Thank you. Have a lot of communities taken advantage of that amount of funding? This is not new funding; this was in place in the previous year. So I’m just trying to come to an understanding of whether communities know of this existing program, that it’s going to continue for this year and if communities did, indeed, apply and take advantage of this $200,000.

Thank you. This program was fully subscribed to at one point until a lot of the communities realized there was a liability issue with this. So right now in 2012-13 we had three communities that have each received $40,000. Thank you.

Thank you. This question is quite simple, and more likely this could be made in reference to other departments, but it’s a very simple question. The question is: Who is responsible for an individual in distress at home in the community that requires immediate medical assistance and need of transportation to the health centre?

He said it was a simple question. Well, in some communities I believe the health centre might have a van or a vehicle that they use. I think the question was who is responsible, if somebody is hurt in their home, to get picked up and be brought to the health centre. Am I correct, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. For clarification, Mr. Nadli.

Yes, that’s correct. Who is responsible?

Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank the Member for clarifying that. Well, again, in some communities the RCMP would bring him to the health centre and in some communities there may be a van that’s used by the health centre. In communities where they have ambulance services, obviously they would call an ambulance and an ambulance would go pick them up and bring them to the health centre or to the hospital. So as far as who is solely responsible, I really don’t know the answer to that, but I know in different communities different people respond, different organizations respond to those that are in need. Thank you.

Thank you. The other question is I want to check to ensure the status. I know the Minister has made reference to some issues that seem to be fundamentally challenging this government to come to a position where it could fairly and consistently deliver a vital service to people on the highway and plus the communities. He’s pointedly stated that it’s a liability issue, plus, at the same time, it’s a lack of training or lack of personnel that are qualified to almost become paramedics, and in some instances, too, there is an obstacle of lacking equipment in terms of vehicles and transport vehicles.

I understand there’s been an effort to try and bring several departments together. I heard the Minister indicate that perhaps by this fall there might be a report or an effort to report to the House in terms of the findings of this group, but what is the status of this group, and where that’s the timeline that’s fairly consistent that this group will report to the House at least a semblance of a framework to enhance ground ambulances and highway emergency? Mahsi.

Well, the working group are looking at all these different issues right now and they’re coming up with ways, some options, and also looking at the cost. I think it’s been mentioned in this House before, if we were to look at the cost of implementing the overall ambulance service across the Northwest Territories, it would be quite high. So they’re exploring all these options.

As far as an actual timeline goes, I don’t have the actual timeline. I know that they are looking at a number of different issues, but I will keep the Members up to date on the work that they’re doing and hopefully we can have something, and I say hopefully we can have something to share with Members quite soon. I’m not sure if fall would be a reasonable expectation, but I will follow up and if it is, then I will inform the Members of that. Thank you.

Thank you. Another simple question, but it more likely would pertain to the working that’s in existence right now, but obviously another question. Who is responsible for a vehicle that is on fire on the highway and in distress?

Who is responsible for a vehicle that’s on fire? I really don’t know. It would depend which jurisdiction they’re in if there’s someone in the community that responds to a fire. That’s a difficult question to answer. It may sound like a simple question, but it’s a shared responsibility, and people will react as they react when they can. If there’s a firefighting service close by, then they will respond, because nobody in the NWT is not going to respond to any kind of an emergency whether it’s their responsibility or not. If they’re available, they will respond.

Again, the purpose of the working group is to explore all these different types of options. Maybe it’s a question that I’m going to have to go around and ask, is who is responsible to respond to this and who is responsible for that. That actually is a very good question and one that I will have to ask as well.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Nadli, your time is up. I can put you back on the list if you need to be. Next on the list is Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to pick up where I left off on the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program which has sunsetted with the federal government. This was established in 1980, according to their website, to enhance the national capacity to respond to all types of emergencies and to enhance resiliency of critical infrastructure. Over the course, they gave out $170 million to provinces and territories at a federal contribution of 75 percent to the projects.

