Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s statement today is on one of my very favourite topics. That is the hospital in Hay River, not the new hospital but the old hospital.
Mr. Speaker, every time we have anticipated what we are going to do with that piece of infrastructure once the new hospital is fully occupied, I have adhered to my belief and my philosophy that just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s no good, and it’s actually not even that old. I was there for the ribbon cutting. I never thought about the meaning of that.
---Laughter
I really do believe that. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I’ve hit a brick wall because they say, “Hey, you want a new hospital? You got a new hospital. Surely you don’t expect the government to maintain the old one.” Then I was in a briefing about the Stanton Hospital and finally a light came on in my head. Guess what? They are going to build a new hospital in Yellowknife but they’re going to give the developers of the new hospital the old hospital. I thought the precedent has been set, the template is there. So now we, in Hay River, need to get together a partnership, a coalition, a group of people in the community, perhaps some NGOs, and we need to look as a group at what the old hospital could be used for. I believe the government might even participate in the old Stanton Hospital to a certain level that they’ve capped off.
If we were going to actually demolish the old hospital in Hay River, there would be a technical review. There would be the cost of demolition and other costs associated with that. What I would like to get a commitment for is could we get… Now the Minister of Health is pointing at the Minister of Public Works, and that’s why I laughed. Sorry.
So, if we could get a commitment that would allow us to go into this project and consider what it could be used for. There are many things that the old hospital could be used for. The other good news is that we have a window of opportunity, because there’s 10 extended care beds in the old hospital right now and there’s been a slight delay on replacing those 10 extended care beds at the new wing of Woodland Manor, and thank you for that. We’re going to move those over there. That means we’re going to have this empty building, and there are so many needs in the Northwest Territories, even the need for a territorial treatment centre. I know treatment centre is not a word that this government wants to hear about, but it is still a need. It is an expenditure. It’s an operations expenditure of this government to send people to institutions in southern Canada. There is money there.
So, I don’t know where this would go, but I want to go back to Hay River with my colleague Mr. Bouchard. We would like to talk to people in the community who may want to think about what we could use that for and then I would like this government to commit to giving Hay River the same consideration they gave Yellowknife in terms of giving this coalition in partnership the old Stanton Hospital. We would like the same consideration. You’ve set the precedent now; the template’s there; we would like to move on that. We might just need a little money to hire a consultant to put our whole proposal together, but we’ll be in touch with you on that. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
