Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the last three days, I've been talking about the health of my constituency, and I get calls all along from the chiefs and the Metis leaders about their issues and community issues as well, so. And then what I thought about was, you know, we have our treaty right to health and we have UNDRIP legislation, and I am trying to figure a way as to how we can look for solutions to some of the problems we're having and, in particular, that NIHB is also a federal legislation. And the Government of Canada also has a fiduciary obligation to implement the treaties, and health is part of that. So the GNWT here, we also are the Crown. So my question would be to the Minister of health.
If medical travel modernization is focused on clarity, information, and navigation, is the Minister suggesting that the only problem with medical travel lies in residents' understanding of the policy rather in the policy themselves? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the Northwest Territories, all travel for medical is provided through many different insurances, and the way that we fund for First Nation and Inuit that don't have any other employer insurances is through the non-insured health benefits. Non-insured health benefits is the payer of last resort, which we administer through their policy. However, when we -- you know, I've heard on the floor now for a couple of days, you know, with specifics to providing healthcare services to Indigenous people, First Nation, and Inuit, we provide health services to the patient. We provide the medical travel for the patient through the medical travel policy that is created and it's a policy, a federal policy that we administer. We have to be able -- we follow their rules. We advocate for the changes. I as well as Indigenous leaders of the Council of Leaders have gone to Ottawa, have sat with the Minister, and stressed our issues with this policy as well and asked them to modernize it for betterment of our residents of the Northwest Territories, to look at our demographics, to look at our geographics, and how we have to -- the complicated issues of moving people around. However, we never stop from allowing a medical travel patient -- the patient, I want to be clear -- to get and access care. Where my office gets many, many concerns and BFs and especially from, you know, the Member's raised from his riding, are when it relates to escorts. Escorts, under the medical travel policy, the NIHB policy, is very clear in the criteria of the escort criteria. But when it comes to medivacs and air ambulance and ground ambulance, there is no policy either within GNWT's medical travel policy or with the NIHB. And those are the things that we're doing through the medical travel modernization. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am aware of the lobbying efforts that you've made with the Government of Canada. I know that the Tlicho and Deline were part of that delegation to advocate for NIHB. Maybe a different approach could be maybe we could do it again with all the chiefs together, and that way here it gives more weight to lobbying to support the changes we need.
But, Mr. Speaker, if cultural safety is also focused on medical travel modernization, does the Minister acknowledge that at the heart of cultural safety are the government's policies that provide Indigenous people with support when they require care in urgent situation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I as part of the Council of Leaders, Cabinet is part of Council of Leaders, I know that we are planning an upcoming -- you know, another fall meeting to go to Ottawa to lobby the -- with all of the Indigenous leaders as well as us, you know, and I encourage the Member's leadership to attend that and advocate with me on these issues. However, right now, and to the comments that have been made about cultural -- and this is why I said it's within the medical modernization, we are completing phase one, and phase one was more of the logistical pieces, clarifying, making sure that we update in clear, plain language for residents and for staff, practitioners who are signing off on these medical travel referrals. The piece in the phase 2 we are looking at is expanding that escort criteria. But this is going to come with money. It's going to have -- it's going to need resources. So we have to make sure that we have to do it in the processes that we have in consensus government where we have to analyze it, we bring it to committee, we go through Cabinet, and then we decide whether or not this is where we can allocate funds to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a couple days ago, I brought up the issue of constituents and elders taking it upon themselves to go south for treatment because we're understaffed and the doctors are all busy. If not, they're -- it's the time wait on these to get help for our people is really long. And then on top of that, we have gaps in our system that are prohibiting our young people that need help sitting on the sidelines until NIHB approvals are done. My question would be to the Minister.
Knowing all what we know now, is there any way where we could create a line item maybe to help in cases where on the weekend where we're waiting for approval for NIHB for patients, is there anything we could do there in collaboration and working together so that we don't leave anybody out, we don't leave people on the streets homeless, regardless how we look at it? But I think we could work together trying to figure that one out. That's what I would like to see. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to NIHB, that is not -- I guess where it is is when the patient needs services, there is no waiting for NIHB, whether it's after hours, weekends. The only time that there is is when it's an exception to what NIHB's escort criteria is. And so at this point right now, we already have a pocket of money that we don't -- we're overspending every year millions of dollars on medical travel. And you see it on the floor of the House every time we sit down that there's a supplementary appropriation for medical travel. It's because this area has been growing and growing and growing. The chronic diseases, the access to care, as the Member has stated, and this is why we've taken many different areas where we're trying to focus on bringing care closer to home. We've done the Deh Cho journey and we're working through that to look at how we provide care to communities without health centres, nursing staff in that community. We're looking at physicians, base care that are servicing, like in the Fort Good Hope pilot project. We are starting -- we are going to be doing more in medical travel in moving of patients in this next couple of months. There's so many things that we are behind the scenes that are focused on that as a Minister I -- you know, I could just be called the Minister of medical travel because that is what I've been focusing on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.
