Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have had a good relationship with the Housing Corporation, and we have looked at things like I mentioned, like retrofitting. Not retrofitting, sorry. Our new independent living units have program space and those types of things. I don't actually know enough about the land lease question to answer that question fully, but I will commit to working with the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation to get the answers that the Member is looking for.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, Tsiigehtchic is in the 20-year plan, but it is quite a ways out. It is not something that is contemplated in the life of this Legislative Assembly, but it is something that has always been monitored. We review the infrastructure that we have regularly and make sure that it is meeting our needs from a program point of view, and currently, Tsiigehtchic is meeting those needs. Yes, it is in the 20-year plan, but a long way off.

The Member is correct that the two buildings he is referencing are Housing Corporation facilities. They are independent living units for...

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that later today I will be tabling the Continuing Care Services Action Plan. The Continuing Care Services Action Plan builds on the seven priorities of the 2014 Strategic Framework, Our Elders: Our Communities, and on our mandate commitment to take action so that NWT seniors can age in place and live in their own homes and communities for as long possible.

We are also committed to ensuring that adequate supports are available for those who can no longer do so. Furthermore, our mandate commits us to develop an action plan for enhanced home and community care...

I will do my best in 20 seconds, but with no guarantees. Bottom line is, we are trying to get value for money here, and trying to get as many beds in place as quickly as we can, and the opportunity of utilizing the old Stanton Building presented a significant opportunity to get a large number of beds in a very affordable manner, and increased a number of beds available to residents in the Northwest Territories.

The Avens, we did give them some planning money. The costs came in significantly higher than we anticipated, which was problematic, and was not going to move us necessarily much faster...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today is Derek Elkin on my right. He is the assistant deputy minister of corporate services. On my left is Perry Heath, who is the director of infrastructure planning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the scenario for those 72 long-term care beds is pretty much exactly the same as the scenario for the extended-care beds. We have to wait until they get out of the old hospital, then the property manager will do the retrofits on the building to meet the needs that we have identified for 72 long-term care beds, which will be funded through O and M. I think it's best to maybe go to Mr. Elkin for just a little bit more specifics on the technicalities around that.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents entitled "Continuing Care Services Action Plan 2017-2018 to 2021-2022," as well as the "2017-2018 Health and Social Services Authority Budgets." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services currently contributes about $2.55 million to family violence shelters across the Northwest Territories. In addition, we make an additional $200,000 available to help individuals who are in communities where there are no shelters with transport or to get themselves to communities where there are shelters.

In light of the Member's question, I have also taken the additional step of directing the Department of Health and Social Services to work closely with the Department of Infrastructure to explore some of the...

The first step is obviously for the Department of Health and Social Services to work with Infrastructure to review the different pots that have been made available by the federal government to see what, if anything, fits nicely that we can actually use towards this end.

Also, as I have already indicated, we are working with the NWT Housing Corporation and the Minister responsible for Homelessness to make sure that we have opportunities or places where individuals could go when fleeing family violence. We do not know what pots necessarily might be able to cover this, but as this work gets done...

As I indicated, we do have money in our budget to actually support individuals to get to communities where there are some family violence shelters, but also recognizing that the last thing we want to do is having individuals who are fleeing family violence end up homeless. I have had a number of conversations with the Minister responsible for Homelessness about how we can incorporate this particular issue into our work on homelessness here in the Northwest Territories to see what we can do to support individuals who are fleeing family violence.

Mr. Speaker, there is currently a territorial...