Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to use my Member’s statement today to talk about a number of medical support programs that have been failing our people. I’ve taken these to the Minister’s office lately and I’m noticing a serious trend: our medical travel process is not supporting the people, in my view, the way it should be.
First off, medical travel, in my view, seems to have this overriding control over what doctors would request as required treatment. Now, of course, the Minister will shamefully defend the denials by saying the process does not ensure these identified things, even though doctors say they are necessary treatment. I say shame on that Minister for being insensitive.
But what am I really talking about? I’m talking about people who require specialized back pain clinic that you can only get in Edmonton, specialized weight clinics that doctors have recommended that they can only get in Edmonton, and specialized diabetes treatment that they need in Edmonton. They cannot receive these treatments here. So what does medical travel do? Stop them. I say that’s a real shame. There’s been no transition of people who have already been going to these clinics for these specialized services and one day they go to process their medical travel form and are told sorry; sorry about your luck.
I think this Minister needs to intervene immediately and say anybody who has been receiving these services can have a transition plan until they are established here in the North. If it makes sense to have these here in the North, then it makes sense that if we can establish them here why we would send them south. But we don’t have these programs up and running here, so what do we do? We make these people, who have doctors’ orders to go get treatment, sit and wait until it comes.
I think the Department of Health and Social Services tends to forget about the psychological cost that is now put on these particular people who require these services. They pull the carpet out from underneath them and they’re sitting there kind of lost, wondering if they will ever get help and if their government cares about them. I start to wonder if that’s actually true.
I think the Minister can show true compassion to this problem today by saying that she’ll look into this problem and say anybody who was receiving these types of treatments who were previously being sent out for specialized services should be able to continue until we establish good programs here in the North to do this. But to tell a patient that you have to sit and wait until we develop a program and no treatment for you until then is the wrong approach.
Let’s grandfather these people. Let’s stop this shameful approach. I think we can do something and we can do something now.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
