Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Premier in light of the program services we have to offer for our seniors and to ensure them that they do live independently, more importantly, that there are supports for them to remain in their home communities in their homes and not have to leave our communities to other facilities such as, say, long-term care facilities in Inuvik and elsewhere. I would like to ask the Premier, would he take it into consideration that there is also an economic cost of having to move people into those types of facilities, the daily cost, the operational cost versus keeping them in their own homes? Would the Premier consider looking at the program services we have for seniors and look at the net fiscal benefit of retaining them in their own homes than having to send them into an institutional setting? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is one of our goals, is to keep our family members in their homes for as long as possible. When we design some of our programs, we try to be as much assistance, for example, on property tax breaks, fuel subsidy issue, or housing repair programs. We do try to take that into consideration before looking at the institution side of the equation. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I think that we also have to realize that there is a cost associated with the operation of a long-term care facility, incarceration programs. I will use the Arctic Tern Facility in Inuvik where we had one inmate which was costing this government some $5,000 a day to keep that one inmate in that facility, in excess of $150,000 a month. I think that we have to be realistic. The cost of keeping elders in their home is a lot cheaper than providing them that assistance and putting them in long-term care facilities where you have 24-hour care and provided by their families. I would just like to ask if he really seriously consider this and take down those barriers and keep their families in their homes, give them their family supports they need, and more importantly, bring down the cost of having to move them out of their communities and live out their days in their home communities. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, in fact, I think we are in full agreement in our goal, is to keep our family members, seniors, in their homes as long as possible before having to look at settings of long-term care, for example. We have tried to design many of our programs. As we continue to look forward, we continue to look at how we can try to better address the needs of our seniors throughout the Territory. We are in agreement that the cost of having seniors or any individual in an institution setting versus a home setting is much more costly. When we look at those programs like our fuel subsidy, our power, land tax, home care, home repairs, we look at those and, in our design, try to meet the needs as best as possible of our elders in our Territory. Thank you.
Thank you. Those are all good programs, but the downfall of that program is the way that you do the household income testing. As soon as a family member comes to visit their parents or a relative or a grandchild comes to spend some time with their parents, they’re penalized, and for me that is the problem with the programs. We have to remove those barriers where you penalize families for visiting family members. I think that is the key in making sure this program works. So could we remove that clause that discriminates families from being families? So I’d like to ask the Premier if he can clearly stipulate or clarify that policy so that we allow family members to do what families do, and that’s reunite them, live together and help their seniors go through their aging process, but also with some enjoyment of their grandchildren and their children living with them? Thank you.
Thank you. The program that we do have in place and the programs we have in place do take into consideration the seniors are exempt from any of these. For example, public housing, rent free, other housing programs that we have, it is household income, but it is the income of a person that doesn’t qualify as a senior or an elder in our communities. So we have taken that into consideration as we look at the design of our programs. I know that the Minister of the Housing Corporation is looking at a Shelter Policy for the Government of the Northwest Territories as well. So when we look into the future, we have to ensure that our programs do make sense and provide the best of services available, but the other side is we have to ensure that we can afford it overall to be able to provide the level of service we can. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Premier for his comments, but again, we do have to remove those barriers that do put barriers on families, and more importantly, the elders, because at the end of the day the elders are being penalized. They’re not accessing those programs simply because they didn’t have the paperwork. They didn’t have the income requirements that are needed by the program. So I’d just like to ask that they allow for some flexibility, some exemptions where a family member is there taking care of the person, which is saving the government costs, and that we’re able to show that those type of requirements will be allowed and it will allow for those types of exemptions in the policies. Thank you.
Thank you. Again, the overall programs and the list we have and the criteria for the programs do look at the consideration of having people and seniors in their own homes versus a separate. For the areas of ensuring forms and our programs are understandable, through the Department of Executive we’ve recently put in place community service offices in a number of our smaller communities to try to reach out, as well, to our seniors. In fact, they do have a program where they go and visit the elders in our communities to make them aware of programs we have and help them through that process. In fact, as the Minister of the Housing Corporation has just shown me, on our CARE program, out of 191 applications of those approved, 136 were from the seniors side. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
