Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just sitting here thinking about the previous answers from the Minister of health on the 48 beds in Hay River. I have a problem that the projections were done, the decision was made with no consultation with the community. In Hay River and in other small communities, it's very important to engage the people who are there if we're going to make decisions. I would ask the Minister if she and her department are willing to keep an open mind when she hears from Hay River residents and concerned organizations, as well, with respect to the need for 48 beds in Hay River, or is the consultation process just a moot point? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my understanding that this is a genuine engagement. We do want to verify the numbers with residents of Hay River, and we plan to meet with the town council, the seniors' society, and with the Indigenous organizations. We want to make sure that we haven't overlooked or missed anything that is important to the calculation of these numbers, so I'm going to say this is a genuine way of getting community input into this. I don't know what the end result is, but I also ask the Member to keep an open mind that, in fact, 48 institutional beds may not be the best outcome for the residents of Hay River. Thank you.

I thank the Minister for that answer, and I will keep an open mind on that as I go around with her and listen to the comments and concerns from people in Hay River. One thing that she had mentioned previously, as well, is the catchment area. I realize Fort Providence, Kakisa, and Fort Resolution are in different regions, but the reality is that Hay River is a regional centre. It's a regional centre to Fort Providence, it's a regional centre to Kakisa and to Fort Resolution, and people come in from those communities for a number of reasons.

Right now, I think we have, in our extended facility, four people from Fort Providence and somebody from Fort Smith, Inuvik, and Fort Simpson, as well. We do get people from those areas, so I think that the department has to look at the reality of beyond the Deh Cho region or the South Slave, or whatever, and see what's real; and the real thing out there is that Hay River is a regional centre for the outlying communities. I would ask the Minister: will the Minister look at the reality of the Hay River catchment area, and will they consider that Fort Providence, Kakisa, and Fort Resolution are actually in that area? Because Hay River has doctors. I suspect that, if you have an extended-care facility, it's important to have doctors there. That's the question I have for the Minister.

Of those people who currently live at Woodland Manor, none are from Fort Resolution and none are from Kakisa, but four are from Fort Providence. It turns out that you can be in long-term care in the NWT wherever you want to be in long-term care, so while there are people in Woodland Manor who are not from Hay River, such as the person from Inuvik, and from Fort Smith and from Fort Simpson, likewise, there are people from Hay River who are in long-term care facilities in other parts of the NWT. This is a personal choice that they can make based on where their supports and their families are. Just because you live in Hay River doesn't mean you have to go into long-term care in Hay River. As I say, with respect to the catchment area, the only community that seems to have any residents within the Woodland Manor is Fort Providence, and therefore, four of the 23 are from Fort Providence.

Can the Minister confirm if timely access to a doctor is a consideration when assessing where long-term beds will be located?

The long-term care facilities are located or will be located in hubs where there is a greater medical staff presence and also a greater opportunity to recruit and retain nurses, but a physician is not essential. I think about the long-term care centre in Norman Wells. I don't believe Norman Wells has a doctor, but there is long-term care there. I think it's a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since I'm willing to keep an open mind, I would ask the Minister: what additional resources would be provided to the Hay River Health Authority to make sure that we're providing the homecare services that are required? Are we looking at additional dollars? Are we looking at additional infrastructure? Are we looking at additional funds to help support people who do want to stay in homes? Thank you.

My vision is that more people will live in their own homes with homecare support than live in long-term care, and in order to achieve that, we need to invest in nurses, personal support workers. We have to evaluate the outcome of the paid community caregiver program and see which resources best fit the needs for people who are trying to age in place. The home and community care study that was tabled about 18 months ago has specific numbers of nurses and personal support workers required to make aging in place work, and there is no budget item for them at this point. It certainly is my expectation that there will be a budget item and there will be a specific number of staff hired to take care of the people who want to age in place. I would refer the Member to the home and community care study to find the detail, and if he finds that that's lacking, by all means ask again. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are, according to my notes, two people under 60 who live at Woodland Manor, so it's two out of 23. I don't believe that the people who live in the assisted-living facilities' needs have specifically been taken into account in the long-term care. The long-term care is really about institutional care for elders who require high levels of nursing care on a day-to-day, 24-7 basis. Having said that, there is now a supported living review going on, the department has an RFP out to choose a contractor to do that, so that we can look at how we can, first of all, repatriate people who are in out-of-territory placements and, secondly, how we can increase capacity in the NWT for people who need assisted living who are not also elderly. Thank you.

