I would like to make a statement on the state of eyecare in Yellowknife. Mr. Speaker, a few years ago I got a prescription and a new pair of glasses here in Yellowknife. Soon after that when I started reading, after about five or ten minutes I started getting headaches. At this time, I was in school in Saskatoon. I had all kinds of specialists there, and I was getting all kinds of tests done. And luckily enough, since I was status, the federal government was paying for it, otherwise the territorial government would have had a huge bill. The long and the short of it is, finally I got a new pair of glasses and, low and behold, I could read again without getting headaches.
Last year, at this time I got a new pair of glasses. I was here this time and I started getting dizzy as soon as I looked down or looked sideways and things like that. I thought it was because my eyes were changing, you know when you have to hold your paper like this. A couple months later, I broke my glasses and told the optometrist this, so he checked out my prescription on his little machine there, and checked it with the one from my old pair of glasses, which I had to wear because I was getting my glasses fixed. What he told me was that I had better go to the ophthalmologist right away, because I had a stigmatism or something in my eye and my new prescription changed it so instead of looking this way, I was looking sideways, which was what was making me dizzy. Sure enough I went back, got my eyes checked again, and I had to get a new right lens because it was the wrong diagnosis.
We were discussing it upstairs and there are a couple of other Yellowknife MLAs who had similar problems. One of them had such a bad problem, not this time, but the previous time, that he was getting worried about going back to the ophthalmologist here. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.