Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I spoke about the urgent need to bring the government and the specialists' negotiators back to the negotiating table. Today I would like to speak about the cost of not settling this issue, and the important obligation of this government and this legislature to closely examine and understand the overall cost.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the salary figures floating around are so big it's beyond what ordinary folk can comprehend. If anyone goes to the Web site on health information -- www.hisa.com -- we see a range of salary figures for specialists across the country in any given field, and in it we can find something as low as $10,000 or over $1 million a year. It only speaks to the complexity of this issue.

While this might make an interesting debate outside, I believe we have to do more of an in-depth cost benefit analysis in this House. Mr. Speaker, in the end, if we as a legislature decide that we no longer can afford specialist services north of 60, I'm prepared to accept the will of the House. But, Mr. Speaker, in order to get there, we need to have a lot more information, and my constituents want more information as well, Mr. Speaker, because so far the math doesn't look very good.

For example, we need to know how much we expect to pay for the locums we'll have up here to fill in for specialists, how much for flying patients from all of the NWT to south of 60 instead of to Yellowknife, all of the money we'll lose for not taking in Nunavut patients, all of the premium fee-for-service costs we'll pay to hospitals in Edmonton, High Level and Grande Prairie, the cost of operating Stanton Hospital that doesn't run at full capacity, any potential job losses at the hospital arising from it, just to name a few, Mr. Speaker, and the list goes on and on. Are we ready to pass supplementary after supplementary to make up for this cost, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, I did some more math on the impact of 12 specialists leaving the North. Assuming each of them is a family of four, we will lose the local income spending and the tax dollars from them. Furthermore, we will lose $17,000 a year federal transfer payments for 48 northern residents, which my elementary math tells me amounts to $816,000 in just the first year.

May I please end this statement, Mr. Speaker, by suggesting to the Minister of Finance that he starts calculating the financial cost of losing these valued northern residents from our government's coffers? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause