Tom Beaulieu

We’ve met with the Avens Society. They have a good plan. The plan is something that is intended to address all of the needs in the Northwest Territories as a fairly elaborate facility that is designed to support people that have long-term care needs and also dementia. Yes, we will continue to work with Avens. They’re the experts in long-term care and we’ll continue to work with them and we will engage them throughout the process.

I will commit to providing the information that we get from our study. I can’t quite understand the note here, so maybe I’ll have Mr. Heath add to what I’m committing to now.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are various numbers that do come out. They are all fairly consistent. We have numbers from a national perspective. We have numbers from the territorial perspective from Avens. We ourselves at Health and Social Services are currently doing a long-term care assessment. I don’t remember exactly when we’re scheduled to finish that. Maybe I’ll have Mr. Elkin just give you a time when we’re anticipating that work to be completed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The current facility was constructed in 1983 and does not meet the current needs of the community and of the region. This is going to be a level B facility being constructed there and should be roughly double the size of the current building. So essentially what is planned is the long-term care facility in Fort Simpson is still a building that is useable, still very functional and still meets the needs of the long-term care in Fort Simpson and the area that uses it. So that part of the building will remain and the new health centre without the long-term care will be...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have some information here; I’ll just pull the information out. I have some of the timelines and I do believe that we’re now prepared to go into a planning study. The planning study for the replacement of the Fort Simpson Health and Social Services Centre is in progress. In the planning study for the health centre in Simpson, we’ll make recommendations for the facility and program renewal. The department is working with Public Works and the Deh Cho Health and Social Services on the study plan now. The study plan is complex and will take several months to complete...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The information and our discussions with Avens have been this year. I think that in response to Ms. Bisaro, we’re not going to take Avens and move it up ahead of everyone else. We’re planning on taking Avens and looking at Avens within the overall picture as part of the continuum of care for seniors. So this is what we’re planning on doing.

Now, the fact that Avens is not in the planning study stage at this point, perhaps I can get Mr. Heath to give the Member a bit of a timeline on when we’re expecting that specific item to go into the capital plan.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I do.

I don’t want to be pulling numbers out of the air here. I recognize that the project is going to be around $30 million. That’s what I know. How many beds that constitutes, I don’t think it’s 600 but I know it’s a project that they see as something that would take them, again, into the future. The reality is they are trying to build something that will take them to 2035, approximately. So the next step, if we agree this is what we need, this is the cost of what we need, is to put it through the capital planning process so that long-term care facility, Aven Centre, can be put up against all of...

We have been in contact with the two Aboriginal organizations in the community, or governments I should say – the local Metis group and the Fort Providence Zhahti Koe Dene Band. So both requests were for them to use the building. One request was to use the building for long-term care and putting four or five individuals in there instead of them moving to Hay River or Fort Simpson long-term care. They would like to keep their elders in the community as long as possible and turn that into a long-term care.

The second request was for the building to become a wellness centre, so they would run all...

We’re moving into the better technology to assist us in health care. We’re going to have electronic medical records right across the entire system. We’re moving all of the authorities into TSC so we’ll have one system that will all be compatible with each other and it will be linked together and working together as a unit, so that’s takes some upfront cost.

For the capital, the simple answer is that we are involved in a lot of construction. There is construction of a fairly modern health care centre that’s 1,000 square metres larger than the current H.H. Williams Hospital. We have a fairly...