Sandy Lee

Home care worker jobs are not inferior jobs. They’re not part-time jobs. It’s going to be a more important profession. They get schooled to do home care work. They do anything from post-op care or working with persons with disabilities, looking after the elderly, working with the nurses and doctors and looking after their medication. Home care is huge and it’s going to be a more and more important area for taking care of our residents all across Canada.

Those will become, actually I think those are better economic opportunities for our people in small communities where our people in our...

Mr. Chairman, that is the one I was referring to. Thank you.

We are a territorial government, a territorial Assembly. We do territorial planning and we are reviewing the capital budget for the Department of Health this afternoon. Mr. Speaker, it’s all before us. For any additional spaces, we put them in as the funding becomes available. We have done a lot of work in building through planning studies and prototype designs, so that we can move these projects on the books as quickly as possible.

With respect to Yellowknife, there are ways to support these families that are not based out of a facility. Specific to the Member’s constituent, her situation is...

I have had that discussion with the Member and I have undertaken to work with the Housing Corporation. It is the Housing Corporation unit. I know the Member is saying we are not talking about 24/7 level 3-4 care, can we not work together, where the Housing Corporation provides those units available to elders and we have home care and more support there so that elders could use that facility to the extent possible, and I am willing to look at that and I believe that we could do that under the existing policy. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, it’s complete. We sent an electronic version, because it’s quite massive, to the committee. Thank you.

Two points to that, one is that Yellowknife has more assisted living beds than any community in the Territories. The second is that, Mr. Speaker, the Member knows that we do our budgets together. It’s not the department alone that sets out this budget.

I agree with the Member that this is an issue that we need to plan for. That’s one of the reasons why the department has worked to finish the long-term care facilities plan for the next 20 years, which has not been done before. The long-term care unit is not just for seniors, it’s for anybody who needs long-term care. I agree with the Member...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I already stated, the regional health centre/wellness centre/long-term care in Norman Wells stands on its own. It is the only region in the Territories without a Level C care facility for all the reasons that the deputy minister mentioned. The 48 repatriation rule that is under effect from Alberta facilities, the surge capacity, the need for us to use technology more and to have facilities in place where our local travelling specialized staff could go to different places and provide services, we just don’t have that in the Norman Wells facility.

That facility, I...

I’m going to invite the deputy minister to add more to what I have to say. The Fort Smith centre is being renovated to meet the needs of the residents that it serves. The way it is designed now -- it was a hospital many, many years ago -- it is designed and being renovated to reflect the ISDM model and integrated services that we need to provide. We’re putting emphasis on the midwifery program there, which is serving the community well. There are residents from outside that are coming in to use that facility. We also want to be able to do other services. I don’t want to get into technical...

Just two points on that. The first point, I will commit to get back to the Members on how the accounting was done in terms of the comparison between BP and the new funding we’re getting, because we did just go through the BP process. There’s a program there, money for respite care, and we are bringing new money under THSSI under supplementary appropriations. So there are some accounting rules that we had to follow that I would get the Member the detail on.

The second part is, I want to tell the Member, and I’ve said it again, THSSI funding is a lot less than THAF. So we are going to see...

That funding is multi-million dollars over five years. THSSI is a multi-million dollar proposal for the next two years. We have just finalized this. I’m not trying to confuse anybody or evade answers in any way. This is a complicated package of funding that we received from the federal government. This is why I’m making a commitment from the Members on the other side that I will come to them with the full proposal so that we can have the entire picture of what the new funding looks like and get an explanation of where respite care would have fit or should fit or doesn’t fit. We’re just working...