Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be supporting the motion and I’d like to offer comments that might be classified or categorized as tentative support.

The motion calls for immediately introducing a policy change to ensure access to non-medical escorts for the patients with particular issues. Then again on the last furthermore that the government produce the report to these recommended actions for consideration by the House by February 2016, that’s almost five months from now. We know that this is being worked on since 2011. So I think that’s a healthy opportunity to help the interim or the new government to do its work and provide its response.

We did begin this work in the 16th Assembly and we’re somewhat frustrated that we didn’t make more progress there. It’s gone for the life of this Assembly and I know that the department is actively working on it. This is the message: please get it done.

Consistently applied is the second ask here. That’s something that I think everybody in the House can support and I certainly do.

The mechanism, calling for a mechanism for monitoring and evaluation, again, that’s a no-brainer. We need to do that with all of our policies, and this one in particular, as already noted by my colleagues, is a very significant policy for our residents and a very expensive policy. So we need to make sure that we stretch our dollars as much as we can. I know, in fact, that we have done a considerable amount of work on the Medical Travel Policy. We are working on this 24/7, on-call process, where doctors can be reached 24/7 by a community nurse. We know that we’re working on getting Electronic Medical Records in place so there’s accurate and ready information on patients to help assess their situation. We’ve established Telehealth with equipment and skills in every community in the Northwest Territories so we can create images of patients in their community immediately and with immediate results, and through our IT they can be transferred to the appropriate doctor or professional, again, for immediate consideration and evaluation. All those things should be helpful.

So, finally, I guess, I would note, I think it’s already been noted very straightforwardly, the more dollars we put into this the less dollars there will be for actual health care, so it’s a fine balance and there will always be a tension. It’s not an easy one to do but I think, you know, we’ve been at this for five years at least and we should be able to see some vast improvements. I’d like to see that summarized in place and presented to committee by February of ’16, as called for in this motion. I’ll be supporting it, and thanks to the mover and seconder. Mahsi.