Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Members in this House heard, we had an accident at the Nahanni Butte airport on August 15, 2018. I'm very happy to say that all the individuals directly involved with the crash are safe and were discharged from the hospital. I'm very happy to hear the collaboration between the community health representative in Nahanni Butte, and the healthcare practitioners in Fort Simpson and Yellowknife work very well together. It is good to hear that telehealth and our telephone systems work well. The community of Nahanni Butte and the GNWT health staff did an amazing job and should be recognized for their help and support throughout the event.
Unfortunately, the smoothness of the response time and the process for medevac is a concern. It is my understanding that at approximately 13:16 the accident occurred. At approximately 13:45, one of the local airline companies contacted the Fort Simpson Health Centre and they said they were willing to take two Fort Simpson firefighters trained in primary care, paramedics who are trained to deal with packaging and transferring of injured people, to Nahanni Butte to assess injuries and to help out the local staff.
Unfortunately, at 14:05 the local company was told that the health centre would not be sending support staff, and that a plane was going to be dispatched from Yellowknife. At around 15:56, a King Air and two Twin Otters left for Nahanni Butte. Unfortunately, the King Air could not land in Nahanni Butte and had to go to Fort Liard. They needed to use a helicopter to take some of the passengers to Fort Liard to get on the King Air. The whole process took a long time, approximately seven hours, for the medevac to leave for Yellowknife.
One of the injured passengers was horrified that it was going to take more than two hours to get help in the community. Community members tried to be supportive and calm her down, but you can imagine her frustration and fear.
In speaking with the community and people from Fort Simpson, we were confused that there was an islander plane and a helicopter in Nahanni Butte and it was not used. They would also like to know why the support team from Fort Simpson was not dispatched. They were only 30 minutes away. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted