Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is related to the coverage that northern residents by and large enjoy with our health care system, whether they are resident here in the NWT or part of the overall Canadian system.
I encountered a situation with a constituent earlier, or last year, Mr. Chairman, where, regrettably, an illness in the family occurred when this constituent was traveling outside the NWT. Emergency health procedures were required. These were performed in Calgary and they were performed quite satisfactorily.
Mr. Chairman, where we ran into some difficulty was when this constituent, who was caring for her mother, also a northern resident, really found it necessary to be with her mother in Calgary for a period of several weeks. There were hotel and living expenses incurred and it took several more weeks for our health care system to make a decision, Mr. Chairman, fortunately in my constituent's favour, to reimburse her for her living expenses while she was out of the Territories caring for her sick mother.
The point that I wanted to make here, Mr. Chairman, is that I appreciate the decision that came down in favour of my constituent and so do they...By the way, it was several thousands of dollars; however, it took our system many weeks to make a decision on whether or not to reimburse this family for their expenses. I wanted to ask at least in our policy area, if not our funding area, is there some work that we could do to clean up the policy here; the definitions, the limitations on where we can go when we are covering our residents when they are outside of the territory?
This issue caused this family some hardship and quite a deal of stress and uncertainty while this decision was being made. I am wondering if the Minister could see if he could perhaps do some cleanup in that area. Thank you.