Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Northwest Territories Medical Travel Policy needs a major revamping and overhauling and hopefully it will be done within this Assembly.

There are many stories on medical travel from our small communities, on the medical escorts, to the medical travel, to appointments either here in Yellowknife or in Edmonton. For example, a medical travel appointment was scheduled in Edmonton; however, there was an unexpected illness with one of the relatives in Edmonton, so this medical travel client of Tulita flew down to Edmonton to be with her sister, who was on life support, to support her, on her own expense, even though she was scheduled for an appointment in Edmonton. She tried to have her surgery appointment rescheduled; however, the doctor said that wasn’t going to be the case because the procedure had to get done.

She stayed down there, and after surgery there was no assistance for her to get anywhere. Medical travel said that since she paid her way down there, she was responsible for paying her way back to Tulita. After much stress and much agony, finally medical travel gave in. They said, okay, we will cover your costs from Edmonton to Norman Wells, but find your own way home to Tulita. So, on the bumpy road in the wintertime, after surgery, her husband had to drive to Tulita and pick her up and bring her back. This was very stressful. It was hard on her.

This is only one of many stories in the Northwest Territories. Medical travel has to have some heart and look at some of the unique situations with the people in the small northern communities where we have a lack of infrastructure, lack of programs and services. We don’t have all that they have in the larger centres.

I will ask some questions that this type of treatment is totally unacceptable, and I ask the Minister, would he look into this case specifically to see what happened and so we can adjust these policies to fit the uniqueness of medical travel in our small communities? Thank you, Madam Speaker.