Thank you, Madam Speaker. Over the last nine years since I’ve been the MLA for Sahtu, I’ve been working with several governments and this government here, the last government and this government here, I really want to, I guess, express mine and my people’s appreciation to the 16th and to this government here. We keep our eye on the prize of a long-term care facility.
In the Sahtu, many of our people, the elders, people that need 24-hour care, often have to go outside the region to get the long-term care facilities that they need. For example, in the Dementia Centre here in Yellowknife there are five people from the Sahtu at that centre. There is one at the Aven Manor. There is another at the Stanton Territorial Hospital, one in Fort Simpson and one in Inuvik.
When the Minister of Health and Social Services and I went over to the Sahtu to do the community tour, we stopped in Deline, and the Deline people really expressed the need for a long-term care facility or a place where their elders can at least be placed at a home in their community. We talked about Norman Wells being a place where it was approved a long-term care facility would be put there.
My people want to come home. Too many of my people have gone out of the region and have died in those facilities, only to be brought back in caskets so that they can have their funeral. It really bothers my people that they have to go out and that’s possibly the last time their grandchildren, or their children, or their relatives see them alive. They are asking that the government keeps their eye on the prize to have a long-term care facility in the Sahtu and work with the people in Deline at looking at a temporary place where they can at least have their elders come back and they can live their last days on this land with their own people.
I’m going to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services about the status of this long-term care facility in the Sahtu. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
