Good afternoon, MaryAnn and committee members.
My name is Florence Willier. I am a member of the local government leadership. My community has about 1,050 to 1,100 people living on reserve and an equal amount living off reserve, for about 2,800 altogether.
I'm not sure if anybody has heard about Driftpile previous to this, but in our community we have a large population of diabetics and a large population of people who are over 55 years of age and are now in need of long-term care.
We have a health centre that is staffed with a nurse, and we do have a doctor that comes in weekly, but most of our people have to travel out for all the specialized care such as dialysis and long-term care. They have to leave the community and be housed in a provincial system. Right now in Treaty No. 8 near Driftpile, there is no long-term care facility we can access. There are provincial long-term care facilities with a huge waiting list. We are usually put at the bottom of the list.
Acquiring those services is a very lengthy process. A lot of times we have to seek other first nation long-term care facilities that are hours and miles away from Driftpile. People have to basically pack up and leave, and a lot of them end up dying in those facilities without coming back home.
One of the wishes of a lot of the elders is to die at home. It has been a pressing task and goal for the leadership to get this long-term care facility built on our nation's land to service the people, to get all those essential services that every Albertan and Canadian receives: OT, PT, speech and language, and dialysis. We have a large population of dialysis clients who have to travel out three times a week every day of the week.
We've always had a large dialysis population. A new hospital has been built 30 minutes away from us. The unfortunate part about it is that there is no dialysis in that brand new hospital, so again we have to travel out for that specialized care.
The greatest need for our community right now is the long-term care facility. We have 11 members who are accessing services miles away from home, as I've said, and we have at least an equal amount still waiting in our community to be put into long-term care.
We have completed a feasibility study. We are nearing our business plan and architectural plan, which is ready to be brought out. I guess our greatest task that we're trying to achieve is to go into a pilot project with the province. We have been working with Alberta Health Services, and we have been at the table numerous times. It is a very good working relationship, and we hope that we can continue working with Alberta Health Services and the province to make this a reality for Driftpile Cree Nation.
Meegwetch.