Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Member indicated, we have a longterm solution for the sobering centre here in Yellowknife. The building does have to go through some renovations. On September 25th the Yellowknife City Council actually approved a proposal for the use of the new building for the sobering centre and a day shelter. This proposal allows us to actually continue our planning for the number of renovations that are required on that site. The department and the city are actively working with partners right now to find interim location while renovations are completed. In order...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are a couple of different ways that we are supporting this. Some of this is through O and M and the department. We are looking at family or community caregivers. We are looking at enhanced homecare. We are looking at a number of different things within the department. The department has also worked very closely with the Housing Corporation. I applaud the Housing Corporation for the work they have done to try to put in more programs, to make them a little easier and a little bit more accessible for seniors to do some mods or retrofits on their houses so that they can...

Come on. Yes, Mr. Chair. I have two people with me today. On my right is Derek Elkin, who is the assistant deputy minister of corporate services. On my left is Perry Heath, who is the director of infrastructure planning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we had had a number of discussions with Avens on the 48 beds, but in light of the fact that we have to accommodate or come up with a plan to address 258 beds across the Northwest Territories, not just in Yellowknife, and we wanted to be able to roll those out across the Territories as a whole as opposed to putting the 200 beds in Yellowknife immediately and then having a significant deficit across the Territories, we have decided to move forward with a plan, or we're proposing to move forward with a plan, that puts the 72 long-term care beds in Yellowknife with...

Yes, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the plan for the extended care beds is that, once the new hospital is completed and the services are moved into the new building and the old hospital is vacated, we will then work with the property manager of that building, who will do the capital asset retrofits on that building to meet our specs and our needs.

Our costs on this would be structures and beds and other medical equipment, which is a capital purchase, but not necessarily the cost of doing the changes on that building. That should start, design is expected to start, in early 2018. Construction is...

Mr. Speaker, we're still a few days away from actually opening these facilities, so we have some time to do some training. When it comes to one of our more recent facilities, the facility in Norman Wells, we worked with local partners as well as Aurora College to provide some training for resident care aides. We can certainly explore that model. I think there's great training out there where we can train local people for local work, and at the end of the day that's what we would like to do: local people, local work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we've moved forward with the single system here in the Northwest Territories, we're focused on providing customer or client services that meet the needs of our residents. I would strongly encourage that the Member have individuals who are facing these challenges get in touch with social services who will hopefully be able to provide them with the guidance to help them get to family violence shelters around the Northwest Territories

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services currently contributes about $2.55 million to family violence shelters across the Northwest Territories. In addition, we make an additional $200,000 available to help individuals who are in communities where there are no shelters with transport or to get themselves to communities where there are shelters.

In light of the Member's question, I have also taken the additional step of directing the Department of Health and Social Services to work closely with the Department of Infrastructure to explore some of the...

The first step is obviously for the Department of Health and Social Services to work with Infrastructure to review the different pots that have been made available by the federal government to see what, if anything, fits nicely that we can actually use towards this end.

Also, as I have already indicated, we are working with the NWT Housing Corporation and the Minister responsible for Homelessness to make sure that we have opportunities or places where individuals could go when fleeing family violence. We do not know what pots necessarily might be able to cover this, but as this work gets done...