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 in the District of The Isles of Notre Dame, and it is regarding the Notre Dame Memorial Hospital Health Centre. 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 last summer and did not reopen in the fall; and

WHEREAS the availability of acute care beds is critical to the people of Twillingate-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-New World Island do not want to see their health care services cut;

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

Mr. Speaker, the people in this area are upset because government closed down five of the acute care beds for the summer season, which is not unusual. It happened last year in this particular region. Normally what happens is the beds are reopened in the fall. They close them down in the summer because it is an opportunity for them when they have people going on holidays and vacationing and so on, and they have staff shortages. So, they keep it down to a minimum because they are not taking in as many patients, they are not doing as many procedures. However, in the fall, Mr. Speaker, the five beds did not reopen.

In fact, there was an advisory, a media advisory went out in March, and that media advisory said there was going to be an official opening of a restorative care pilot program in Twillingate. You would have thought that the people there would have been very happy about that. In fact, they were happy that they were getting a restorative care program. What they were not aware of, Mr. Speaker, is that when their MHA and the minister came out to make the announcement, that indeed what they were doing was taking five acute care beds out of the hospital setting altogether, out of the system, and they were actually converting them to restorative care. That was the pilot project that they were announcing for the people of the area.

In a letter, Mr. Speaker, that I wrote to the CEO of Central Health, she wrote back basically saying to me that we have consulted with the people in the area; however, people who I talked to felt they were not consulted. In fact, I have a folder full of petitions that are still coming in to me from people out in this particular area. Mr. Speaker, they feel that they were not consulted; they had no input into the decision that was being made. They recognize that there was a need for restorative care beds; however, they felt that they should not have to compromise their acute care health care system in the Twillingate-New World Island area in that entire district in order to accomplish that.