Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion was one of really good discussion and debate in terms of whether or not we want to compensate non-medical escorts.
As you already know, we go through the budget session and we see the costs that are associated with medical travel, and they are very high and that’s one of the areas that we’re already exhausting a lot of our financial resources on medical travel and trying to find ways that we can
mitigate that and still provide the services to residents of the Northwest Territories.
Aside from that, if you look at all the work that this government and committees have been working with the Department of Health and Social Services and the Anti-Poverty Strategy and acts that we’ve implemented, we’re putting a lot of work on the Department of Health and Social Services and this is another one that’s just going to add to the workload. In some cases, who knows if we have the adequate resources, human and financial, in the Department of Health to put another work caseload on to our already exhausted staff which do a lot of good work.
Other areas I thought why I would not support this motion are things such as how it’s going to affect income assistance. We had one Member who talked about the unemployment rates in the communities, so that means we might have people on income assistance. So if they get compensated, they’re going to have to record that. It’s going to affect the amount of income that they get on income assistance and it might also affect what they have to pay in housing rates, their monthly housing rates that they have to claim on their monthly reports.
We do have boarding homes here in Yellowknife and in Edmonton that do provide adequate services. They provide meals and transportation for these escorts to get in there.
As Ms. Bisaro mentioned, one concern was extended periods of time. If we have medical escorts that are going to be away for, say, a week or two weeks, then maybe we should look at something in that area.
However, I looked at things that might have convinced me not to support the motion, but in recent case files, recent concerns came to my constituency office from not only Inuvik but residents of the Northwest Territories. There are some big concerns on the Medical Travel Policy. I know that we’re reviewing that right now, and I think this motion is timely in that, if we are able to find something that might be adequate enough to give some type of compensation for our low-income families, maybe some of them aren’t on income support and some of them are living with elders, with their families at home. They don’t have the adequate finances to go down and buy the simple things, that I guess some of us might take for granted, while they are away from their home life. Some individuals might be a single sibling in the family and they’d have to take time off to escort a loved one down and, as a result, might have to take leave without pay and there’s no compensation there.
The big one that has recently come into my situation was an emergency trip in terms of a family member going down. The family felt that they
needed to be there with the family member. They went down at their own costs. They even got a letter of recommendation that the client needed an escort under the medication and the surgical process that they went under, and yet even with the letter of recommendation for an escort the family still didn’t get compensation and didn’t get reimbursed for all the costs associated with them coming down, and even when the individual got released from the hospital, they had to pay for their own hotel and accommodations because they weren’t ready to fly. Under certain circumstances like that where it does become an emergency and families in Inuvik, for example, we just decreased the northern living allowance, we have high fuel costs, and when certain things like this happen and family members who are worried for the family member’s life have to go down to Edmonton because sometimes we don’t have the services up here to provide those surgical procedures. Even though some of these families do get physicians to write that letter of recommendation for an escort, sometimes that just doesn’t get reimbursed and they’re stuck paying thousands of dollars in bills.
With that said, I’d like to see some type of program in place to address this. I will be supporting the motion even though I do understand all the hardships and all the work that the department is going through. Plus, I understand that we are going through a review, and if we can get something done before we get that review in place then I think it will be perfect timing and something that we can incorporate into this policy review. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I do thank all the Members that are supporting this and talking to the motion here.