Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question for the Minister on medical travel. I just wanted to give a little bit of a background on some of the stuff that you’re dealing with at the community level. I’m trying to see if the Minister would look at putting some sort of flexibility into the Medical Travel Policy or the medical travel benefit, I guess it is.

What’s happening is people are facing some hardships. We have experienced in the past and we continue to experience situations where people are sick or injured and have to remain in hospital, whether it be in Yellowknife or Edmonton. Medical travel will support one individual to support the person and depending on the nature of the sickness or the injury, I find that more than one individual is needed in order to provide proper support to individuals.

I’m wondering if the Minister could give me some assurance that the department would look at something on a case-by-case basis, I suppose, where I currently have a situation where I think that even a young man is seriously injured in a car accident and the family, even the mother and father, need to support each other and need to be with him, but medical travel is fairly restrictive as to who can provide assistance. It’s kind of like looking at these things on a case-by-case basis, not trying to get a bunch of people to go travel with someone unnecessarily. I understand that. This is very important to families. Of course, there’s low income as well.

I’m wondering if, I guess to be really specific with my question, based on income, will the Minister or department look at providing a benefit to more than just one individual in situations where a person is seriously injured or sick.