Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the course of this Assembly, we have heard a lot of conversation around the provision of healthcare services in our communities. There have been requests for community nurses to make house calls and for them to leave the health centres in emergency situations. The majority of Canadians have access to emergency medical services in their home, if needed. Why do our residents not deserve the same? Why is this critical component of safe emergency care missing in our communities?
We have heard several Ministers of Health and Social Services, time and time again, redirect questions of ambulance services to the Department of MACA. One department blaming the other, and the typical silo'd government approach continues on hampering progress. Meanwhile, years pass with no new services coming into existence, and people in communities die. Having a safety background and having been lucky and never injured in a community I was working in, I have a lot of questions about what happens during an emergency. Once a patient is at the health centre and needs to be medevaced out of the community, how does the patient travel from the health centre to the aircraft? How do critically ill patients get to a medevac flight? Is it in the back of a pick-up? On a four-wheeler? Or in a Ski-Doo? Isn't it our responsibility to get a patient safely from one centre to another for care?
All levels of paramedics are licensed in the rest of Canada, so why aren't paramedics professionally licensed in the NWT? It's my understanding that the Department of Health and Social Services has been working on legislation to regulate paramedic services in the NWT, going as far as the public consultation phase, but then cave to the pressure of a few local providers who didn't want to have to provide the same level of care as down south. This leads to inconsistent delivery of service across the territory as there are no standardized protocols or procedures for recordkeeping, drug administration, or risk management. This severely compromises patient safety and is not acceptable. How can we say we are protecting and serving people when we don't even have a definition of how we are going to do it or track any of the results? Why does the Department of HSS not go forward with a community-based paramedicine program we've seen in the Inuvik region, a model for a health-authority-based ambulance system that can actually make money rather than lose it? Why are we not looking to replicate this in other northern communities?
We have an obligation to keep our patients safe and that includes during transport for all of our residents, including those in our primarily Indigenous communities. Recently, Laney Beaulieu, a pre-med student from Fort Resolution took to social media to call out these lack of services for what they are, racism, and I agree. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.