resources there right now, and that’s what this motion is calling upon the department to do, is to work with Aboriginal governments.
I would also like to say to work with other wellness groups that should be invited. In fact, while I’m speaking, I’d like to call upon the other groups to assist the Elders’ Council with their plans for a wellness centre.
It has been said times are tight and GNWT resources are limited, but we’re not talking about a full facility right now, just the resources to do a planning study, even assistance to cost out the cost of a planning study. I think that’s what they’re looking for, how much this facility is going to cost, what it’s going to look like. They really need assistance in that. That’s why I am bringing forward this motion. Let’s get assistance to cost out a planning study.
I too, about 10 years ago, was at the Alaska Native Medical Center and I saw how that facility works, how homey it is. They have Aboriginal culture, paintings, and it really looks homey and gives people a sense of a northern facility and of belonging in the North. It gets away from a facility that’s so square and institutional. I really believe we have to get away from that because we’ve been living that way too long.
Further, I believe it is an idea whose time has come. We have to support it and get the political ball rolling, as it were, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi cho.