Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In other cultures a great deal of importance is placed on the role of the extended family. In our culture, even here in the North, we often take our seniors to a different community, put them in facilities. Seniors living in their own accommodation, as my colleague raised today, struggle to maintain themselves in their independence in their own home. A number of years ago there was a prototype of a granny suite developed. They actually had it in the parking lot up here at the Explorer Hotel. The wisdom of the NWT Housing Corporation at the time was to build these modestly sized units, take them into the communities, and actually co-locate them on a lot in a community with the grown children of this elderly person. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation where did that idea go. It was a great idea. Seniors could watch their grandchildren come and go; they could come and visit them; they’re completely self-contained units. With the growing population of elders – as stated in the budget address, it’s going to double in the next few years – shouldn’t we be revisiting such a thing as that and encourage the involvement of the extended family in a seniors life?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is actually the first that I’ve heard of this particular program and I would have to follow up with the NWT Housing Corporation and see what happened with that, where it went, any future plans.
As I said before, through the independent home ownership program they had a couple years ago they were able to get a lot of independent seniors into their own units. But the Member has raised a good point on co-locating with family members. I will commit to the Member that will follow up with the corporation and see where this is at, because I haven’t heard of it before.
I asked the question because, of course, we happen to have a business in Hay River that could build them for you and get them out to the communities. I appreciate that the Minister will go back and check. I mean, sometimes these good ideas come about and then something happens, the government changes direction, they fall off the table. But I particularly like them because the other thing is that they are fairly readily moveable, so they can be deployed to wherever the situation arises, because there is a continuum of care for seniors. They may not always be able to live there, but to me the idea is excellent. I really appreciate if the Minister, maybe even during this session, could get some research done with his corporation and bring it back and table it and let’s look at it again.
I will follow up, and obviously, as with all the departments in the government, they’re over there monitoring the conversations we have in here, so I’m sure that they’re putting some information together for me right now. I will follow up and see where that went. It’s a very novel idea and it has some merit, but we’d have to follow up on it further.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
