Northerner facing huge lodging bill

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This article was published 11/10/2009 (5926 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — An Iqaluit man is facing a hefty bill for months he spent at an Ottawa boarding home because he doesn’t meet the main qualification to have his stay there paid for by the government.

That is to say, he’s not Inuit.

Nunavut’s Health and Social Services Department sent Michael Gardener a bill for $17,000 for a nine-month stay at the Larga Baffin home in Ottawa.

The 81-bed facility is used by patients from the North and their escorts as a temporary home.

Gardener, 79, a retired Anglican minister, accompanied his wife to Ottawa at Nunavut’s expense in January when she required medical care not available in Iqaluit.

Nunavut’s deputy health minister, Alex Campbell, said Gardener simply didn’t understand Nunavut’s benefits programs.

He insists race was not a factor in the decision to bill the man.

Campbell said the non-insured health benefits program (NIHB) does pay for stays by patients and their escorts at places like Larga Baffin.

But the NIHB was intended to support Inuit and other First Nations people only, Campbell said. Gardener was therefore ineligible for these benefits. Ideally he would have cleared his stay at the Larga before making the trip, Campbell said.

Gardener said he didn’t have time for paperwork when doctors at Iqaluit’s Qikiqtani Hospital prepared to rush his wife, a cancer patient, to Ottawa. He said Qikiqtani hospital staffers even made arrangements for him to stay at Larga.

"I didn’t think anything about it," he said.

Gardener had stayed there for a few days on another trip with his wife and had not been billed. He bemoaned the lack of equivalent spaces for non-Inuit.

"When you suddenly have to come without any pre-planning," he said "you’d know you have a place to stay."

Gardener has lived in the North since the 1950s and was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2006 for his long-standing service to northern communities, including establishing an Anglican theological school. He continues to provide pastoral care.

Campbell said Gardener was eligible for different compensation under Nunavut’s extended health benefits program, aimed at seniors, the uninsured and others who are "falling between the cracks."

Under this program, Gardener is eligible for $50 a day for accommodations and $20 a day for meals, giving him a monthly allowance of about $2,100.

It costs roughly $140 a day to stay at Larga Baffin, or $4,200 each month, so Gardener was billed the difference, about $17,000 for the duration of his stay.

"I tried to stay calm," he said when he received the bill.

Campbell said the department is negotiating with Gardener about how much he will have to pay, although CBC reported territorial Health Minister Tagak Curley as saying Gardener will not have to pay anything.

Gardener is now staying at the interns’ residence at an Ottawa hospital. The monthly fee for a one-bedroom unit there is $1,689.

Gardener is happy to be there — and that he can afford it — but said he feels that as a long-term northern resident without supplemental health insurance he deserves the same benefits as any Inuit.

"The basic thing is to get the rules changed so that all races are covered equally," he said.

 

— Canwest News Services