Nunavut MLA criticizes conditions at Iqaluit medical boarding home

South Baffin MLA David Joanasie asks questions about the Tammaativvik boarding home in Iqaluit during Question Period in the Nunavut legislature Sept. 15. He says he’s just voicing complaints he hears from constituents. (PHOTO BY BETH BROWN)

Iqaluit’s Tammaativvik patient boarding home comes under fire again in Nunavut’s legislature for services and state of rooms. (FILE PHOTO)

Conditions at Iqaluit’s Tammaativvik patient boarding home are generating complaints from his constituents, South Baffin MLA David Joanasie said Sept. 14 in the Nunavut legislature.

The boarding home now accommodates Nunavummiut from Baffin communities who need a place to stay while they are in Iqaluit for health care.

The home’s current building was built about seven years ago.

“One of my constituents had to move from the Tammaativvik Boarding Home to a hotel because of the conditions,” Joanasie said in a question to Health Minister George Hickes.

“Can the minister clarify what steps are taken to ensure that medical clients are accommodated in a healthy and comfortable manner while they are here in Iqaluit?”

Joanasie cited concerns such as carpeting in rooms that cause respiratory troubles and poor food choices. He said he was also told that the Larga Baffin boarding home in Ottawa offers better services than Iqaluit’s boarding home.

“Larga’s vehicles are new and upgraded when necessary, the food choices at the Larga home are more varied and offer healthier options, and the issue of carpeting causing problems… does not arise,” Joanasie said.

Hickes said the conditions at the boarding home are “an unfortunate reality.”

“It’s hard to quantify the challenge that the boarding home here in Iqaluit has,” Hickes said.

“On average, they are 30 percent over capacity all the time. We do our very best to co-ordinate our clinics and any specialist services so that we’re not stretching that resource even thinner.”

The boarding home is run under a contract between the Government of Nunavut and the Pairijait Tigumiaqtukkut Society, which also oversees Iqaluit’s elders centre.

The society has been financially constrained for some time and officials said, at an annual general meeting in 2016, that they were sometimes required to offer services outside the boarding home’s contract for which staff are not properly trained.

“There have been discussions with the contractor on looking at options,” Hickes said, adding that carpets have been removed in some of the rooms to make hard flooring units available for clients with respiratory problems.

He called the service provided by contractors at Baffin Larga in Ottawa “a nice benchmark,” but noted that the out-of-territory boarding home was actually exceeding its contract requirements and “supplying fantastic services to our patients and residents that go through the Ottawa health care system.”

In other words, it might not be fair to compare the two.

As for monitoring services standards, Hickes said the department is working with Health Canada on a new monitoring plan for all boarding homes contracted by the GN.

Details on how that plan will be “rolled out” are still to be finalized, but should be completed as early as next month, said Hickes, adding that the report would be based only on the minimum standards required by the GN’s contract.

“I encourage all of our contractors to not just meet the minimum standards, but continuously look to improve upon the services that they’re providing for residents and patients,” Hickes said.