My experience that I had at the meeting over the summer, just being in attendance – I wasn’t there for all the three days, but I sat in and listened to some of the discussions

– and the

passion and concern of these elders speaking up and not really having the confidence. Within government and other areas of leadership, something needs to be done so that with the Continuing Care Action Plan that the Minister is discussing, would he welcome some of the senior populations from the regions to sit in on the discussion of an action plan to help to address the real issues in the small communities and at the regional level? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I’ve indicated

previously, we have a really positive working relationship with the NWT Seniors’ Society, who represents seniors from across the Northwest Territories

and

the

board

actually

has

representatives from people from across the Territories. We work closely with them and are always seeking their input and guidance. I am happy to meet with seniors’ societies across the Northwest Territories to get their input. The services and programs we are talking about are ultimately for them and it’s important to make sure they are engaged. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we come to an end in the 17th Legislative Assembly,

would the Minister responsible ensure that this is a priority of the 18th Assembly? Would he commit that

our seniors’ issues, such as elder abuse, housing and services in some of the small communities are a priority in the 18th Assembly so when the new

government comes in, they can hit the road running and address some of the issues our elders are dealing with? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is obviously an incredibly important issue in the Northwest Territories, especially recognizing the rate in which our seniors populations are increasing. It’s something I have asked to be included on the Cabinet’s transition document so it is brought forward to the future government. If I’m fortunate

enough to be back, whether I’m on that side of the House or on this side of the House, it’s still a priority for me and would continue to be a priority for me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions

today

are

for

the

Minister

of

Transportation. I would like to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask some questions about the Deh Cho Bridge review, which is apparently not now coming. I would like to ask the Minister, first of all, if he could please explain to me the answer that I got from him that he and Cabinet had decided that the public did not deserve a report which had been promised by the previous Transportation Minister in 2011.

I have to ask him, what is the value of the promise of government and why did you decide the public did not deserve the analysis that was promised? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe I said that the community or the public did not deserve a retrospective analysis. I indicated that we had done some work with the Auditor General in looking at the bridge at the point when we took the bridge over from another project authority and changed the contractor. We also had a report done by independent people, the Levelton Report that was done from the time the bridge started until we took over the bridge, and DOT had done a couple of reports on lessons learned. I felt that that was sufficient for us to move forward using that bridge as lessons learned on other major projects that would be undertaken. It isn’t a matter of whether or not people deserved something; it was something we felt we could work with the information we had to move forward. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I didn’t

suggest that… I think it was my statement that the public didn’t get what they deserved. It was a public commitment in the House to do a retrospective analysis and then there was a decision by the executive, by a Minister and I guess the rest of Cabinet, not go through with this.

So my question is again, which I think the Minister chose to ignore, what is the value of promise by government?

The Minister mentioned a whole bunch of documents. I have a list here that is probably about six or so documents, but why should the public have to go searching all over the website, all over the GNWT public site looking for documents to find

out why this project didn’t proceed as planned? I would like to ask the Minister, in that particular instance, where is it

– I know there is no spot – that

the public can go to get a fully inclusive retrospective analysis of the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I don’t believe it’s there. There is no one report which covers everything and I want to ask the Minister why that is not there. Thank you.

We do have that information on our DOT website. We felt that individuals who wish to determine what the issues were could find that information in a lot of different places. We looked at a retrospective analysis as a tool for ourselves when we move forward. It appeared that the main issues that people in the House felt that there was something wrong with the Deh Cho Bridge. What we were saying is the issue was that the contractor changed midstream, that the project authority changed in midstream. That is what seemed to be the issue.

As far as the department goes, we felt we did a very good job. We put a project in that is very valuable to this city, valuable to the people of the Northwest Territories. It makes travel a lot easier and we felt it was a very good piece of infrastructure. It appears as though individuals are indicating that that may not be such a good piece of infrastructure. We put information together from lessons learned so we could do a better job on other projects, but it wasn’t something that would be there for the individuals to see and say exactly what happened.

Everything that happened with the Deh Cho Bridge was very public. There is more information, and if individuals want specific to what they are saying what they see as an issue, they can make that request. Members can make

that request and we’ll

comply. Thank you.

I don’t believe I was suggesting that

the bridge was not a good project. By the time the government took over the project, I believe it was extremely well managed and it has become an excellent piece o

f infrastructure. That’s not the

issue. The issue is that the project started under a veil of suspicion and it continued under that veil of suspicion for quite some time.

There is no analysis, to my mind, that’s been done, looking at all the documents I got from the Minister. There’s nothing that looks at the project from its inception from the 15th Assembly when it was first

discussed, from the transition from the 15th to the

16th when the contract was signed and then on into

the 16th until the government took it over. There is

nothing which I can go to or direct the public to go where they can see what sorts of things happened and what went wrong.

I would like to ask the Minister, there were lessons to be learned, absolutely. The lessons that were learned by the department were from a review team

and specific to the building of the bridge. I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is what lessons were learned from the very inception of the bridge project. Thank you.

