Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, besides the hospital care for medical patients, especially those who are unilingual and only speak Inuktitut or Dene, the ability to communicate is also very important at boarding homes, whether in Yellowknife, Edmonton, Winnipeg, or wherever people of the NWT generally go for medical treatment. Mr. Chairman, I think it's crucially important that we try to make medical patients absolutely comfortable, wherever they are.
I have been told, especially by people in my area and also the Keewatin region and the Baffin region, through my honourable colleagues who represent those regions, that there are times when medical patients going to major medical centres have to wait at the airports for transportation. On many occasions, Mr. Chairman, they are not even picked up. They have had to provide their own transportation by way of paying for taxis to and from the airport, especially from the airport to the boarding homes.
There are times when medical patients from the eastern Arctic are not able to communicate with boarding home staff because the dialects are different or there is no one on staff who are able to speak the language, Inuktitut mainly. I notice, Mr. Chairman, that medical patients from the western Arctic, mainly Cambridge Bay, Coppermine, and other communities are, in most cases, able to speak English and Inuktitut. They are more or less bilingual. But most patients, especially elders, coming from the eastern Arctic, from the Kitikmeot, Keewatin and Baffin regions, are not able speak the English language which seems to be and is deemed to be a universal language in this area.
Mr. Chairman, I think the well-being of the patients is crucially important. Mostly medical patients who go to larger centres are elders or pregnant women and these are the people most easily subject to the slightest problem of stress. I don't think that we should undermine the system, Mr. Chairman. Many times people have come to me to talk about their appreciation for medical treatment at the hospitals, not having to pay for the transportation from their community to a major medical centre and back to their community, not having to pay for the accommodation -- either boarding homes, hotels and so on -- yes, Mr. Chairman, we appreciate those things very much.
But, I think that it is very important that the comfort is there for those patients, as well. When the patient is not being treated as expected, when a patient is not comfortable, when a patient is away from home is a strange environment, a patient, even when faced with the slightest problem, may experience stress, therefore prolonging the recovery for whatever medical problem that person has.
I would like to urge the honourable Minister to make sure that she communicates with the boarding homes, either here in Yellowknife, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and other major centres where people go from the Canadian north to the south for medical treatment. There are people who have talked to me about this. I have not taken a stand on the issue previously, because I was told by some other medical patients that they have no problems with the boarding homes when it comes to communication, being picked up at the airport or not being picked up at the airport. They are able to read, write and speak the English language.
From the airport to boarding homes, they are able to call the taxi on their own, they are able to talk to taxi drivers at the airports. But the majority of those people who feel that the services aren't all that great, are those people who are unilingual. They have no complaint about the food, they have no complaint about other things, except the ability to communicate and not being picked up at the airport on time. I think these are very crucial and important and I would like to stress that to the honourable Minister. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.