Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, we all heard the other day that the population in Canada is aging. No surprise, of course, and the NWT is certainly not immune to those pressures. That’s right. Stats Canada says one out of every six persons in Canada are over the age of 64. Heck, take the statistics in this room. Twenty percent of the MLAs are over the age 60. Stats Canada can see this, why can’t the GNWT see this?
So, while the problem keeps getting ignored, Avens continues to be bursting at the seams when it comes to capacity, and as time goes on, it marches on, more seniors are on the waiting list at Avens, knocking on the door when there’s nowhere else to turn. But what happens? They get turned away. Why does this keep being ignored?
Avens is maxed out, Mr. Speaker. I cannot keep telling you this because everyone knows it, and if something doesn’t change, who knows what will happen?
We need more extended care beds because Stanton isn’t going to cover them. Avens is offering a solution.
If this was a school, for goodness sake, we have policies to start looking at renovation plans or extension plans once they reach 75 percent, so why do they just pay lip service to our seniors? So, where are they to go? To the street, I wonder: I don’t know. I could tell you about the 50 or more seniors on the waiting list, but no, the government already knows this, so there’s nothing that seems to want to motivate them into action.
Typically finding a single partner is the biggest problem to these things, but no, they’ve got a partner, a partner that’s competent, that can do the job and wants to do the job. So, what’s the problem? Procrastination. I think that’s all it is.
So, while the delays continue, and of course our elders population keeps growing and growing, and the need for 173 residential long-term beds is still at zero capacity because they’re all full and we need more, well, this government, what do they do? They hire an expert, Dr. Hollander, who says in his report – the government’s expert, by the way – “Yellowknife is expected to grow by 287 percent in the next 16 years.” Oh, but that’s too far away to talk about, let’s go to 11 years away, 248 percent. Oh, 11 years is too far away to think about? Well, let’s just get it down to five years from now, 184 percent growth in seniors.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Bromley couldn’t be more right; it was a shame the way Ms. Lemay had been treated in her nineties. She’s given her life, heart and soul to this community and she’s shown the street, with no options. They’re giving her temporary care but there is no solution.
To sum up, it can’t go on any longer. This government needs to wake up to the seniors’ problem. We must do something to the demand that’s on our doorstep now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
