Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The urgent need for a complete restructuring at Stanton Territorial Hospital has been under review since before the last Assembly. We’ve patched cracks and tinkered with failing and mouldy systems for too long. It’s time to get serious.
Emergency physician and current CMA president Anna Reid has been quoted as saying, “there is no place in emerg for doctors to privately use a phone, not even enough surface space for a doctor to sit and fill out paperwork.” That’s the critical care portal at Stanton Territorial.
Patients wheel through the waiting room to X-ray, there’s room for only four crammed beds in the ICU unit. Files overwhelm office space and surgeries get backed up through long waiting lists for a lack of operating room time. The facility is poorly laid out for modern medicine, causing serious issues of safety, efficiency and privacy.
We strive to control travel costs, but then ship patients south for want of facilities here. The cost in employee stress and to patient care can only be imagined.
In August 2011, the Minister of Finance was quoted as saying, “Stanton needs some very, very critical work.” He estimated $200 million in needed renovations would extend the facility’s life by 15 years and cost $300 million less than replacing the hospital. We’re spending $1 million this year and we’ll be lucky to see $5 million next. That’s what, 20 or 30 years?
With elections won, where is the real money? Well, it will be paying for a bridge for 35 more years, 80 to 90 million dollars for the Inuvik-Tuk highway is on the spending list, with tens of millions more for yet more new initiatives. All new dollars while critical capital spending to meet human needs is postponed, delayed and deferred.
Stanton Territorial Hospital is the foundation of our most important and often most urgent medical facilities serving all of the citizens of this territory. Three hundred fifty million on a bridge, Tuk road and other new projects won’t save lives and ease suffering. The conditions at Stanton for patients and staff border on disgrace. Members have been calling for action from the Health Minister for a decade. Two hundred million dollars now to save $500 million later is a fiscal no-brainer.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
We’ve fiddled and faddled so long the midlife window for Stanton Territorial has almost passed. The Finance Minister urges thrift today for a better tomorrow, but tomorrow is here.
I’ll be working with all Members to put the human needs of our constituents first on the list of our next capital budget and I will have questions for the Minister later today. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
