Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We appreciate the concerns that are raised with respect to the Medical Travel Policy and there’s no question that the Medical Travel Policy needs to be reviewed. In fact, we are currently doing that. One of the areas that we are looking at is the per diem rates that we provide to residents of the Northwest Territories who happen to be on

medical travel. But there are many different situations when an individual may be eligible for per diem and may not be eligible for per diem. For instance, if an individual goes south for an extended stay, we try to get them into one of our government-approved boarding homes where the meals and the accommodation and transportation to and from the health facilities and all those types of things are fully paid for and compensated. But if there is no space available, we do provide our residents with a per diem rate. That per diem rate hasn’t changed in an extended period of time and that is one of the things that we clearly need to update and will be reviewed as part of the review of the Medical Travel Policy.

At the end of the day, I agree with what many Members have said, but at the same time we do have to be fiscally responsible. Money is an issue and when we look at the motion that’s provided to us today, it talks about devising a system of compensating medical and non-medical travel escorts for their time, which is basically compensating them for lost salaries and already we spend tens of millions of dollars on medical travel and I hear every day, find a way to control the cost of medical travel, find a way to control the costs of medical travel.

I have had an opportunity to travel to many communities to talk to residents both in the larger communities like Yellowknife and the smaller communities and hear their concern around medical travel and the administration of medical travel.

We will work with Members, we will work with residents of the Northwest Territories and we will work with stakeholders to make sure that we have the best Medical Travel Policy, but given the wording that is presented here in front of us today with respect to paying people for their time, we don’t have the financial resources to do that to support this motion. It would actually drive us deep, deep into a financial hole.

So we will not be able to support this motion at this time, but I will commit to doing the review of the per diem rates and I will commit to bringing the Medical Travel Policy back to committee and back to the residents of the Northwest Territories to continue the important dialogue around escorts, appeal processes and other important issues that have been raised, but we can’t support the motion as written. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.