Get cracking on home: Corner Brook group

Advocates for a long-awaited long-term care home in Corner Brook say the new provincial budget has let them down, because no construction work is planned for the coming year.

CBC News Indepth: Budget 2005

Government will spend $2.7 million to design the home and do site work.

But people who have been fighting for the new facility had been hoping to see a much more substantial commitment in the budget.

Israel Hann says his group wanted an investment of between $5 million and $10 million, so a new home would relieve the stress on Western Memorial Hospital in Corner Brook.

"If you're going to keep tying up your beds in the hospital with long-term care patients, eventually the numbers are going to grow, one outweighing the other, and acute care people are going to suffer," Hann says.

"And it's growing worse and worse."

Hann says Williams had promised to start building a new home during his term in office. At this rate, he says, it will be difficult to deliver on that promise, because the design work ought to have been done by now.

Meanwhile, the provincial Tories have restored the plan for a long-term care home in Clarenville, a year after they shelved it to save money.

The Williams government deferred design work approved by the previous Liberal government, as part of 2004's cost-cutting budget.

The province is committing $1.4 million for design and site work.

Don Holloway, president of the provincial seniors federation, is delighted the project is back on track.

"People don't like to go too far from home for long-term care," he says.

"If you have to go 200, 300 miles from home, you're never going to be visited by your relatives. You're going to be isolated. You're going to be alone."

Keith Rodway, a member of the committee that has been lobbying for years to get the new long-term care home for Clarenville, says it will provide an opportunity for seniors living in other areas to return to their roots "and be with their family in their remaining years."

An original proposal called for a new wing to the Clarenville hospital, with more than 40 long-term care beds. Currently, there are only a dozen available.

Rodway says, however, that the committee will keep lobbying the government to ensure the facility is actually built.