Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the spirit and intent of the motion. It is interesting. Like Mr. Dolynny, I have some issues with the final now therefore. It talks about paying medical escorts, both medical and non-medical escorts, and it talks about paying people for their time and it sounds like paying for their time when they’re perhaps going to be away accompanying someone for a long period of time.
Right now I believe what we have for people who are medical escorts is we have travel, we have per diems for food, we have per diems for accommodation, we do have a lot of financial support out there for medical escorts. This is talking about medical escorts, but what I’ve heard Members talking about here today is something quite different. We’re talking about families, full families that want to go and support a loved one that’s ill or something and that’s quite different than a medical escort. So this whole discussion here, if you actually analyze it, is a little convoluted. It sounds like everybody is talking about something different. I’m being honest and the other thing we’re doing is we are, even by discussing this motion and bringing it forward – with all due respect to Mr. Yakeleya – we are raising an expectation in the public that we can actually afford to do this. We’re putting an expectation out there. We’re saying, oh well, let’s just look at it, let’s just study it. We probably, you know, in the end will determine we can’t afford to do it, but let’s do the right thing and let’s get the department to look at it. You know what, in all responsibility as legislators and all the demands that there are, we can ask the Department of Health to go and look at this, but I hope we aren’t creating the expectation out there in the public that this is actually doable on the level that’s been referred to here today.
Like I said, we do have monetary supports out there for medical escorts now, travel to get them there, a
place to stay, we’ve got boarding homes, escorts can stay with the patient in the boarding home. I’m just listing off some of the supports we already have out there.
I just want to draw one other analogy here, which kind of puts this in perspective. I know people, Northerners, long-time Northerners who have been diagnosed with cancer who work for the Government of the Northwest Territories and can’t even get enough time off work. Like, their leave doesn’t even…and we’re talking about the escorts’ monetary compensation, what about the person that’s sick? What about the person in the hospital who doesn’t have insurance or some kind of insurance coverage? What about their wages and what about the fact that they no longer have an income when they become ill and they’re in a hospital for a short term or a long time and become incapacitated in some way? I mean the actual patient. Do you folks hear what I’m saying? The actual patient. I mean, some of the best paying jobs in the North don’t have enough coverage, insurance coverage to allow those people enough time off work to even get the treatment that they need for cancer, but we’re talking about compensating the person who’s going as a medical escort.
These are all demands. They all need to be put into perspective and if it makes people happy for us to look at this, then let’s look at that, but let’s surely inventory and articulate all the supports that are there because I don’t want this motion to create the illusion that we aren’t doing anything for people who do require an escort, medical or otherwise. So I’ll go along with this. To not go along with it would be seemingly now to be the Grinch, but I guess in time I think we all know sitting on this side of the House that are bringing forward this motion that this comes back with a big price tag on it. You’re going to look at forfeiting something else in order to do this. I mean, let’s be honest.
So I’ll support looking at it. I hope the department can come up with something, but like I said, they need to clearly articulate what we already do for people. If we need to accompany someone and this whole other issue of compassionate travel and whole families and all that kind of stuff and let’s also just look at the irony in fact that the person that’s sick, that they’re getting compensated for their wages. Thank you.