MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Mr. Speaker, it is an unusual part of the House this procedure that allows me now to speak for 15 minutes on a topic of my choosing. I'm going to take advantage of that to put on the record some issues from my constituency for which I have no other forum to put on the record. I'm going to address the series of issues that have arisen in my constituency.

The first one I raised in Question Period yesterday concerning a long-term care facility called the Glades Lodge that is in Halifax Fairview - a 123-bed facility. The problem with the Glades Lodge is that it was built in 1962 and it has not had any extensive renovations since then, and a study recently commissioned by the Department of Health indicates that all the mechanical systems in that facility are at the end of their useful lives. There is a long list and expensive list of renovations that need to be done so we are faced with two options: either an extensive renovation of the existing building or a new building on adjoining land . . .

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The honourable member for Halifax Fairview.

MR. STEELE: But instead of addressing this issue, which this study commissioned not by the owners of the building but by the Department of Health lays out very clearly, is that the status quo is no longer an option. We cannot continue with the Glades Lodge in the condition that it is in. It is a disservice to the residents, it is a disservice to their families, it is a disservice to the staff and also to the owners of that building. One of the interesting things about the building is that many of the staff live in the residential neighborhood immediately around the Glades Lodge, so this very much is a community thing. This institution is tucked away in a residential neighborhood and if one didn't know one's way there, one might not ever come across it, because it is chucked right in the heart of a residential neighbourhood. Many of the staff live around it. The other residents of the neighbourhood have had it as a good neighbour for over 40 years. So this is very important to everybody in that part of my constituency, not to mention the family members of the residents there who, of course, come from all over.

The pleas of the owners to have the Department of Health make some decision, any decision about the future of the Glades Lodge has been met with a deafening silence. The time for that silence is over, Mr. Speaker. The time for action is now. Just to give an example of how the Department of Health has treated the owners, the Department of Health commissioned a study last year, 2005, and then refused to give the results to the owners. This was after extensive review of the condition of the building, and the owners had to apply under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to get the department's study of their own facility. That is no way to deal with this issue.

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It is very important that whether it is an extensive renovation or a new building that it be at or near the existing site. I know, Mr. Speaker, that all of the staff support a renewal of the Glades Lodge, but since many of them live in the neighbourhood, many of them support it only on the condition that the existing building is renewed or rebuilt on adjoining land, because there is a large tract of empty land right beside the building. If the owners only had the go-ahead from the Department of Health for a new building, they could purchase the necessary land. The best option, the least disruptive option, would a new building on the adjoining land.

So I plead with the Minister of Health, it is time to give the owners and the staff and the residents and their families an answer. Silence is no longer good enough. We need to know what the future holds for the Glades Lodge, and we need to know soon.

Mr. Speaker, the next issue I want to address involves a public highway, a provincial highway that runs through my constituency. Again, I raised it in Question Period yesterday, but this forum gives me an opportunity to address it at a little more length. Northwest Arm Drive is a provincial highway running from Main Avenue in Fairview south to the Old Sambro Road. On that road is a very dangerous intersection, the intersection with Walter Havill Drive to the east, and J. Albert Walker Drive to the west.

How dangerous is that road, Mr. Speaker? The collision rate at that intersection is double the provincial average. There are two large condominium buildings looking directly over the intersection, and many of the residents can see, every day, every week, every month, the collisions and the near-misses at this intersection. It's impossible, really, to explain why without actually seeing the intersection, but it has to do with the curvature of the roads, it has to do with the terrain, it has to do with the turning arcs, it has to do with the sequence of lights, but when you put it all together, it creates a very dangerous intersection.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Transportation and Public Works staff, for whom I have the greatest of respect, acknowledge the problem. They know there's a problem. In fact, at a public meeting that I called a year ago, now a little over a year ago, the Department of Transportation and Public Works staff explained exactly what needed to be done in order to fix the intersection. They know. They even have some preliminary plans drawn up about how to make that intersection safer. They told the public meeting that all that was missing was funding.

[1:45 p.m.]

The public meeting was held a few months into last fiscal year, so they said, okay, we understand the problem, we know how to fix it, it's just that we don't have any money this fiscal year. We'll try to get it for the next fiscal year. Indeed, true to their word, departmental staff identified it as a regional priority in their budget plans for 2006-07. This, in the budget plan of the government that claims it's embarking on the largest road building project in 40

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years. You'd think that a government that was really doing that could find a few hundred thousand to modify the most dangerous intersection in western HRM.

Departmental staff, when asked, could not think of a single other intersection in their regional area, covering all of western HRM, with a collision rate higher than the Walter Havill intersection. They could not think of a single one with a higher collision rate. I'm looking right across to the member whose constituency is also in western HRM, and I'm telling that member this intersection is the most dangerous in the entire district. Yet one week before election day we were informed that there was no funding for these modifications in the 2006-07 budget.

