Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
I want to start with talking a bit about this idea of institutional care in terms of level 3 or level 4 long-term care. What has been the determined threshold for the size of a community, numbers wise, that it would take to sustain a facility like that?
Normally, I know in New Brunswick, which is where I'm from, you need to have a population centre of 4,000 to 5,000 people with an outlying population to support a facility of that size. What is that number that you think will work, and then how does that look? Is it a combined facility that takes into account assisted living and then level 3 care and level 4 care as a total overarching approach to end-of-life care, or is it different conceptual models that will work within a community or group of communities? How do you see that?
I'm really concerned about the viability of building facilities. It's great if communities can afford to build the facilities on their own. I know there are some communities that have chosen to do so, but just because they've chosen to do so doesn't mean it's necessarily a viable option. Of course, in New Brunswick, we have the exact opposite problem. Except for indigenous communities, we have a declining population. We're building for the top of the bell curve knowing full well that 15 to 20 years from now, the older of our long-term care facilities are actually going to be decommissioned or turned into something else because we just won't have the population we need to sustain them. Could you just speak on that?