Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The fact that the Edmonton Centre Airport closed down was not a decision that laid with this government. The fact that there is more time to fly to the International Airport is because it happens to be further away than the Municipal Airport. However, what I was referring to was the care once the person arrived. We are able to move the person that is being medevaced to Edmonton into an ambulance service that would take them through the city and we are able to hand them over at the airport instead of outside, or having a contractor that we were contracting from here pick...

All of the standards for the medevacs are laid out in the contracts between Stanton and the people that provide medevac services. Again, it would be difficult to put an actual time period in any specific community because it would depend largely on what type of craft would be needed.

In this specific case, the plane that would be ready under normal circumstances to pick up a medevac was not suitable to go into Trout Lake. They had to reconfigure a different plane. That took some time.

I agree with the Member that there was too much time at the outset contacting the medical people, and we are...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The response time would depend upon what type of craft would be needed. In this case, they determined, after contacting the medical people in the Deh Cho, that a Twin Otter was needed. So a Twin Otter was configured as quickly as that can happen to get to the site would be the response time.

Yellowknife Health and Social Services has responded to the information, the Commissioner, of privacy concerns. If certain recommendations in the report that the health authority did not agree with, that may have been the reason that they have not responded to every concern, but every concern that was put out there where the health authority felt that required a response or a change, that has been made. Thank you.

The act will go through the regular process. We are targeting the fall 2013 session. I did say hopefully that will happen. Provided nothing goes sideways, we’re expecting that the bill will be provided to committee prior to that, at the appropriate time prior to the time that it’s introduced in the House in 2013, the fall.

There is no contract. They are doing this under an intergovernmental agreement with Alberta and it’s costing $600,000 a year.

I don’t have that information, but the Member did mention that it was not used. So I’m assuming that there was no requirement for a STARS helicopter to be used to transport patients from the Edmonton International to the hospital. So likely it hasn’t been used at this point. Thank you.

I had not had previous discussions with the Minister of Health from Saskatchewan on the press release. However, when there is anything that’s pertaining to health right across the country, we have individuals in our communications that would track it, pull out some information and eventually, as we sit down and go through various agenda items with the deputy minister as part of regular routine, we discuss what’s happening in other parts of the country in as far as health goes. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t specifically talked to other Ministers. We all have the different types of issues in recruiting doctors. There are doctor shortages everywhere. It’s just that our percentage of our population that don’t have immediate access to doctors is probably higher than most, maybe not as high as Nunavut but higher than most places. We develop various strategies. We have a website. We have bursaries. We have 22 medical students from NWT now out in school that we are tracking. Like I indicated, we offer a good compensation package. We also offer residency to any doctors that wish to...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to recognize some people from the health authorities and Health and Social Services. These individuals are taking advanced investigations training. We have Cheryl Abraham, Fort Providence, Deh Cho Health and Social Services; Jocelyn MacLean, Fort Simpson, Deh Cho Health and Social Services; Debbie Greenland, Inuvik, Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services; Lisa Norris, Aklavik, Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services; Ellen McDonald, Inuvik; Melissa McDonald, Inuvik; Tasha Lake, Yellowknife; Amanda Neville, Yellowknife; Vanessa Rankin, Yellowknife...