In Hay River, we've got the 10 new beds that they built a few years ago, and we have 15 existing that were in Woodland Manor. My concern is that, by putting in 24 versus 48, I'm not sure what's going to happen to Woodland Manor, and my concern is that they may do what they're doing with the old hospital and knock it down. I haven't really heard of any plans to turn it into anything else at this point. One area that we're really deficient on in our extended care in Woodland Manor is a place for dementia patients. We probably have several there right now, and I don't think they have the support they require. I would ask the Minister: has that been taken into consideration when you looked at the extended-care facility?

According to my information, nine of 23 clients at Woodland Manor have dementia, and I certainly do recognize that residents with dementia need additional care. We don't want them to roam or leave or hurt themselves or be lost. It's my understanding that all of the new builds for long-term care centres take into account dementia as a diagnosis and they are constructed to keep dementia patients safe, so that is a consideration in all of the long-term care builds. As things stand now, we only have a long-term care facility here in Yellowknife. We recognize that, going forward, people want their family members to be at home, so it makes more sense to do it the other way, where all centres are for dementia patients, rather than having only a specialized centre in Yellowknife.

One of the issues that come up, as well, is that, when you have an elderly couple and one has to go into extended care, the spouse may be required to live elsewhere, and we separate them. Has there been any consideration by the department at looking at putting smaller independent-living units on the site where extended-care Woodland Manor in Hay River currently is, to allow for couples to be together and grow old together? Recently, we had a couple who had to move out-of-territory, someone who was born and raised here, even though they wanted to stay here. It's sad to see that, so I'm just wondering if the department has used that as a consideration, as well.

I'm not sure if the department has specifically considered that scenario. If it's independent living, it sounds like this would be part of the Housing Corporation's offerings for seniors' housing. Obviously, it would be our intention to keep couples together. They should be together at the end of their lives, as they have been through their lives, and so we would want that to happen. However, how that is going to look in long-term care, I'm not really sure how that's going to look, whether there will be suites available to accommodate couples rather than rooms for single people.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would ask the Minister if there have been any preliminary designs for either a 48- or a 24-bed for Hay River, because I look at the cost of a 48-bed, which would probably be less than doing two 24s. This whole exercise is going to end up costing more money to this government if we split that building. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The issues we're talking about here go beyond budgets and money. Aging in place is what most seniors want for themselves. They want to stay in their home. They want to have services that come to them from the community, whether it's a nurse or a personal support worker or a family member, and they want these people to assist them to remain independent for as long as possible. That's really the future for elders in the Northwest Territories and in the country as a whole. Long-term care has turned out to be a disaster in southern Canada. It has turned out to be a place where way too many people have died because of poor or no standards, poor regulation, issues around having people work in multiple places for very low wages. We are fortunate here in the sense that the government offers long-term care and so there is accountability. There isn't a need to make a profit. We can accommodate people where they are.

What I want to say to the Member is that, if there are sketches and cost assessments, I'm not aware of them, and if there are those, they would be out of date. The costs and estimates would be out of date. I'm not aware of anything new going on here, but I would really like the Member to turn his mind to the benefits of aging in place, which we recognized by putting it into our mandate and which most people prefer to being in an institutional setting. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Colleagues, our time for oral questions has expired. Item 8, written questions. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Responsibilities established in the mandate letter of the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs include "the development and maintenance of community governments... with sufficient legal authority and resources to carry out community responsibilities." Can the Minister state which NWT communities have been placed under supervision during the past five years and:

1. When and where MACA or other Government of the Northwest Territories staff have been seconded or assigned to community governments to provide support during a vacancy of senior administrative officer or finance officer positions over the last five years;
2. What activities MACA has undertaken to facilitate the staffing of vacant community government senior administrative staff positions;
3. The type, number, and uptake of training opportunities through the School of Community Government or other special training opportunities to build senior administrative positions capacity at the community level; and
4. The type and level of support to the local government administrators of the NWT (LGANT) to expand that organization's activities for senior administrative position recruitment, training, and retention. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.