Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have a number of concerns with this particular report. One of them is regarding medical travel in my riding. Many of the people that would take an opportunity to access medical travel are concerned because of the availability of the service, because so many concerns have been expressed about the cost of medical travel. They believe steps have been taken and it is almost a situation where you have to be very seriously ill before they allow you to leave the community.
Of course, that reflects on how well you can be diagnosed by the nurses or by travelling physicians. People do not have the ability to go back and forth to the nursing stations or to see the doctor, except on a monthly basis. Therefore, they are very concerned they do not have the ability to see specialists. For one, it may be another month before the travelling physician comes back to the community. And will you be able to be medivaced if your condition deteriorates and the weather is permitting? People are very concerned about how you actually made the criteria for medical travel. I think Health and Social Services has to have another look at this medical travel criteria in respect to how it applies to outlying small communities.
I also have some comments to make to regional boards and the representation on the regional boards. I believe some other Members have brought some similar concerns to that board members are now appointed rather than being elected, and they are appointed specifically by aboriginal groups rather than the communities.
People get concerned as to how you make these boards accountable if the representative is not accountable. Furthermore, there is no suggestion as to how board members are supposed to travel to the communities they represent. Do they have a budget? Do they have a work schedule that the public is aware of? That the communities are aware of? I have four communities that are represented by the Inuvialuit representative on the Beaufort board, but she also represents two other communities. Now this person has the opportunity to hold meetings in her home community, but I do not know how she is supposed to get to the outlying communities. We have never seen her budget. We have never seen her workplan. As a matter of fact, some of my communities have a hard time remembering having seen her. It becomes a question of accountability. How could you possibly expect the communities to bring their concerns to the board if they do not see the board member? Obviously, they would be expected to write and mail in their concerns.
The question that remains is the MLA not also responsible for these types of concerns? The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chairman, the MLA really has to reply to the community. I can take it to your board or I can take it to your department but, as one of the Members here suggested already, the department responds by saying I have to take it back to the board and see what they have done. It becomes a question of who is responsible for what.
Another example is the new hospital facility being designed and supposedly in the plans for Inuvik. The hospital is supposed to serve all communities in the Beaufort. Recently, I was in touch with four of my hamlets and their executives. They say they are not aware of the plans. They have never seen the plans. They have not seen the design for that hospital and I can tell you, as an MLA, I have not either. I have been here for five years. I have not seen the design.
I am aware this hospital has reached a point where it is in the request for proposal stage, yet the communities are not aware of what the design of that hospital is. That suggests there should be some more cooperation between the boards and the communities they represent.
I am also not aware of what the input is to the boards as other Members have expressed. What are the boards doing for the seniors? There is a suggestion this hospital will address some of the seniors' concerns and some of the seniors' needs, but I am concerned as to who represents all of the seniors at a regional level. Who is addressing the needs of the seniors in each community in my riding, for instance? Right now, I am aware the communities have taken it on themselves to individually request senior facilities because nobody seems to be doing this on a regional basis. My communities are also very concerned that if they had done it on a regional basis, the big communities would get everything first and everybody else would come second. That is the concern expressed by my communities. Mr. Chairman, I really think there has to be some accountability by these boards. If we cannot make them accountable, do we have the political will to take the responsibilities back to the department level? That is the question. Are we going to make these boards more accountable or are we not?
That is part of this whole study. I think that if you look back at every one of these studies that were done, the problems were all related to how do we make our boards and agencies accountable. It seems like we do not have the critical will to do it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.