Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A Medical Travel Policy gap causing grief for northern families needs resolution. Specifically, problems are arising for those who have children going to school in southern Canada under the Student Financial Assistance program and who fall ill and require hospitalization or treatment. At a time when these kids desperately need them, their parents are unable to access travel support to attend them because the medical travel is not initiated in the Northwest Territories. Yet if these students had fallen ill at home, their own plus an escort’s travel costs would be covered...

I’ll leave it at that. I think it’s always good, as the Auditor General continually reminds us, to have an evaluation program in place when we start new programs like this. I would have thought there would have been one and I hope the department will address that. For now, I appreciate the Minister’s commitment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to follow up on the Green Light, I believe it was called, environmental strategy for the department. Are we expecting an update on that strategy or that process and an evaluation of how well we’re doing?

Thank you, Madam Chair. That’s good. I was just asking when that might be.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Building Canada Fund dollars, are they reflected on this page or is that something we will fill in later?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Workers’ safety for all government workers is of primary importance and hospital workers are really no different from carpenters, electricians and others, although the hazards may be different.

In a perfect world, non-violent intervention would be adequate and de-escalation would always work. But in the real world this sometimes is not enough and this is exactly what we are seeing at Stanton Hospital, both currently in the emergency department and the psychiatric unit. I have been at the hospital and hearing code whites frequently.

When violence occurs, it is necessary to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s initiative. Of course, students are on a budget, so a group plan might be something attractive.

I support the Minister’s review of the Medical Travel Policy including this apparent policy gap under the medical escort travel.

When will the Minister be seeking input on the draft results of the review from committee, and when can we expect it to be completed and implemented? Mahsi.

It was profiled in the Minister’s remarks today, so somewhere there’s a missing $350,000 here from the budget, I would assume. But it is a proposal and I guess I’ll just go ahead and talk about it a little bit here.

I am a little bit uncomfortable with that. The thing about the Executive is that they do deal with all aspects of government, as do non-governmental organizations. They deal with all areas of government and some non-government areas, of course. But MACA has, in the past, mostly focused on sport and NGOs that work in sport, so I think we would be losing something in the transfer from...

Thanks to the Minister. I know the Minister is keenly interested in this and very open to investigating and considering the various perspectives.

This review is a welcome one, of course, and long overdue. I’m sure that there are many people that could provide valuable insight and have experiences to relate, such as my constituents.

How is the Minister engaging the people of the North for input into this review? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was page 135. Am I correct? I just wondered, and I’m sure there’s an explanation probably associated with devolution, but the big jump in the current fiscal year from about $6 million to about $17 million, a $10 million jump, if I can get an explanation for that.