Wendy Bisaro

Madam Chair, I didn’t hear an answer to the customer service issue there, but I’ll just leave it at that. It was a comment.

I did want to ask the department about another change which apparently is in the works and it has to do with recruitment of physicians. There has been some talk about the development of a physicians pool to try and deal with the absence of physicians in some communities; Hay River, for instance.

I’d like to ask the department with regard to this change in our system to go to a physicians pool. Is that something which is still in the works? When can we expect to see that...

Thank you, Ms. Mathison. Mr. Hawkins.

Thanks to the deputy minister. I guess, as I tend to always do, I would suggest that standing committee would be better served by getting the drafts earlier rather than later. You may find that input from standing committee on the draft may have some impacts on the next draft. I know we usually get stuff when it’s kind of finished, but very often if we get it when it’s halfway through or three-quarters of the way through, it will develop a faster and better product in the end.

The last thing I wanted to mention has to do with accountability. That’s another area that the directorate, I believe...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to speak to this motion a bit. I discussed some of the statistics when I made my statement earlier today, but I wanted to remind people that in the NWT, if the rates of physical activity of our people – young people and older people – are going down and our rates of obesity are increasing, that does not bode well for our health system. It means we are going to have more and more demands and more and more of a drain financially on our health system and on our government.

We have pretty good services here in the city of Yellowknife and we have reasonably good...

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Are we talking about the same numbers, perhaps? Minister Beaulieu.

I presume the Minister does not mean the sports network. I presume he means the Territorial Support Network. Thanks to the Minister for that.

I did want to ask, as well, there is a review, I understand, of the ISDM, the Integrated Service Delivery Model. That has also been a long time in the making or in the offing, so I’d like to know from the Minister where the review of the ISDM is at this particular time and when it will be finished.

Thanks to the Minister. I don’t know if this is a valid example or not, but I did hear somewhere that if NIHB only covers road travel from Yellowknife to Edmonton for a particular procedure, I would presume that we would not send the patient by road, we would send the patient on an airplane and are we then losing or gaining money with the cost from the feds based on road. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Bouchard, your time has expired. I’ll put you back on the list, if you need to be. Next on the list is Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some more questions on this page. My first one has to do with medical travel and the review that is apparently ongoing. My first question has to do with when that review is intended to be completed. I think the Minister has spoken about it before, but I don’t think we’ve had a definitive answer. I’d like to know from the Minister when we can expect the results of the medical travel review.

Thanks to the deputy minister. I have one last question in regard to this. If it is a capacity issue, which is what it sounds like, and it is a fairly large change, I gather there’s no funding in this budget to effect the changes. I think the DM said earlier that any changes will be done from within. Is it reasonable for Members to expect a request in the 2014-15 budget for funding to increase capacity to get these sorts of things done? Thank you.