Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the challenges we face around midwifery and providing birthing services in communities outside of Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife and Beaufort-Delta, Inuvik in particular, is that we need to make sure the facilities are appropriate, that individuals can receive the proper diagnostic and specialist obstetric or services such as C-section. Most of our communities don’t have the capacity to provide that type of service. So we need to make sure we focus our attention where we can actually provide birthing services.

What we’re talking about now is pushing midwifery services out and supporting community health nurses in the communities so they can provide many aspects of what midwives do, which is a lot of the postnatal and prenatal services, which will actually lead to healthier babies, healthier births and healthier pregnancies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.