Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the committee would like to continue with the consideration of the O and M budgets for the Department of Transportation and then continue on today with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Thank you.

We have a lot of students from the North who do attend post-secondary facilities in Alberta. It seems to almost be a destination of choice. I don’t have any statistics to bear that out. Where a constituent or resident can prove a cost savings to the government, the cost to get from Grande Prairie to Edmonton to see a specialist is a lot less than getting from Hay River to Edmonton. Where it is an absolute, undeniable, proven case of where it would cost less to waive the policy about it having to originate in the Northwest Territories, would this not be something that the Minister could simply...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It has to do with our medical travel. We have a very comprehensive Medical Travel Policy in the Northwest Territories and I would suggest that most of the time it works really, really well. Occasionally, though, we bring to the floor of this House some anomaly, some glitches where there are problems.

The policy is well-known that if somebody requires medical travel it has to originate within the Northwest Territories. However, this does not address the situation that I described today in my Member’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as a Member who’s been here quite some time, I think that Mr. Miltenberger has taken the opportunity to raise a point of order to, in fact, correct the record on a certain matter and I’m not sure that that actually constituted, in my experience, in my opinion, a point of order. I suppose if each one of us stood up on a point of order every time somebody said something in this House that was not correct, we’d be standing up a lot.

I appreciate the fact that Mr. Bromley did err in his assumption or his assertion on this particular matter and has withdrawn his...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The committee would like to consider the Department of Environment and Natural Resources budget along with, if possible and time permitting, moving onto the Department of Transportation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

There are no doubt, I mean, the Medical Travel Policy is, no doubt, a very expensive policy and very expensive exercise of the Department of Health and Social Services because we do live in the North and we are remote from some of the very specialized services that are required by our constituents. It’s a very large ticket item. It’s very expensive. Sometimes things are done which might actually seemingly waste money, but the opportunity to save money is here before us.

I’d like to ask the Minister if there is anyone within the organization who looks after medical travel or medical insurance...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a constituent who is a student attending full-time studies at the Grande Prairie Regional College in Grande Prairie, Alberta. My constituent had a medical specialist appointment booked in Edmonton. She had gone through the appropriate channels for this appointment. She had been seen by a doctor in Hay River, referred to Yellowknife, and in turn received a referral to a specialist in Edmonton. When booking her medical travel for her appointment in Edmonton, she was informed that she could not access assistance from where she was attending school because medical...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to seek unanimous consent to return to item 20 on the Order Paper, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters.

---Unanimous consent granted.

It’s definitely not my intention to cast in any negative light any private carriers or small companies, but we do hear and have heard debate and controversy over the years about people, whether it was a violation of their rights to have mandatory drug testing in certain areas. You hear about in the oilpatch. I certainly know that large companies have their own in-house policies on drug testing and it’s particularly stringent, I believe, on anybody that’s involved in the transportation industry, and certainly for pilots, as the Minister says. I know there are medical tests and tests that are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as we listened to the large amount of media coverage this morning on the Deh Cho Bridge on CBC Radio this morning, Mr. Ramsay was in for an interview, we heard the Minister’s comments in the media scrum after the House session on Friday, and I’ve been struggling and thinking, you know, what can we do to bring some more, I guess, transparency and accountability to this whole issue of the Deh Cho Bridge.

As my husband and I listened to the news this morning, Rick, who’s not known to be the politician in the family, suggested, he said, isn’t this the first time...