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.
WHEREAS there were fifteen acute
care beds in the Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital Health
Centre – and I know the member stood up on a point of
order last week. In fact, the only time he spoke to
address this issue. He stood up on a point of order
prior to the House closing, and saying that it should be
seventeen acute care beds, but I have to read what is in
the prayer of the petition, I say to the member from the
district. So, if your constituents, the thousands who
signed this, are wrong, Mr. Speaker, he should take it
up with them.
Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I will read
the prayer of the petition as is stated:
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 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 reinstate the five acute
care beds in the Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital Health
Centre.
Mr. Speaker, the people who have
signed this petition, from communities all over the
district, and I have read a number of these communities
already into the record; the bottom line is they want to
have the five acute care beds that were in their
hospital put back. They did not want to lose these
services. They feel that there is still a need for acute
care beds in this particular hospital, and they feel
that there is a need for them in the region. They find
that government made the wrong decision. Government made
the wrong decision, supported by their MHA, to cut these
beds at a time when they were needed in the area. What
they are saying, Mr. Speaker, is that they want
government to put these beds back.
Now what government did is they
actually reclassified the beds from acute care services,
Mr. Speaker, to beds that would be used for other
services in this particular area.
People may have expressed the need
to have alternate services but they certainly did not
want to have their acute care beds converted to
restorative care beds. That was not the solution that
they saw to the growing need for services in that
particular area. In fact what they wanted, Mr. Speaker,
was their government to listen, to listen attentively
and to act in a manner that would have provided for
enhanced services in the region and not decommissioning
of services. That is exactly what they have received.
They feel that they do not have a
voice on this issue because their MHA did not stand up,
Mr. Speaker, and fight for them, but rather participated
in the plot by government and participated in the
announcement on the ground that was made in a very
public way out there to take the five beds that they had
closed, to reconvert them to restorative care beds and
to try to make it sound like a good news story for the
people of that area, for the people of Twillingate and
New World Island area. Instead what they were actually
doing is taking five beds that were used for acute care
services directly out of the region, leaving less beds
for less people who depend upon that service. They
certainly feel that is not the direction that government
should be moving in with regard to health care in that
region. They are asking government to put those beds
back.
