Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Member I get what he is saying. I get what the Members are saying, Mr. Speaker. This is about a capacity issue. It is about a priority issue. It is about the traffic jam we have with the legislative office.

Mr. Speaker, we have, as I stated, outstanding that we have been working on to regulate licensed nurse practitioners who we need to regulate. We need to regulate psychologists who are numerous in numbers who do a lot of work in the Northwest Territories. We need to regulate emergency responders and we need to regulate chiropractors. I said, and I will say it...

We contract medevac services to our providers. We have people qualified to handle that. Medic North does that on the ground. We have staff and people equipped to handle medical situations on the plane. We spend millions and millions to do this medical travel. Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Member and the public that we take care of our residents.

I want to offer to the Member again, before he makes generalized statements that sort of impunes the staff and the contracts that work for us, maybe he should just present to me the details and I will get back to him. Thank you.

I thank the Member for asking for an update because he is working with very outdated information. As the mayor from Edmonton, when he was visiting here, had told us in the briefing meeting we had with all the Members, the Premier of Alberta, which I have advised the Member many times, has set up a Health Quality Council of Alberta with a mandate to come up with a plan on how we deal with emergency medevac programs at the airport. The city of Edmonton, citizens of Edmonton have voted resoundingly to approve the plan to close that municipal airport. Members should know, and I tell them again...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The legislation that we are working on is going to be Health and Social Services umbrella profession legislation and it will start with including four large professions: licensed practical nurses, psychologists, emergency medical service providers and chiropractors, because they have been identified as the four we need to work on right away. There are several other professions that have asked to be included and they could be included as we go forward.

There is lots of research and background work that we need to do to establish this umbrella legislation and this has been...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to just reiterate that the department is reviewing the possibility of including this group of practitioners into omnibus allied health professional legislation. Each of them have very, very few numbers and this has been in the works and it will take some time to develop, but it is under review.

Secondly, it’s the Medical Profession Act in the Northwest Territories that defines who are doctors and who can call themselves doctors, so there is conflicting legislation that we need to work through.

The third thing is what is important is that for those people who are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; we are considering an omnibus legislation on various health or allied health professions and it is possible that this could be inputted in that. Thank you.

Thank you. I need to remind the Member also not to compare this profession as medical doctors, just because we have existing legislation that protects that word “doctor” just for those who are practicing medicine. So let me just say this profession is allowed to be practiced here. The practitioners are allowed to do their work and there’s nothing that we’re doing or not doing right now that prohibits them from doing their work. Like my colleague Minister Miltenberger just said to me, it’s like a float plane and we want the float plane to take off and if you load way too many things on there...

Once again I need to state, the naturopathic practitioners are allowed to practice their fields as they are now. So there’s nothing that needs to be done to have them practice. They are allowed to practice that now. I have stated earlier that we are reviewing this. I want to say again that I just don’t want to load so many things onto this umbrella legislation that it doesn’t make it off the ground. It is really important that we regulate chiropractors, psychologists, licensed nurse practitioners, as well as emergency responders. Those professions have been at the front of the line and they...

The Member’s line of questioning in itself is questioning the competence and the quality of the people that are practicing. I want to say that those that are licensed to practice as a therapist and naturopathic practitioners and even acupuncturists, all those professions are allowed to practice in the Northwest Territories. They just cannot call themselves a doctor. That might give an idea to the public that they are practicing medical doctor medical practices. That’s clearly defined in our legislation.

Mr. Speaker, let me just say once again what I said to MLA Abernethy, which is that we are...

I think it’s important for the Members and the public to know that professions like massage therapist and naturopathic practitioners can continue to practice their fields. They do not need the legislation to practice those. As I stated, unregulated professions pose certain regulating challenges such as small professional numbers and significant licensing differences throughout Canada. It does require tremendous research to determine how best to accommodate these unique circumstances. We believe that, as a department, by finding a framework for the most challenging and complex professions, the...