At this time, we are not planning to do a pilot of a patient advocate in any communities throughout the Northwest Territories. I know the Member would be disappointed if I did not bring up the quality assurance professionals that we have in the system today. The quality assurance positions are also patient representatives, so they have a double role, Mr. Speaker.

Now, increasingly over the last number of months, it's becoming clear to me that having those two positions as a single position probably isn't the best way to do business here, in the Northwest Territories. Quality assurance tends to deal with situations after they have occurred or where a patient or a client has brought a concern to them that we need to fix, whereas a patient representative, I think, falls more in line with a patient advocate.

That is a person who is there to help the clients navigate their way through, overcome language barriers, understand a system that might appear intimidating or frightening to them. There is a role for that.

So I have already directed the department to look at our positions, the quality assurance/patient representative, see what it would take to separate these out so that we can have those two roles separate and distinct within our system so that those people can provide care. As far as doing a pilot of a patient advocate in a region, that is something we have not contemplated at this time.