I don’t know specifically

which lessons were learned from the very inception of the Deh Cho Bridge, but we do have lessons learned. They are on the website. We have made several presentations. The department of highways and

marine

division

of

Department

of

Transportation made a presentation on the Deh Cho Bridge lessons learned. That is on the website. Retrospective Lessons Learned on the Deh Cho Bridge, again prepared by the Department of Transpiration, is on our website. The Auditor General’s report is also on the website. We charted out the recommendations of the Auditor General’s report. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have to say to the Minister that the only lessons that were learned were from the review team project. I quote from their report: “The analysis was based on the experience of the delivery team, and many more parts that included political, financial and legal issues were not looked at.”

I have to ask the Minister, will he, once again, commit and fulfill the promise that was made by the previous Minister of Transportation and provide one report, a fully thorough and analyzed and retrospective analysis of the Deh Cho Bridge Project from inception to completion?

I can have that discussion with the department again. We felt like there was no real value in continuing to do a retrospective analysis. We are busy. There are a lot of projects on the go, and the department felt that with the retrospective lessons learned and the Deh Cho Bridge lessons learned, the Levelton Report before we took over and the Auditor General’s report at the point we took over were sufficient for us to move forward, was sufficient to provide information.

Th

e Member is correct; that doesn’t cover the

financial and the political perspective of what occurred with the bridge, and I’m prepared to put that information together to provide it to the Member or put it on the website.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Colleagues, before we go on today, I’d like to welcome back to the Assembly Mr. Derek Tremblay, our former head of security here. Welcome back to the Assembly, Derek.

Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said in my Member’s statement today – and I gave the facts and the numbers, and even the GNWT’s numbers through their partnership with the researcher on Avens

– the study Where to Go and

What to Do, one thing is clear: a tsunami of seniors is coming and there’s nowhere for them to run.

As I said in my statement, if the capacity was similar to a school, where once a school hit 75 percent full, it triggers a renewal of the school whether through renovation or a building of a new school, but yet we have no policy or solution for the seniors. Avens is 100 percent full right now, at least 50 on their waiting list with nowhere to go.

I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, what are the delays that are stopping this government from making a formal commitment to address the seniors population problem and provide Avens with the necessary tools so they can provide the solutions for those seniors who need places to go?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the numbers that the Member has put forward. I mean, they are department numbers. There is no question that the degree of increase of seniors in the Northwest Territories is going to be significant over the next number of years, but it isn’t just a Yellowknife problem; it’s a territorial problem and we have to look at this with a territorial lens.

We have been putting new beds for long-term care facilities in the Northwest Territories. We will have 18 beds in Norman Wells. We are going to have nine more beds in Behchoko, and we have put new beds in the Territories over the last number of years, including the Dementia Facility. At the same time, we are also partnering with the NWT Housing Corporation that is putting in independent living units throughout the Northwest Territories, five in the life of this government. That will make space available.

We are focusing on Our Elders: Our Communities, which is an aging in place strategy to help encourage and help support people who want to live in their homes.

All that said, we know we need additional beds, and over the last two years we have been working very closely with Avens, exploring a number of different alternative financing options to support the pavilion project which will increase the number of units or beds in the Northwest Territories significantly. We are committed to finding a solution. We will find a solution and we will find a way to support Avens as

we move forward on th

at project. It’s an important

project that needs to happen.

It couldn’t be said better than by

the Canadian Medical Association president, Cindy Forbes. She talks about the growing rate of seniors. She also references the cost, where it costs $1,000 a day, on average, in Canada to hospitalize and hold seniors. Whereas if you find partners like Avens, it comes at a fraction of that price. She estimates average cost in Canada at fifty. Now, I know these are southern costs, but the ratio is the point, not the actual dollar number. Why is the government not realizing that?

My next question is: When will this government be willing to finally step up and address the Avens problem, which is an NWT problem because there are a lot of seniors there from the Northwest Territories, not just Yellowknife. In other words, when will this government be willing to step forward to make that final commitment to address the overpopulation of seniors and the inability to meet those needs?

As I’ve indicated,

we’ve been working very closely with Avens over the last few years. We’ve even presented options and they’ve presented options back. At one point in time, we were talking about working with them to utilize the extended care needs and an extended care facility here in Yellowknife as an option to help them leverage some money to build their long-term care facility. At that time, that was declined by the board. I’m happy to say that the board has actually re-engaged and they are now interested in having dialogue and discussion about the possibility of merging those two opportunities, and it is certainly something that we’re open to. As I’ve said, we work very closely with Avens. We’re in the process right now of actually taking all the work that’s been pulled together to figure out how we can move forward and exploring all the different

financing

options

that

have

been

presented to us by Avens and other groups to make this a reality. As I’ve said, this is incredibly important. We need to make this h

appen. We’re

working with our partners. We’re going to continue to work with our partners and we will find a way to make this pavilion project a reality.

At the current time on the Territorial Admissions Committee list for Avens we have 13 people on the wait-list to get into the Avens facility, so there is clearly a need. We know that when the facility in Norman Wells and the facility in Behchoko opens, we may have some opportunity to move some people back to their initial or home communities, which we are hoping will take off some of the immediate need on Avens.

But at that same time, as I’ve indicated, and I’m going to indicate again, we’re working very closely with Avens. We have a number of options and opportunities in front of us. We need to explore them and we will come to an agreement with Avens, and at that time we will be prepared to make announcements on when and how we’re going to move forward.