Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we approach the end of this sitting, I know that Members of this House and residents of the Northwest Territories are looking forward to spring and summer in the North and all that it offers. This is a good time for us to reflect on the past year to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been a long haul for all of us.

The first case of COVID-19 in the Northwest Territories was confirmed on March 21, 2020. That was just shortly after the first Public Health Order restricted travel within the NWT and required all travellers coming in to isolate for 14 days in one of...

I think it is really important to note, first of all, that we are not locked down. The borders are open. Hundreds of people cross the borders every single day. We have approved something like 35,000 self-isolation plans. People are not locked in or out of the NWT, but there are some guidelines in place for them coming and going. Since last year, of course, we have made significant increases in the capacity and resourcing of our healthcare system to be in a position to respond to COVID. Although we did not have a lot of hospital cases, we wanted to be ready for that. We have allocated over $30...

I'm not sure if the department has specifically considered that scenario. If it's independent living, it sounds like this would be part of the Housing Corporation's offerings for seniors' housing. Obviously, it would be our intention to keep couples together. They should be together at the end of their lives, as they have been through their lives, and so we would want that to happen. However, how that is going to look in long-term care, I'm not really sure how that's going to look, whether there will be suites available to accommodate couples rather than rooms for single people.

I find it hard to answer a huge hypothetical there that crosses many different departments. What I want to say is that I appreciate that people, that residents in the NWT, the Members of this House, want to return to normal gatherings, normal ways of doing business, and normal ways of visiting family that they knew a year ago. I am keen on that, as well. My hope is that the rationale for easing the restrictions internally and externally will be made known to the public by the end of April. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are, according to my notes, two people under 60 who live at Woodland Manor, so it's two out of 23. I don't believe that the people who live in the assisted-living facilities' needs have specifically been taken into account in the long-term care. The long-term care is really about institutional care for elders who require high levels of nursing care on a day-to-day, 24-7 basis. Having said that, there is now a supported living review going on, the department has an RFP out to choose a contractor to do that, so that we can look at how we can, first of all...

Thank you for that question. It's not clear at this time whether the CPHO would make changes on a community-by-community basis. We do know that, in the month of April, she's going in to review of the whole of the Emerging Wisely Plan to look at ways in which to ease restrictions. Certainly, the vaccine rate will figure into that. The rate that we've all been discussing is 75 percent. I think that that rate is now in question to some extent, given changing situations such as the variants and how transmissible they are, vaccine uptake, a number of other things that may change the immunity level...

The long-term care facilities are located or will be located in hubs where there is a greater medical staff presence and also a greater opportunity to recruit and retain nurses, but a physician is not essential. I think about the long-term care centre in Norman Wells. I don't believe Norman Wells has a doctor, but there is long-term care there. I think it's a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

I would like to just say a word about the catchment area for Hay River. Kakisa and Fort Providence are within the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority area, and so generally speaking, they are served out of Fort Simpson, which is the headquarters for that authority; Fort Resolution is within the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, so they are served from Yellowknife. The Hay River long-term-care bed projections are based on the Town of Hay River, K'atlodeeche First Nation, and Enterprise.

What we know about the occupation of the beds right now is that, at the extended care...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my understanding that this is a genuine engagement. We do want to verify the numbers with residents of Hay River, and we plan to meet with the town council, the seniors' society, and with the Indigenous organizations. We want to make sure that we haven't overlooked or missed anything that is important to the calculation of these numbers, so I'm going to say this is a genuine way of getting community input into this. I don't know what the end result is, but I also ask the Member to keep an open mind that, in fact, 48 institutional beds may not be the best outcome...

It is my understanding that, in doing that report, the Bureau of Statistics looked at issues such as the age of people going into long-term care; what their health status was going into long-term care; how much time they spent in long-term care; which community they were from and which community they want into long-term care in, which are sometimes different. They looked, certainly, at the comorbidities, as we say, more than one chronic disease, that drive people into the requirement for higher-level nursing care and thus into long-term care. I feel confident that the health of the population...