The expansion of long-term health care in La Ronge has moved one step closer.
Health Minister Dustin Duncan was in the northern community this week to announce the province will fund the entire project and the business case has been approved.
The Wall government announced a half million dollars in planning funds in this year’s budget.
Duncan says unlike health-related capital projects in southern Saskatchewan, there will be no expectation that local stakeholders come up with 20 per cent of the design and construction costs.
“The long-standing policy of the Ministry of Health is that, in northern health regions, capital projects are 100 per cent funded – the design and construction is 100 per cent funded – by the provincial government,” he says. “And so I confirmed that will be the case when it comes time to move to the construction phase of this project.”
The Mamawetan Churchill River Health Region has now received the green light to begin work on functional programming for the expansion.
Local NDP MLA Doyle Vermette – who’s been pushing for a new long-term care facility since 2008 – says it validates his work as an opposition MLA.
“People ask me that,” he says. “They said, ‘Can we get this done having a member in Opposition?’ And now, as I see this clearly, yes, we can get it done if we work together. We can hold government to account, and we can put pressure on them that having an MLA that’s in with government may not be able to do the kind of pressure that we can put on in a different way – publicly and humiliating the government – to do the right thing for our loved ones.”
It is still to be determined when the expansion will happen and what it will look like.