Money for John Amagoalik’s care running out, family says
Nunavut’s Health Department said funding privately arranged at-home care outside its ‘authority’
John Amagoalik’s wife Evie Amagoalik, left, and daughter Lily Amagoalik picked him up at Iqaluit’s airport on June 10. He flew home after living at Embassy West Senior Living in Ottawa for 16 months. (Photo by Mosha Folger)
Friends and family of John Amagoalik say they’re desperately seeking funds to cover his at-home medical care in Iqaluit after the Government of Nunavut informed them it would only cover a small portion of costs.
The Health Department told Nunatsiaq News it can’t cover the total cost of his care, like housing or privately arranged personal care workers, because these costs fall outside of its “authority.”
“Nunavut has a publicly funded health-care system, with services provided fairly and equitably based on assessed need, eligibility and available services,” spokesperson Charmaine Deogracias wrote in an email.
“Individuals are assessed according to their level of care needs and offered appropriate services, which can range from supports in the home to 24-hour care in a health care facility.”
John Amagoalik’s wife Evie Amagoalik says her husband needs around-the-clock care and that it’s only fair the territory at least covers the costs of medical professionals the family has hired to take care of him.
“The government should pay for the helpers that come by every day,” she said in an interview. “It’s the government’s responsibility to do that, even after the patient has gone home.”
John Amagoalik returned to Nunavut, the territory he helped create, in June after spending 16 months at Embassy West long-term care centre in Ottawa. Family and friends had raised the money required to set him up with at-home care but at the time said they only had enough to temporarily cover costs and were hopeful the Department of Health would provide longer-term assistance.
Revered by many as the “Father of Nunavut,” John Amagoalik served as the executive director of the Nunavut Land Claims Project starting in 1974. After 1993, he led the land-claims settlement process with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., following the ratification of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act. From 1999 onward, he chaired the Nunavut Implementation Commission, the 10-member organization that outlined what eventually became Nunavut’s government.
“He along with others worked for over 25 years to create this territory, so we think it’s unconscionable that he be treated this way in his last days,” said Mark Stiles, a close friend of Amagoalik’s.
Stiles said he believes keeping John Amagoalik in territory is cheaper for the government than sending him back to Embassy West. He estimates, based on publicly available figures, that the Department of Health spent around $32,000 per month for John Amagoalik’s care at Embassy West. His care and housing in Iqaluit costs $16,000 per month, Stiles said.
He said he met with Nunavut’s Health Department on two occasions — in July and August — to ask for help. He said he was told by Heather Hair, the assistant deputy minister of health, that her department could only provide funding for a maximum of 2.5 hours of at-home care per week.
“Privately contracted care services and independent housing arrangements remain separate from department-funded home care services. Consequently, they cannot be provided or funded through the department’s Home Care Program,” Hair wrote in a letter addressed to Stiles and others advocating on behalf of the family.
“The department is not responsible for housing and is unable to transfer funds allocated to existing elder facility contracts to pay for private housing for individuals.”
But Stiles said his friend has been moved around enough in his lifetime.
At five-years-old, he and his family were moved against their will from their home along Hudson Bay to Resolute Bay in the High Arctic. In his youth, he was sent to Edmonton after contracting tuberculosis before being forced to attend another residential school in Manitoba.
“He’s been through adversities time and time again, he doesn’t need another kick in the teeth,” Stiles said.
Anne Crawford, another close friend of the family, said John Amagoalik has been doing fairly well since getting back to Iqaluit, and that she’d like him to be able to stay.
“I was surprised that they resorted so quickly to bureaucratic responses, I had expected there would be more consideration,” she said about the Health Department.
She said right now his care is running on the “goodwill” of friends and family, something they won’t be able to afford much longer without external support.
Nunatsiaq News has reached out to NTI, which owns the subsidized housing where Amagoalik currently lives, for comment, but has yet to hear back.
This man helped create our territory and establish land rights yet this is how he is treated? We are a joke, fund this his care and living so he can live out his life with dignity. This goes for so many too.
we will all be in the same boat soon.
we are appreciative of what he fought for. but honestly, his salary over the years was much higher than 90% of the people he helped.
This comment ignores the realities of life before 1999. I am not sure the writer has any knowledge of how things were in those days.
Canada funded TFN land claims negotiations through loans to the Inuit organizations. Inuit organizations had nothing. All negotiators salaries were assessed and parsed by Canada, and the pay was most certainly not rich. Meanwhile, the federal and GNWT negotiators had overtime pay and public service pensions.
The indigenous funding was never certain from year to year. There was no funding and no certainty to set up the kind of pension that non-native negotiators were given.
