Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That strategy will be complete in the spring of 2021. Thank you.

I need to do some work to understand where the gap is here. I know that the medical practitioner is the starting point for requesting an escort and that goes to medical travel and the staff there make a determination. It's not up to me to create exceptions. The policy has the exceptions in it, and as I mentioned, there is an appeal mechanism for people who feel it has been applied incorrectly.

I want to add one more thing. There is confusion that I've seen between the need for a medical escort and the need for compassionate travel. I have seen medical escort requests where what the request is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The medical travel escorts are determined by need, by the medical practitioner, not by the age of the person who is travelling, so I don't see that we need to change the policy right now, that an elder, by default, needs a medical escort. That's really up to the elder to decide. Thank you.

Yes. I don't think that there is any guarantee that a building will make someone well. It's a place where they may access services that are helpful, but the building itself has no magic related to it. I will give you as an example the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation that operates here in Yellowknife, out of McPherson tents with wood stoves in them. I know quite a number of people who are regular visitors there. They find counselling. They find companionship. There is a warm place to be. There is food and coffee. It has been proven very beneficial for those people. Now, that might not be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to start by expressing my condolences to the family who lost their person to addictions. It happens, as the Member says, too often and with heartbreaking results.

I have some numbers here to share with the Member based on his question. For the most recent year, which is the year we are in now, where capacity has been very reduced because of the pandemic, people choosing not to go South, and limited capacity within the centres, a total of 50 people have been approved to go South; 20 people have completed the program; three people also completed the extension...

Yes. I appreciate that there's a lot of anxiety and fear about the prospect of COVID being diagnosed in our communities, and Inuvik is no different in this case. People who are tested for COVID are entitled to their privacy. Identifying information and additional information is very tightly controlled by the CPHO. There is no reason that she would feel obliged to enumerate who else lives in the house with the infected person unless that person was also infected. When that person did test as infected, it turned out that they did live in the same house. There's no obligation to provide a...

An example of the impact of COVID on this program is that, when the territorial manager of midwifery arrived in the territory in March, right at the outset of the pandemic, rather than being asked to sit and write policy, she was redeployed to support clinical care to postpartum and newborn clients at Stanton Hospital and in the community. That, I don't think, is in place any longer. I think she is back to her regular job at this point, but that was an example of where things were at.

As the Member is aware, the midwifery expansion project did not receive funding in the 2021 budget year, and...

The policy and guideline development is an ongoing process. It doesn't impede the development of the territorial midwifery program, so they are developing together.

I do make a commitment to look into what is going on with the meals. Thanks.

The medical travel policies were revised last year, at the end of the 18th Assembly, and one of the new features is an appeal mechanism so that, if someone is denied an escort, then it is possible for that person to fill in an appeal form and file that with medical travel and have it considered. The only hitch to these, though, and I get lots of these crossing my desk, is that people need to plan ahead. Medical-travel people work a regular day. There is an on-call function, but I find they get a lot of last-minute requests. If the person who requires an escort is denied, there is an appeal...