My question is this: This free money – and I will call it free money – was available to this government up until the fiscal year-end of 2012, and yet I see that we have not taken up that money in 2012. It’s not in any literature that we have here. Can I get a bit of an update as to, as I said in my earlier questions, what has been the uptake of this free federal money? And if we can get a bit of a background in terms of what were we able to use that money for.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The federal money that was available as free money, as the Member likes to call it, we’ve taken it up pretty well every year. For some reason it wasn’t available to us last year. Every year since its inception, I think we have taken our share of it.

As I’ve said, we’ve taken the money up every year. The Member talked about federal money. I’ll tell you one thing with the Government of the Northwest Territories. Not this Assembly, but Assemblies past, any time there’s free money from the federal government, we are at their door getting our fair share. It’s just something

that we’ve always done and the government’s become quite good at.

I’ll provide the Member with the information. We’ll put something together to give him some comfort that we’ve done our work since 1980 when all this money was available and taken our fair share. We’ve used it for a number of different things. The last time we used it was for a video that we had produced. We have taken our fair share of the money, and I will provide historical background for the Member.

If I could remind the Minister, it’s not for my comfort that I’m asking for this information. It’s for the taxpayers who are asking if we were good stewards of the availability of such funds. I just want to make sure that’s put on the record.

Not that I want to dial 911 on this issue, but the concern that was brought up by my colleague here Mr. Nadli in terms of our Ground Ambulance Program is something of a concern. We don’t need to have a disaster on our highways to do so. It just so happens that we had a disaster as of late with respect to areas where a ground ambulance or an air ambulance extraction could have been used in probably more effective ways. We’ve heard today that there were issues of liability, lacking equipment, lacking personnel.

About this working group, my questions are the fundamentals behind this working group. I was led to believe that the department had a very similar working group for a number of years that disbanded, but they did not have any type of conclusion. Now we’ve got a new working group that’s been put together that is working on, I guess, the expertise of our future Ground Ambulance Program. Can the Minister indicate who the members are of this working group and what background they are bringing to the working group? If I could get a response to that, please.

The members of the working group are the Department of Health and Social Services, Department of Justice, Transportation, Municipal and Community Affairs.

There will probably be a time when I will be asking to get the actual personnel, the people who are part of this group, and I would like to know what their qualifications are in this area with time. I’m not going to ask that today here. This is a question I would expect the Minister to answer here in due course.

The concern I have here is we just heard from the Minister that the findings of this working group might not be available until, as he put it, this fall. I think people are gravely concerned that we do have some gaps in our system. It was clearly indicated here by another Minister, the Minister of Health. These gaps are obviously putting a lot of worry and

stress on motorists, the people of the Northwest Territories who have to use highways for a means of getting to and from. Is there a possibility that this department can look at interim measures until such time as recommendations from a working group become available?

I’m assuming that the Member means by interim measure that we provide the service until full service is available. Am I correct?

The terminology of interim measures is exactly that. We don’t really have a program in place currently in a lot of our communities and highway infrastructures. My guess is that an interim proviso in terms of providing any type of ground ambulance protocols or anything that they have will enhance what we don’t have today and would probably be better than having nothing.

My question is: Would the department consider interim measures for ground ambulance support in community highway infrastructures during this fiscal year?

One of the things we’re working on is updating the Highway Emergency Alerting Protocol. As far as the interim measures go, I mean, I mentioned before that we’re trying to get some first responder training so we have some folks that are able to respond. We’re looking at different types of equipment they might need.

As far as implementing an interim service, that’s a huge undertaking, and I think we’d have to, as a department, have a look at that. We’d have to do our due diligence on that because it is going to be a huge undertaking. Even though it would be just an interim measure, there’s a lot more to it than just putting a piece of equipment on the ground and hoping somebody can use it.

I will commit to the Member that we will… I mean, all the Members’ concerns that were raised, I think I’ve committed to pretty well all of them that we will have a look at them. It’s what we continue to do as a department. When we come back for business plan discussions and have a back and forth with committee, there’s opportunity there for them to raise these particular types of issues and see if there are ways they could fit them into the business plan. We look forward to that discussion. Hopefully, by the time we get to that stage we’ll have more information to share with the Members.