Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have quite a number of issues that I want to touch on, not the least of which is something that I forgot to mention in the House earlier today. Mr. Ramsay raised the issue of the privatization of the three contracts at Stanton Territorial Hospital. I think the Minister by now has figured out that I am not too overly impressed with the services that are being delivered there. You hear from patients who are having...you talk about healthy food. Check this out and verify if this is true or not, but patients being served hotdogs and french fries under those covers that they deliver to the rooms, these are the kinds of things you hear. It doesn't sound too nutritious to me. I can't imagine if McDonald's can hardly keep the french fries hot, I don't know how you can get them from the cafeteria to a room and still have them taste edible for human consumption.

I think the Minister has the general idea. I appreciate his response that he will look at those privatized contracts at the hospital that deal with the issue of laundry services, cleanliness, housekeeping and food services. I think Stanton is obviously a beautiful facility. I remember the price tag on it not that many years ago. I see in the capital budget there is another $27 million slated to go in there. I don't think that there is a lot deficient about the actual facility itself, but what goes on inside it perhaps needs to be looked at. I want to be clear. I am speaking very specifically to those three areas. I am not talking about the issue of the care delivered by the front-line workers in terms of the health care professionals.

Mr. Chair, also noting Mr. Miltenberger's support for this particular budget for Health and Social Services and how well it was put together, I see that the Fort Smith Health Centre is right in there for...Hay River and Fort Smith were kind of on par at one time in terms of the timing for major renovations. I know there has been some discussion recently about whether or not Hay River would undergo a renovation or a replacement, so I want to ask the Minister when he gets the floor again to tell me if that discussion about which is the most appropriate route to go is what might have stood the Hay River facility back because the Minister recently kindly agreed to come to Hay River and had a tour of the facility. You could see that it is getting in pretty dire need of something, particularly in the old end of the hospital. The floors are sloping. There are some real function issues in there as well with the ambulance bay where it is and how far you have to go to get to the room where patients are assessed. They have to basically wheel half the length of the hospital past the waiting room and everything else. So there are some real functional issues with that hospital in Hay River and I think there are some ways that we could address them. I would just like to be informed on the timing. It wasn't that long ago that I thought that Fort Smith and Hay River were kind of on par in terms of timing, but it looks like Hay River has been pushed back a fair way.

When the Minister was in Hay River too, he saw some of the challenges that are there, say for example, in the outpatients' area. In health today, we put a lot of emphasis on the privacy of patients and their right to privacy, their records and things like that. The Minister saw firsthand in Hay River that, in fact, if you come in for an assessment as an outpatient in Hay River, there was a thin curtain separating you from the person in the next room where the patients are being assessed. In fact, you are privy to the entire conversation of what is wrong with the person in the next room, not room, just in the next little bay to where you are. I think that is a concern. It is a small town. Everybody knows everybody, but I know when I have gone there before, I don't really feel like discussing my medical issues with the whole town. That is something that I think needs to be addressed sooner than later. I don't think that can wait for hospital renovations.

The report on ambulance services is now out. Again, it is something that needs to be addressed in a fairly timely manner. We have been carrying on under the present system for quite some time now. I know the government needed time to work together with Health, MACA and Transportation to assess that, but all the while, the trucks and the vehicles are roaring up and down the roads. There are liability issues and there are concerns over these emergency response services being provided by a municipality through a volunteer organization and what would happen hypothetically, I guess, if there was ever an incident, litigation or some question about services that people had received. We need somebody to backstop us, I guess, as a community if those folks that are out there doing that are going to continue. Again, I think something very pressing, very urgent is the issue of the ambulance services report needs to be responded to and appropriate contracts and protocols put in place to deal with that.

The other thing I was going to mention is the issue of the physicians being on contract all working now. I don't believe there are any fee-for-service positions in the Northwest Territories anymore. Physicians are on contract. They work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. I made an interesting phone call the other day. I called the Great Slave Medical Clinic here in Yellowknife to make an appointment. The response that I got was we aren't taking any new patients. In a private clinic, I can see somebody saying that, but to say that in a clinic that is publicly funded and doctors work for the government, that is a bit of a strange response: we aren't taking any new patients. How do you know how often your patients are going to want an appointment with a doctor? Maybe they only go see the physician once a year or maybe once a month. Maybe they have chronic illnesses. I don't know, but I can see saying we don't have an opening available for three weeks or we will put you on a waiting list. When something comes available, we will give you an appointment. But to say we are not taking any new patients, and they are on our payroll, I have some questions and concerns about that. Those are our facilities. Those physicians are being paid by us, and I think that everybody is entitled to some kind of access. I don't think you have to have some status as a patient to...I mean I think we should all be eligible for service under that. I don't know if any other people in Yellowknife have had that situation. I've never had that response in Hay River, but I did get it here in Yellowknife the other day. So I'd like to ask the Minister about that.

Just one last thing that when we talk about barrier-free access to buildings and all the legislation and requirements over public buildings and people being able to get into them with wheelchairs, one of the strange anomalies in Hay River is the fact that there is no barrier-free wheelchair access to our medical clinic. There's just concrete steps and that's it. That money has never been spent. I know there has been talk about the medical clinic perhaps being incorporated in a new facility at some point in time and maybe they haven't wanted to invest the money, but for whatever it costs I think it would be extremely important to get a ramp, even if it's removable. It could be recycled and relocated someplace else in the future. To get something there so that people when they are accessing the medical clinic in Hay River could not be in a situation where a wheelchair could not get in that building whatsoever. Especially, I mean, it's bad enough in any building, but especially in a health care facility it's particularly difficult and unacceptable, I guess. I don't know what the status is of any capital to address that, but I think it needs to be dealt with.

I'm curious about the capital planning and certainly I think Hay River is due for either a renovation or a replacement of that facility. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.