Mr. Speaker, yesterday I spoke about my concern with increasing health care privatization and my concern that private paramedics do not have the right skill set to fill gaps in remote community primary care. I could be taking an unpopular position here. People like paramedics. They're great. Of course they are. Nurses like them. They're helpers. More hands on deck. And they seem easier to find at short notice than nurses. Communities are asking for them. There's a vague sense paramedics could do the things that we don't let community health nurses do. Maybe they could treat patients outside the health centre. Maybe we could put them in health cabins where there are no nurses. Maybe they don't require RCMP presence. Everything about paramedics just feels easier. You don't have to deal with the union. There aren't so many rules. But this is exactly the danger, of course. There aren't so many rules. There aren't so many protections either for patients or for healthcare staff working alongside paramedics. There's no regulation of paramedics in the NWT.

The Minister reassures us often that any paramedic contracted by the health authority is required to be licensed in another jurisdiction. But what does that mean? There's no binding national standard for what it means to be a certain kind of paramedic, what training is required, what protocols are to be followed, what kind of tests you have to do to renew your license and keep it in good standing. Every province is different. In several places like BC and Ontario, paramedics are only insured as long as they're working within that province. Would any of those provincial regulatory bodies take responsibility for a paramedic working in the NWT? How would an NWT patient file a complaint against a paramedic licensed elsewhere? Let's say a paramedic working in a remote community was ordered by a nurse to do something that they didn't have the skills to do? Would they feel pressure to do it anyway because there's no one else around to help? What if the patient was harmed because the paramedic refused to do the task, who's liable? Is the nurse responsible for what the paramedic does or doesn't do? Mr. Speaker, we want so badly to make health care easier, with less restrictions, less rules, but plugging holes with unregulated paramedics is not the way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.