Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I had homecare on the brain. What I am referring to is the Continuing Care Action Plan, and I apologize for the confusion, but it is the same thing. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Ms. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have any further questions on that, now that we know what that is about. Also, during the business planning process we talked about the tremendous backlog of need in both long-term care and homecare, and the Minister said that the department is aggressively exploring options to acquire additional long-term care beds in Yellowknife in the short term. I wonder if the Minister could give us an update on that issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we are currently working with Avens who, with support from us, some money to help them do the work, is developing a comprehensive business case for the expansion of 48 beds on the Avens site, a net gain of 48 beds on the Avens site. The other 172 beds, we are looking at putting into the old hospital, and we have got direction from FMB to explore that further and see what we can do to utilize that. That will give us the 120 beds that are required in Yellowknife as a result of the comprehensive review that was done, indicating we need 258 beds. I have also had some discussions with a number of different groups in Hay River who have expressed an interest in being partners or finding ways to work together to increase the number of long-term beds in that community.

Priority-wise, based on where the demand currently lies, our priorities are to get the 258 beds open by 2026 or within 2026, but, in order, priority would go Yellowknife; Inuvik, where we have people living in acute care units in the hospital, which is completely inappropriate; then Fort Simpson and Hay River are about equal. That is the majority of the 258 beds. We are working on different plans, trying to address the needs across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Ms. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There was an important piece about the timing there that was new to me. The timing is to have the 258 beds in place by 2026. I heard about the priorities, but is there any staging, that there would be so many by 2020 and then so many more by 2026? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are not working at it that way. We are looking at where the priority lies. We need to get the issues done in Yellowknife, because that is where the greatest demand is. The next greatest demand is in Inuvik, and then Hay River and Fort Simpson are about the same. Ultimately, our goal is to have those facilities open and in operation during the year of 2026 or sooner, but, obviously, we need to start rolling these out quicker. Yellowknife Avens is an opportunity that we think we might be able to move on quicker, depending on the results of the business plan.

Then, obviously, putting 72 beds in the old Stanton building can't happen until the new hospital opens and they have moved out of that building, and we have appropriately done capital retrofitting within that building to meet the needs, so that is a couple of years out. We have nine years, so we are trying to figure out where we need to be in those nine years and backing it to make sure that the work can get done in all the regions necessary. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Further comments, Ms. Green?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will make this my last point. One of the difficulties of the anti-poverty work, since it was really renewed with vigour in 2009, is that the territory doesn't have a definition of poverty. I am wondering if the Minister believes the time has come to create a definition. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am pretty sure I have said a couple of times that we need to really get a definition here in the Northwest Territories. I would like to add that I had the opportunity to attend the federal-provincial-territorial meeting of the Ministers of Social Services last week with Minister Duclos and some of his representatives. He was not able to stay the whole meeting. We were there to talk about the national anti-poverty work that is being done, and one of the discussions is there has to be a definition in order to evaluate whether or not we're making ground or not making ground. Had every province said the same thing that all the NGOs and other governments said in Yellowknife when we tried to come up with one that passes, man, that's hard. Everybody's definition is a little bit different, but we have to do it. We have to find a way. So it'll be interesting to see what the federal government comes up with as a definition of whether or not that's something we might be able to use, but at the time we need to keep trucking forward to see if we can come up with a relevant and meaningful definition here in the Northwest Territories. If you have one, we're open. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Ms. Green.

I'm ready for that challenge, Mr. Chair. The definition of poverty reduction in the NWT should be we pledge to reduce child poverty in the NWT by 25 per cent in five years. Could the Minister work with that please? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I like it. That's a target, not a definition, but I’m prepared to work with it. We still need a definition of poverty, and I think the Member's point is valid. I mean, that's a good target, but we still need to define what the poverty means in order to meet that target. There are so many different definitions out there, so many opinions, but we have to do it. It's not going to be easy; it's hard work. Like I said, I know the Member is passionate about this, so I'm open to some suggestions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Ms. Green, further comments?

Just one more. Yes, I appreciate that that is a goal and not a definition, and for sure this work is going to be hard. I don’t think that we should wait for the federal government. I think that we need to consider in our own context what poverty is. We often hear that people with low income don’t feel like they live in poverty, so it's not only income driven, but we do hear that lots of people don’t have enough food to eat.

So I think that we really have to make the effort to do that, and I think the biggest danger here is overthinking it and making it complicated, and that's why I'm talking about 25 per cent poverty reduction for children in five years. It should be something that you can spit out in a sentence that everybody understands and everybody can support without getting into a monster, you know, 150 words, this is what poverty means to us. So I just also say that with the provision of the new Stats Canada information starting to flow now, I think that we're going to see some additional indicators of poverty that may inform the kind of work we need to do on indicator. With that, I'll bring my comments to a close. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. I'll give the Minister a minute to respond, if you would like.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's good information. I look forward to seeing those indicators and sharing with the advisory groups and, you know, the department seeing it so we can start moving forward to put some indicators here in the Northwest Territories. My challenge, if you will, is to the Member and all the Members, you know, the Member and I have been working on this for a while and we still haven't come up with a definition of poverty that satisfies the people of the Northwest Territories, and I think both of us clearly know in order to make progress that definition needs to be there. So I challenge the Member as I do all Members, bring us your suggestions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Seeing no further comments, I will call this activity total. Health and Social Services, community health programs, operations expenditures summary, total activity, $158,460,000. Ms. Green.

I move that this committee defer for the consideration of the activity community health programs under the Department of Health and Social Services, Main Estimates 2017-2018, on page 167 at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Green. There's a motion to defer. The motion is on the floor and being distributed. The motion is in order and non-debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed?

---Carried