Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank you for your patience and the patience of the Members. Mr. Speaker, he made the statement that I just read, but yesterday I received a copy of the letter dated May 14th, which is a full three weeks prior to his statement that I just read signed by all 18 general practitioners in Yellowknife and it was tabled yesterday. I quote, Mr. Speaker, from the latter part of the second paragraph of that letter: "Family physicians providing obstetrical care, including high risk obstetrics, will not be able to continue to provide this care without specialist obstetrical backup. Similarly, those family physicians that provide surgical services cannot continue to do so without specialist surgical or obstetrics backup." The letter goes on to say, in the next paragraph: "Many emergency physicians chose to work in Yellowknife because of the level of acuity and the specialist backup that allows ongoing treatment locally. Without specialist backup, the role of emergency physicians will be altered, with more patients needing simply to be transferred south for ongoing care. GP anesthesiologists chose to practice in Yellowknife because of the ability to work with general surgeons, gynecologists, ENT surgeons, orthopaedic surgeons and ophthalmologists. In the event that these specialists are no longer represented in the community, many family physicians will find their scope of practice greatly curtailed. Given the situation, some family physicians may elect to look for opportunities in other communities where they could utilize their skills to the fullest."
This substantiation is that the Minister was misleading the House by not providing the full answer and making a statement that was, I don't want to say contrary, but not a full picture of what he was aware of.
Mr. Speaker, my second substantiation is from what he said on June 4th. This comes in light of the document that I was able to get yesterday. Mr. Speaker, as you recall yesterday, there were extensive discussions about the fact that some mothers were having to travel to Edmonton for labour and he said, on page 1781: "My job as Minister is to ensure the maintenance of the health and social services system, to deal with issues in a careful, measured way, not to promote fear and concern and needless apprehension among the people. Mr. Speaker, the Member has raised and thrown out a number of third-hand comments that I have no knowledge of, I have no context, I have no way to verify what she has said, so I am not in a position to address what may be considered hearsay at this point."
Mr. Speaker, this sheds a different light on the issue for me because of the document that I tabled, which is a letter dated June 5th that gives more context addressed to the Minister and signed by all four members of the OBS department in Yellowknife. The letter states the following, in the second paragraph: "In the short term, we are absolutely clear that we cannot carry on as usual without intermittent locum obstetric backup. Although in theory, we could carry on low risk obstetrics under those circumstances, in fact risk stratification is fraught with difficulties and when impending disaster is diagnosed from Yellowknife, we are hours away by air from additional resources, particularly paediatrics. In addition, two of the family practice obstetric group members have resigned from the obstetrics practice as of July. With holidays, this leaves three family practitioners doing intra-partum obstetrics without paediatrician availability for at least several weeks in July. This is not doable. Thus, we must not accept obstetrics patients from out of town for confinement and we must be making arrangements now to send our local patients to another centre to await delivery. We cannot wait until the end of June to begin this process."
Further, Mr. Speaker, the letter goes on to say, and I quote from the fourth paragraph: "We will be contacting the communities immediately, advising them that we will not be accepting prenatal patients for confinement and making arrangement with other local patients for their ongoing care outside the territory."
My Point of Order is in saying that he was unaware of this problem and that it was third hand knowledge when he knew or ought to have known this information and I await your ruling. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