I don't understand how that could be, Mr. Speaker. Who is making the decisions? It's not the departmental staff because they've identified it as a priority. It's not the residents because they've been asking for this for a long time, and every single resident of the Stoneridge subdivision - the people who have no choice but to enter and leave their neighbourhood through this one intersection - knows how dangerous it is, and they are pleading with me, they are pleading with the department to make the modifications. Yet it is our understanding that there is no funding for this in the 2006-07 budget.

Mr. Speaker, there is enough leeway in the departmental budget to provide funding for the necessary modifications. This is a critical matter of safety for the travelling public and, in particular, for the residents of my constituency who have to use that intersection each and every day to enter and leave their neighbourhood.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take a few minutes to talk about another issue which is always present in my constituency, about which I'm always starkly reminded at election time, and that is the level of poverty in my constituency and in Halifax Regional Municipality. We can't escape it. We can't hide from it. We can't pretend it's not there. It is made more difficult by rising rents in the HRM and the inadequacy of the shelter allowance offered by the Department of Community services which will not provide for safe and affordable housing for people who for one reason or another find themselves relying on the Department of Community Services for their income.

The food bank that served my constituency had to close down last Fall, Mr. Speaker, and there's a long story behind why it had to close down. It had to do with the safety of the building that had housed it for the previous 12 or so years. There's a very dedicated group of volunteers who keep that food bank going and are looking forward to the very likely reopening of the food bank sometime this Fall at the Salvation Army on Gesner Street, at the top of Fairview. I want to, today, thank the Salvation Army for opening their doors to this food bank so that it can reopen, but that will be one full year since this very large food bank serving all of the west end of Halifax, the old City of Halifax, has had to close its doors. Anybody who thinks that there is not widespread poverty in this area just needs to come to this food bank to see how many hundreds of families rely on it every month just to put food on the table.

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Mr. Speaker, one of the other issues that I have become acutely conscious of in the last week or so, because two very similar cases have suddenly come to my attention, is the abysmal lack of services for people who for reasons of mental illness are unable to care for themselves. In the last week I've dealt with two very, very sad and difficult cases, people living in Fairview who are in their own homes, but in the judgment of their relatives are absolutely unable to care for themselves because of a deterioration of their mental condition. These families have tried everything, every avenue that they can think of, in order to have these people declared incompetent, to have them taken into care because they are a danger to themselves first and foremost.

Mr. Speaker, they cannot care for themselves. Every time their relatives go into their homes- one lady was saying to me yesterday her heart is in her mouth because she doesn't know what she's going to find. The man threatened suicide repeatedly, and still it doesn't meet the threshold for being taken into care, or for adult protection to kick in. I don't understand this and when I started looking into it, I was told this is normal, this is routine, that there are dozens, hundreds of other cases just like them in HRM. The answer families are given, or the friends, or the neighbours, or whoever is looking into it, is that they don't meet the threshold for incompetency. But the real answer is that there are no services for these people and the people in the Department of Health who are responsible for these things set the bar so high because they know that if the people got over the bar, there are no services to offer them.

Mr. Speaker, surely these are among the saddest and most difficult cases that have come to my attention in the five years I have been an MLA, and I have sen a lot of sad and difficult cases. I wanted to put that on the record today because these families - not for lack of trying and lack of advocacy - they have tried everything. I have nothing to suggest to them. Everything that I could possibly suggest to them, they have already done. Yet there are no services, they don't meet the threshold. Their hearts are in their mouths every time they open the door because they don't know what they are going to find.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to mention Long Lake Provincial Park in my constituency, which is an issue I have raised in this House before. I am pleased to say that after many years of there being no management plan, of the Department of Natural Resources essentially keeping Long Lake Provincial Park a secret because they didn't want people to go in because they had no money to develop and manage the park, that steps are being taken to develop a management plan, led by, I must say, a citizen's group. One public meeting has been held, another public meeting is coming up on July 11. I commend to the attention of the Department of Natural Resources all of the community effort that is going into developing this park which is shared between myself and the member for Halifax Atlantic and the member for Timberlea-Prospect. This is a jewel in our midst. Very people know that in my urban constituency there is a very large, very beautiful wilderness park and it is long past time that there was a management plan for that park and we look forward to that happening.

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Mr. Speaker, those are a few of the issues that I wanted to take this opportunity to put on the record since, as I said, there are few other opportunities to speak in the way I just have. There are many other issues I hope to raise inside and outside the House. The election afforded me the opportunity, again, to feel that sense of renewal and energy that comes with talking to a lot of people, finding out what is on their mind, what kinds of issues they want me, as their elected representative, to bring to this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried