Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to talk more about the $26.95 million that this government spends every year on southern and, may I say, Alberta institutions for placements for northern residents. The Minister indicated that there were 106 including adults and children. That works out to an average of $255,000 per placement.
I’d like to ask the Minister, first of all, when is the last time these placements where these referrals are being sent to, when was the last time those facilities were visited by somebody from our government, either standing committee or members of his staff? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a large number of facilities that we actually are utilizing – there isn’t one facility – because the residents who we actually have down at these facilities have a huge range of needs. We have some individuals who require 24/7 with multiple attendees in order to provide them the services that they need.
As far as when I’ve been down to them, I haven’t visited them. I don’t believe standing committee has visited them. But if that is something standing committee is interested in doing, I’m willing to entertain that and have a discussion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I just want to reiterate my phrase out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I don’t know what support there is for families, either, for seeing these folks’ family members who get referred to southern institutions.
Previously, in another Assembly when I was on the Standing Committee on Social Programs, we actually went and did a tour and visited many of the facilities. That was way back in the day when Michener Centre was still operating and we went to the Alberta Hospital. I believe Minister Miltenberger was the Minister of Health and Social Services, and off we went to see where our people were living.
It still seems like a lot of money to me, $30 million a year every year, year in, year out. I know they’re specialized needs, but I’m a little bit, I don’t want to say suspect, but I’m a little bit curious that if we don’t have any capacity here in the Northwest Territories that every referral that is made is for these specialized reasons and for this very specialized care.
I’d like to ask the Minister, could we use another group home in the Northwest Territories for adults and children? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we actually have contracts with accredited agencies located in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to provide these incredibly specialized skills. It’s not just specialized skills but it’s different skills. I mean, we have our residents who have really unique conditions who require significant supports, and we don’t actually have programs or the specialists to provide those skills here in the Northwest Territories for one person. Whereas, they have institutions in the South that provide it for similar causes or conditions where they’ve got a large number of people in there, so they’ve got economies of scale that they can administer these.
I, like the Member, am very concerned about these numbers, and this is something that I’ve asked the department to look into. Following on the recommendation of committee, the department did a thorough analysis. Honestly, we are hoping that we would find some like conditions where we could bring them together and utilize a northern facility with northern professionals to provide these supports for our residents. Quite honestly, we want our people home. We want our people in the Northwest Territories. But given a unique file-by-file review, there weren’t enough conditions that were similar that we could justify creating a unit or a function or a service in the Northwest Territories to provide those high-level services.
But it may change. As we continue to evolve here in the Northwest Territories, as patients are coming forward with new conditions we may find that there are conditions similar enough that we can house them, which is why we do the biannual review to make sure that we’re on top of these. Every once in a while we’re lucky where we do have an opportunity to repatriate individuals and we work with the southern institutions to develop great repatriation plans for the individuals who we can bring back, so we’re always looking for ways to bring these people home. We hate spending the money in the South; we’d rather spend the money in the North; but sometimes requirements are so different, so unique, we don’t have a choice but to work with one of our southern partners. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The planes fly both ways. Maybe we should be looking at building some facilities here in the Northwest Territories, and if we didn’t have enough people with specialized need that required that care, we could actually probably take some of the pressure off some of the provinces and have the people come this way.
I would like to ask the Minister if he ever gets any pushback or any concern raised by families. I mean, we’re raising this here in the House and we’re talking about it from the point of view of economics and economy and work. But from that personal human interest side of the folks that are referred to these southern institutions, does the department ever hear from the families about whether they would like to see their loved ones closer to home? Thank you.
The department hears from time to time, but we also hear it the other way as well. We have individuals who would prefer to be in southern facilities because they don’t feel that they’re getting the supports they need here, and at the end of the day, we make referrals to the South that sometimes are declined. So it goes both ways, and we do hear from residents on both sides of this issue. As I said, we really would prefer to have those people back here. I hear the Member talking about opportunities for maybe bringing people from the South up, but we would still need incredibly specialized professionals to come with those positions, and many of them are working in large facilities where they have a huge clientele and maybe wouldn’t be that interested in small facilities that have maybe 10 or 12 patients.
We’re always looking for opportunities to bring our people home and we will continue. We’ll do the biannual reviews, and we’ll continue to keep committee up to date. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
MRS. GROENEWEGEN:
We’ve just finished the most recent one as a result of recommendations from committee, so I’m assuming biannual would be two years from now. We did just finish one. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I request unanimous consent to go back to item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. Thank you.
---Unanimous consent granted
