Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise, like my colleagues, to speak in favour of this particular initiative. It's time that this government moves forward on an emergency health services type of act which outlines what we can do and what we will do for our citizens because they're important.
In this day and age, it's a great surprise that we do not have some time of ambulatory act that demonstrates and says that these are the types of services we offer. What we hear today is both the passion and the struggle brought forward by many Members and their communities, where they're almost helpless, stranded by the process by not being able to help good people in certain circumstances. What we get are Good Samaritans running out doing the right thing, but in some cases they may end up causing more harm than good.
If we move forward on a particular act, spurred on by this motion that says ground ambulance services are necessary on our highway, this will stimulate the right type of action and we need to stand by it with the right type of funding.
Health care is such a critical issue amongst all Canadians, not just people in the Northwest Territories, all Canadians. We see the groundswell at every single budget across Canada as it grows and grows and grows because it emphasizes how important health care is.
This is one of the elements in northern health care that cannot be stranded and ignored. These are the types of services that our policies and protocols must address because, in some ways, they are already addressing them. Under MACA, we have the Highway Emergency Ambulance Protocol, which I was trying to get at a couple of days ago, which basically says we had an incident but we didn't follow our protocols. I look forward to the response by the Minister of MACA as to what actually happened in that situation.
But equally, as I balance this issue out, it's tied in with skills as well as tools. Yes, we can fund them, but we have to make sure that we can get behind them so they get the right training. We have to make sure they get the right tools, such as the proper ambulance services, for the right conditions. There are many elements of this particular motion that cannot be forgotten.
By and large, I start off by saying it's time this government comes forward with a health emergency services type of act that addresses ambulances, highways and says how we reach outside of our typical municipalities.
The last area I'll mention, although it's not directly related to the motion, it sort of speaks to the essence of the motion. As we know, the incident a few weeks ago, we could not send a medevac out there to rescue that one person. Timing, as we all know, in incidents can range from we need to respond immediately or some with lesser priority. The way our medevac services are set up, we can't send anyone out to rescue anyone who isn't at a health centre. So where are we left? We're left with motions like this today that say we have to find a way to respond to our people who are in urgent need of help.
This motion I think speaks to that. I applaud the Member for bringing forward this motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.