Sandy Lee

Mr. Chairman, I will do my best to answer questions. I will get back to her on all the documents I gave her. We gave a bunch of documents to the committee. There might be some breakdown in communication. Whatever she needs, whatever I have, whatever I can give her, I will give her.

In terms of long-term care facilities needs study, the Member knows that the department just finished looking at long-term care needs of the Territories for the next 20 years. We talked about the need to review that every five years. That was part of our discussion in the Standing Committee on P and P and Social...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Legislation for the professions that the Member mentions are in the line-up. The legislation for various health care professions have been lacking for a number of years, so we have had to update the Medical Professions Act, the Pharmacists Act, we’re just going through the Social Worker Profession Act. There are a number of professions that are more numerous in numbers that we have had to update, and the ones that the Member is talking about are in the pipe, so to speak, in the legislative writing line-up. There is a long list of legislation that needs to be updated...

This capital plan is for this upcoming fiscal year. We have based it on the long-term care planning facilities needs study, but this is not a final sort of document that’s not to be changed forever. The long-term care needs have to be reviewed every five years. The populations will tell us where the needs are and it is possible that Aklavik and McPherson combined for the Gwich’in Nation, that they may be able to establish a long-term care facility that they could jointly share.

The important part is that this is a template that we can work on, and I think the department has done really good...

Just to answer the Member’s first question, as the Member knows, we did have a prior briefing on this and we did send some documents that the Member has asked for. I believe it was sent in an electronic version and I’m assuming those were made available. If not, I could make that available to the Member.

Secondly, I know what the Member is asking. I think she wants to see right in front of her how many beds in how many communities, in what communities, in what year for the next 20 years. I think what we need to discuss about long-term care. We know that the Department of Health along with...

We are working on that right now. That’s what a capital budget review is. The long-term care facilities review has done work on that. It talks about how many bed spaces we need for long-term care territory-wide. That’s a 20-year plan reviewable every five years.

Mr. Speaker, we have to recognize that not everybody in the Territories gets to stay exactly where they want to be. We would like to have people stay in their communities as much as possible, but the assisted living facility in Hay River was built for everybody in the Territories. We do have services in Yellowknife, but whenever there...

Thank you Mr. Chairman. The policy or however you want to call it, the work that we are doing in the Department of Health and Social Services is pretty much in line with what has been there for as long as I have been here, I believe.

I know the Member is right, there are some facilities in the communities that were built by the Housing Corporation in at least three or four communities, but those were not meant to be long-term care as Department of Health and Social Services know it. When we are talking about long-term care, we are talking about acute care or more intense care. I believe there...

As I stated, we are designing a prototype that would go into, well, Smith is a little different because we’re renovating an existing facility. As I mentioned numerous times, we’re looking at a prototype for Level B-C health centre. That’s what’s going to go into Simpson. Well, that will be a renovation too. The functions that are going to be delivered in these programs are similar. So I don’t think it helps to say we don’t look at it as a region. We look at it as a community, we look at it as a health facility that’s going to serve residents in that area. We also look at these health...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we should not forget that this Assembly and this government is the first to invest into a built-for and custom-designed assisted living facility for persons with disabilities. In this year’s budget we’re spending $2.5 million for a complex in Hay River. That’s a territorial facility and that was one of the largest capital investments that we had on the books for the Department of Health and Social Services.

We also spent a sizeable budget in Yellowknife and other areas, to help families with persons with disabilities. I do appreciate that, as is the case with...

Mr. Chairman, we have already established that that is not the best way to describe that project. Long-term care facility and wellness centre being built in Norman Wells stands on its own. Thank you.

In many ways the Member’s question about Smith and Hay River is related to the work that we are doing in Stanton. Going forward what we need to do not only in programming but especially in the capital plan that’s before us, is that we need to have a system-wide plan and work on facilities, because facilities are built to support the services. What we need to do is make sure that Stanton becomes a true territorial hospital; a true acute care, tertiary, the only acute care facility. Inuvik will be the secondary, second level, high-level care facility. Sort of the hub-and-spoke model is the...