Tom Beaulieu

The plan was always to make sure those long-term care beds did not disappear into the system. It was just not to put them into the hospital. In their current location, we can do an evaluation to see about the feasibility of keeping the long-term care beds in H.H. Williams up until the time when those beds are replaced.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can write a letter to the Minister of Public Works and Services, asking that that unit be assessed for long-term care facility as opposed to being used as a hospital. It would still, I think, have to go through the capital plan. It would, in essence, be skipping over a process. But I can do that. I have no problem doing that.

Thank you. I do not have that information. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve always known that there is a staff shortage of nurses right across the Territories. We also know that we have a separate governance system in every health and social services authority across the territory. We can’t share resources as though we have one single governing system with doctors or nurses the same. So the health authorities with their own governance system get the nurses in, they hire the nurses or they hire locums to fill in these positions. So in reality, the department is not specifically aware where and when the nurses are not going to be, although...

Mr. Speaker, that seemed to be the problem, that they had moved away from purely alcohol counselling to more of counsellors that have degrees in mental health and that they looked at a lot of this as mental health issues. It appears as though the communities that want to use Nats’ejee K’eh would like to see that become more of an alcohol counselling type of facility as opposed to a lot of the mental health counselling requirements that are now associated at Nats’ejee K’eh. That’s the exact review that we had asked the board to come back with, an alcohol type counselling versus something that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that Nats’ejee K’eh is not operating at full capacity. There is no question about that. Also, the people do successfully complete Nats’ejee K’eh. We don’t have an instrument that’s going to determine whether or not the Nats’ejee K’eh graduates were fully successful in achieving their battle against addictions, because at which point do we measure success? Is it one year of sobriety? Five years? Or is it a lifetime of sobriety after that? We are trying to get a feel from the communities and the people that have gone through Nats’ejee K’eh, through the...

Mr. Speaker, the plan is not to move people that are from Hay River that require long-term care into long-term care beds outside of Hay River. All the long-term care needs in Hay River will be addressed within Hay River. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The very first process to adding long-term care beds to Hay River would be to go through the capital planning process. I’ve had discussions with the executive and the Department of Health and Social Services about initiating the initial discussions that are needed at the senior bureaucratic level to talk about adding this project to the capital plan for the GNWT. Thank you.

It would be difficult to stand up in the Legislative Assembly and ask for some political support on this, but we can, hopefully, based on the merit of the assessment in the community for the need of long-term care beds in Hay River. It would be based on that that we would extend the use of that facility.

If we were to request that the Department of Public Works and Services reviewed the building for use as a long-term care facility, Health and Social Services would pay for the review.