MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to present a petition on behalf of the people from the District of The Isles of Notre Dame. Mr. Speaker, it says:

WHEREAS there were fifteen acute care beds in the Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital Health Centre; and

WHEREAS five of the acute care beds closed this summer and did not reopen in the fall; and

WHEREAS the availability of acute care beds is critical to the people of Twillingate and New World Island; and

WHEREAS the shortage of acute care beds is resulting in people being denied admittance to the Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital Health Centre; and

WHEREAS the people of Twillingate and New World Island do not want to see their health care services cut;

WHEREUPON the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and ask the House of Assembly to urge the government to reinstate the five acute care beds in the Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital Health Centre.

As in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, I have a folder full of these petitions that came in with thousands of signatures on them from this particular district. These are people in the area of Twillingate and New World Island who obviously feel that their own MHA did not support them in keeping these particular beds open in their facilities.

Mr. Speaker, what happened here is this - and we wrote the Minister of Health on this issue before the government had made the decision publicly. We asked government why the acute care beds that had been closed last summer - because there were five beds in the hospital that were closed, which is not unusual in Newfoundland and Labrador in the summertime to close down some of the acute care beds in our health care facilities. However, the practice has always been that these beds will then reopen in the fall.

In the case of the people at the Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital, Mr. Speaker, those beds did not open in the fall. In fact, they stayed closed. What the government and Central Health decided to do was to take these five acute care beds and use them for restorative care beds. Now, Mr. Speaker, you have to understand what is happening here. There is a need in the Twillingate, New World Island area for restorative care beds just like there is a need in a lot of other areas around the Province, but there is also a need for acute care beds and what government did is they made a trade-off. They actually re-designated those particular beds in the hospital that were designed for people who were of acute care need, who were sick and needed to be admitted, into restorative care beds for longer-term care for those patients.

What really makes the irony in all of this is that the member for the area, the minister and the government actually went out to Twillingate and New World Island and made an announcement that they were putting five restorative care beds, making them available in the hospital. When in fact, Mr. Speaker, they were just closing out five acute care beds and designating them for another purpose. The people in the area have seen through this ploy by the government. They find it unacceptable and they are petitioning the House of Assembly to ask the government and to ask their member, Mr. Speaker, to reverse the decision to put proper restorative care beds in this hospital and not use the acute care beds that people depend upon.