Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we, as well, share the same concern about the quality of care and the standards that that care is provided. I think, for the most part, the system we have tends to work fairly effectively, but to be sure, as the Member has pointed out, and others have pointed out, and we find out through phone calls to our office and such, there are times when things don't work as they're supposed to.
On the issue of contact information, that is a good, common sense, simple suggestion and I'll commit here that we'll make sure that in every airport, if it doesn't already exist, we will have contact information for those travelling of who to call either in Yellowknife or in the community where the airport is.
In terms of the service or trying to improve the service, we're continuing to invest, as the Member may know from discussion in this House. In this budget, there's funding for additional nurse practitioners to go into the regions to provide more support to the communities. We've got two for the Deh Cho, two for the Tlicho, two more for the Sahtu, and two more for Inuvik with their function to be able to go to the communities and provide better support than currently exists. We also have the public health units which have been funded, and we're working hard with the Deh Cho, the Sahtu and the Tlicho to get those units up and running. Those are three positions each where I think they're about $900,000 per unit. As well, we've also announced that we're going to make a significant investment in the rehabilitation teams that will allow greater service to the regions and communities and that's going to be staged in over the next number of years.
The issue of medical travel is a very sensitive one and I recognize that one, as the Member has indicated. We try to ensure that it's done carefully There's medical decisions made, but the issue of making sure that elders aren't inconvenienced or disadvantaged is one that we continually try to pay attention to. Whenever specific circumstances arise, we try to address it, as well as try to make sure that people are as sensitive as possible to the circumstances of the people travelling, which gets back to another suggestion that the Member made, I think it was last year, which was the whole issue of cultural awareness training and being sensitive to these issues, especially if you have a population of health professionals that may be fairly mobile and not aware of some of the circumstances that they are working in. That, as well, we hope will contribute to greater effectiveness in how the work is done. Thank you.