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 Twillingate-New
World Island area, from the District of The Isles of
Notre Dame.
Mr. Speaker, these people are
petitioning the House of Assembly because of the fact
that government closed down five acute care beds in
their health care facility in the Twillingate area.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, their MHA was a part of
ensuring these beds did not reopen, but in fact went out
and announced that they were going to put restorative
care beds in the facility.
Mr. Speaker, this petition, which
has thousands of signatures, has come to the House of
Assembly. Basically, their issue is that at Notre Dame
Bay Memorial Hospital last summer there were five acute
care beds that were closed down in the hospital. That is
not unusual. That happens at lots of health care
facilities around the Province in the summer, Mr.
Speaker, but they usually reopen in the fall.
What happened at Notre Dame Bay
Memorial Hospital is that they did not reopen the five
acute care beds last fall. Therefore, people did not
have the same options, the same number of beds for acute
care in that region as they had previously. That was a
huge for concern for them.
In addition, Mr. Speaker, they
wanted to have restorative care beds in their facility
as well. So they were lobbying to get their acute care
beds open and to get restorative care beds added to
their facility. Mr. Speaker, what government did is they
took the five acute care beds, they reallocated them to
restorative care, and they said to the people in the
Twillingate-New World Island area: Here are your five
restorative care beds. In fact, they even went out there
and made a press conference, made a public announcement
to the people in the area that they were going to do
this, instead of giving them the real facts, and that is
their beds would close.
Mr. Speaker, the petition reads:
WHEREAS
there were fifteen acute care beds in the Notre Dame Bay
Memorial Hospital Health Centre; and
