Tom Beaulieu

The act will go through the regular process. We are targeting the fall 2013 session. I did say hopefully that will happen. Provided nothing goes sideways, we’re expecting that the bill will be provided to committee prior to that, at the appropriate time prior to the time that it’s introduced in the House in 2013, the fall.

There is no contract. They are doing this under an intergovernmental agreement with Alberta and it’s costing $600,000 a year.

I don’t have that information, but the Member did mention that it was not used. So I’m assuming that there was no requirement for a STARS helicopter to be used to transport patients from the Edmonton International to the hospital. So likely it hasn’t been used at this point. Thank you.

I can commit to doing that. I will commit to doing that. Thank you.

Again, depending on what type of craft is needed, what type of vehicle would be needed for the medevac would depend upon the response time. What I can advise the Member is we can ensure that when the call is received, that the medevac people are out as quickly as possible, as soon as they can get into the air. That is supposed to be the standard. As soon as the people are mobilized and the plane can be in the air is the time we’re trying to achieve. Thank you.

I will assume that the Territorial Electronic Medical Record Project Team will be looking at best practices across the Territories and then put the information together for the act, and also that they had also reviewed all of the Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations, and through the review they have addressed the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner pertaining to this area.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Health Information Act is top priority for the Department of Health and Social Services, and we would be hoping that the bill will be ready for introduction in the 2013 fall session.

Mr. Speaker, in Saskatchewan they’re trying to attract doctors to communities with less than 10,000 people. All of our communities, with the exception of Yellowknife, have less than 10,000 people. Again, our game is a little bit different but, of course, as we meet at the federal/provincial/territorial meetings, I would talk to the executive deputy minister and see if there would be some value in us having a discussion with a jurisdiction such as Saskatchewan, Manitoba, which also have remote communities, and Alberta to see if there is maybe something that can be gained from having the...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Recently we had transferred the territorial physician recruitment, developed a Territorial Physician Recruitment Strategy that’s developed to improve recruitment to the Territories. We hadn’t contemplated luring doctors with cash, but rather improving the system and how we attract them back to the Territories. We have a fairly healthy compensation package for doctors that wish to work in the Territories and we are seeing some success. Recently, since we’ve developed this recruitment strategy, we have some doctors in Inuvik, Fort Smith and now the first one in Hay River...

I had not had previous discussions with the Minister of Health from Saskatchewan on the press release. However, when there is anything that’s pertaining to health right across the country, we have individuals in our communications that would track it, pull out some information and eventually, as we sit down and go through various agenda items with the deputy minister as part of regular routine, we discuss what’s happening in other parts of the country in as far as health goes. Thank you.