There were no banks in communities to even buy an RRSP.
You cannot assume that today’s coonditions exited then.
The GN has egg on its face after the family was able to get this guy home and arranged care. The GN was proven by a family that it can be done despite they saying it cannot. Clearly it was a we “will not” vs. we “cannot”.
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Now the family is likely looking to prove it is more economical than the inflated costs Embassy West and other institutions are milking the GN for. Of course, this requires the GN to actually deal with people directly in-Territory instead of buying them a ticket and throwing them at a contractor, which is bad news for officials who are used to underperforming under the radar and blaming contractors for everything.
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The way this all is playing out seems awfully strategic so good on the people who are pushing for better elder care, because the Minister and the Department look completely foolish here: We’ll pay $X for him to be in Ottawa at a private institution but we won’t pay the same $X for him to be in Nunavut. NTI really should play a role in supporting advocacy here for elders .
It’s not the same $x to be in Iqaluit as in Embassy West. It’s 1/2$x. So the GN’s stance makes even less sense.
If it costs 50% of the price to keep him in Iqaluit, where he is happy and he wants to be, why does the GN want him back at Embassy for double the cost?
And if it costs 50% for John why aren’t we exploring this option for other elders?
I am constantly puzzled by what the GN does and does not do, but this one really takes the cake.
Okay, let’s say the GN does that.
Where does it get the bodies to fill those positions? The professionals to able to provide 24 hour round-the-clock service as needed? Health centres across the territory are chronically understaffed as it is. So where are all these additional trained caregivers going to come from?
Looking at it from strictly a cost standpoint for a single individual is very misleading, and someone like Anne Crawford is smart enough to know that.
Thank you Observer for the compliment, I do spend a fair bit of time thinking and working on these issues.
I truly believe that most of our elder care needs can be met in community.
We do need people will skills and commitment, but we don’t need to overstate the levels of skill in most cases. I went to court for a family where the GN wanted to send a woman out of Nunavut to Calgary (forever) because they claimed that they couldn’t find someone to assist her with her toilet. Clearly this is a skill that many in Nunavut have – most of us have changed diapers and done the necessary clean-up.
The current GN model is contracting for housing and personal care through Embassy West – a private provider in Ontario. Embassy does not have a monopoly. There is no logical reason why a contract could not be put in place for housing and personal care through a private provider in Nunavut. As a matter of fact the Nunavut Agreement Articles 23 and 24 would suggest that this is the GNs obligation.
Where this is possible for John – or any other elder – the GN should be making all efforts to support and sustain that arrangement. The commentator Get In Line is right to be angry. This approach to care should be available across Nunavut. These contract funds should be supporting elders to stay here, with the economic and personal value of Nunavut dollars and employment contributing to the economies of many Nunavut communities.
Let us hope that change is coming and we begin to see private or community care options for as many elders as we can safely return to home. That transition would truly live up to the often-repeated GN commitment to prioritize our elders.
Just to be clear, I’m not insisting on private providers. I’d be even happier if the GN hired a fleet of casual or term employees to provide these services on a public model (because the need varies from time to time and place to place) taking on the burdens of management and payroll. Or as a crown agency. Or any delivery method.
I have used the “private” model because that is what the GN has used in Rankin and at Embassy in Ottawa.
I have tremendous respect and sympathy for John Amagoalik, and he deserves proper care. But this feels like a public pressure campaign to have the GN fund a privately arranged care model that could set an unsustainable precedent.
If the GN funds a $16,000-a-month private arrangement here, will the same option be available to every Nunavummiut with similar care needs? If not, how is that fair? If so, is it sustainable?
Nunatsiaq should investigate the numbers more closely. Who is currently providing the health care? What qualifications do they have? What exactly is included in the $16,000? How much is NTI subsidizing the house it owns?
This is not about whether John deserves care. He does along with all Nunavut elders. It is about whether the proposed arrangement is transparent, equitable and sustainable for Nunavut.
The GN already employs a private care model in Ontario and MB, maybe QC I don’t know. They pay private companies to provide private care via public funds. Is there any material difference?
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The GN wants the easy option. Pay $X and don’t worry about it. The alternative is to pay and be responsible for hiring and organizing in-territory, or contracting in-territory services and arranging facilities etc in some instances.
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Clearly the second option is a lot of admin and work for the GN. Clearly the GN doesn’t want is the care (or lack of care – I don’t have an opinion as I don’t know anyone in this system) on their doorstep, because elders fly under the radar when they are thousands of KM away.
Well John should get in line, just like the rest of us that have family down in Ottawa! Sucks but that all we have as care for these conditions, loved ones away from home, that’s the reality all the rest of us have been faces.