Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I like the cover on the report, Our Community, Our Decisions. Let's Get On With It. I am sure people of the North are saying let us get on with it in many different areas, not only in health and social services.
In the area of health and social services, and all the recommendations that are made in the report, I am not so sure we are going to be able to go ahead and get all of these things done without more studies and more evaluations. I can see a lot more, if you read through this.
I do not believe some of the recommendations are going to happen without some more studying. I do not think we have reached the end of that, although I do believe we have to cut down on the amount of studying we do and the amount of money we put into the studies. We need to get some of these things done.
The whole health issue has been mentioned before. I feel very strongly that it is a family issue and very much tied into education. We can do all the work we want in health, including trying to cure the sick, but until we educate the families to do it at home and stress the importance of leading healthy lives, it is going to be a struggle for any government to try and carry out a proper healthcare system. Education plays a big factor in this. Somehow, the two of them have to be tied together, whether it is through the amalgamation of boards or another solution. I think we have to find a way to address health issues through education.
I know one area that is really tough to deal with, and one I have heard time and time again in Hay River, is the problem of somebody coming into a healthcare centre with a sickness that is an ongoing problem. The people dealing with the health problem know the problem is caused from another area. There are two or three different areas that cause this, whether it is the condition of the life of the family, or whether it is education. They are directly related, and they know they can treat that sickness.
They send the person home knowing two or three months down the road, they are going to be back with the very same problem. They have no system in place to address the root of the problem. There may be three areas causing one problem, but the mandate they have only addresses one. And that is what is occurring now. That is the sickness that is there now.
I do not know how you would do it, but I think we have to look at people who are responsible for carrying out health care systems. If they know for a fact this problem is being caused in a different area, they have no way or no right to venture into that avenue.
It would be nice if we had some kind of combination where we could bring these things to light and treat the symptoms for what they are. Maybe that way we could help some people. Whether it is going back to the families, to the parents whatever, and saying this is what is causing this problem. What can we do about it as a unit? We have to bring it back to the family.
In the North, there is a danger we might be losing some of the infrastructure we have. I know the hospital in Hay River sometimes wonders if they are going to be there as a regional hospital or just a community health centre. It is a beautiful facility. I think some of the speciality work could be going on in Hay River. It does not necessarily have to all be in Yellowknife. We have many areas where we could bring in some professionals and set them up in Hay River.
One of the other areas I am concerned with is travel benefits for our people. I know it is important to have special help for aboriginals who are coming out of the small communities. But from the community I represent, 50 percent of the people are non-aboriginals. When they are sick, they are just as sick as the aboriginals. When they need help for travel, I think it should be available to them as well.
I think we go backwards in a lot of cases. I look around and I see the people who are making the biggest wages are the ones who are qualified the most for health benefits, as far as travel is concerned. It is pretty tough when you have two people living next door to each other and one gets airfare to a hospital and the other does not. If they get the airfare, then they get hotel accommodations, meals, and a rental car. It seems like they either receive absolutely nothing or absolutely everything. To represent two people from a riding where one is eligible for this and another is not, I have a hard time trying to justify that, simply because of who they are. If there is any government money going into it at all, then I think one person should be just as qualified for it as the other.
In the area of training, I think it is important we have a lot of northern people trained, especially in the nursing field. One of my colleagues mentioned a while ago that many of the people who are trained in the North are working in North.
I just happened to be talking to one person at the hospital in Yellowknife last week, and he was on his way to Texas. He had gone through a nursing training program, and could not find employment in the Northwest Territories because he had no experience. He had to go to the States to get experience, because he could not get a job in the Territories, even though he took his nursing program here. I do not know if that problem has been fully addressed or not.
I heard it mentioned a while ago that one of the big areas we have to address is seniors. I fully agree. We have many seniors in my riding, and many people who are going to become seniors in the near future. Our demands for programs for seniors is going to be growing dramatically. We have to find a way of addressing those needs as well. I am looking forward to the briefing we have with the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services to get deeper into this and see exactly where we are. I will probably have more questions later on. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.