Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to follow up on some questions that were being posed here in the Legislature last week on midwifery. I want to say in my preamble that I was very glad to hear the Minister of Health and Social Services not agreeing with everything that was being suggested about midwifery, and using words like “common sense” and “basically pushing back” a little bit on this theory that midwifery is the panacea of birthing opportunities in the Northwest Territories.

Being from a community where there are currently no resident physicians, certainly the desire of people to have their children in their home community is real, and I understand that. I had three kids. I had them all in Hay River not two blocks from where I lived at the time, and that is wonderful when those children can be born there. I think we are deluding ourselves if we think that midwifery in and of itself is the answer to all of that.

I’d like to ask the Minister, even after midwifery is in place, will people who are having a first child, a high-risk pregnancy, will they still need the conventional medical services in order to birth?