Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, medical travel: where do I begin? I spoke yesterday about the medical travel co-payment threshold that desperately needs updating. Today I want to talk about the level of service that residents in Hay River receive with regard to medical travel. There are around 1,300 medical travel round trips between Hay River and Yellowknife each year, and about 600 to Edmonton. Maybe it is because of the sheer volume of these trips, but without a doubt my office receives more complaints about medical travel than anything else. The frequency of complaints has reached a point where the GNWT can no longer ignore the problem. Mr. Speaker, things need to change.

As I was preparing my statement, I really did not know where to begin. I typed "medical travel" into my e-mail inbox to look over some of the issues I have received in the past, and I was overwhelmed. I will provide a couple of examples, but just know that these are not isolated cases. For everything I say, I have had multiple constituents tell me the exact same thing.

I will begin with the difficulty in scheduling travel. A constituent contacted the Hay River medical travel office to make travel arrangements two weeks before his appointment in Edmonton. It is a recurring monthly appointment that he has been attending for some time now. Being diligent, he called back a week later, on Wednesday, to ensure arrangements had been made. They had not, but he was reassured that they would be. He called on Friday. No arrangements had been made. He called on Monday, three days before his appointment. No arrangements had been finalized. His next contact with medical travel was the following day, when he received a call from the office asking him why he missed his flight. He was never informed that the flight was booked, let alone booked a day early. A new flight was booked, and he arrived in Edmonton the next day; well, technically, two days later because it was 3:00 a.m. by the time he got to Larga House. Luckily, his appointment with at 3:00 p.m. that day, so he had a little time to recover, but he was on the plane with another patient who had cancer and whose appointment was at 7:00 a.m.

My constituents frequently deal with specialists in the south, some of them, and they tell me the specialists cannot understand why it is so difficult to book their appointments. My constituents often spend hours just to book a single trip. I had notes about the complete lack of communication and information-sharing with patients about escorts, about not even being aware that they can stay at Vital Abel House here in Yellowknife, but I have run out of time so, Mr. Speaker, I will have some follow-up questions for the Minister of Health at the appropriate time. Thank you.