Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it has become a tradition of mine to make statements in this House about the government's lack of support for ground ambulance and highway rescue services. Today the tradition continues. I wasn't planning on continuing it today. It has become frustrating and exhausting, frankly. I have brought this issue up during every business planning session, during the deliberation of the main estimates, during departmental briefings, and during many, many committee meetings.
During the last briefing we received from the department, we were informed that the little funding directed toward highway rescue was being cut from the budget, despite the Minister acknowledging that a real fix to the problem will cost millions. Luckily, that meagre sum was added back to the budget, and communities can still apply for a pittance to help them do millions of dollars of work on the GNWT's behalf. That is a great deal for the government.
Despite my frustration with all this, I decided to do another statement because in my research I came across some exciting and encouraging news. I came across the fall edition of the MACA update, and it reenergized me. Let me read from it:
For several years, community governments and other stakeholders have raised concerns about the lack of a comprehensive coordinated system of ground ambulance and highway rescue services in the North and about the need for clarity with regard to service levels, responsibility for service delivery, and associated funding. There have been several studies done on this issue which have proposed a series of options ranging from maintaining the status quo to a legislated program delivery mandate supported by the GNWT. MACA and the Department of Health and Social Services are working towards a legislative framework and coordinated program delivery. The departments are currently engaged in data collection and establishing monitoring mechanisms to determine uses and costs of current service delivery.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, this is the type of progress we need.
Now if the Ministers of MACA and Health and Social Services are a little confused it's because they might not be familiar with this publication. If they would like to be brought up to speed, I suggest they talk to the two former Health and Social Service Ministers in the gallery because this update was published during their terms in 2007.
Mr. Speaker, why do I have to ask the government to do what they said they were going to do 10 years ago? I'm going to have questions for the Minister of MACA later because that's where this file seems to have landed, and I hope the answers I receive aren't read by another MLA 10 years from now in the same position. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
