Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll certainly, once again, accept the offer to review this file. I think that is a good first step for this family. Still, there’s quite a bit of vagueness on whether the Minister will provide a written apology to this family. I certainly hope the Minister will clear this up.

We need to be ultimately clear. Do we allow doctors — and this is certainly not a slight against doctors — to send people to hospitals where they can’t be treated? I want to be clear on that. Do we allow doctors to send patients south to hospitals that have no beds for them? In such cases I’m...

Mr. Speaker, all those hospitals in Alberta, all those hospitals in Calgary and Edmonton and elsewhere, yet there were no beds. I’m wondering who is taking responsibility for sending one of our patients, who was in dire need of serious medical care, to a hospital, or certainly a city, that has no beds. Is the Minister willing to take responsibility specifically for that and write an apology on that issue so this family has some healing and can go forward?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to item 8 on our agenda, oral questions. Thank you.

Unanimous consent granted.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly wish we were in a court of law so we could treat the Minister like a hostile witness to get her to answer the question. The answer wasn’t in there anywhere. My question was about the detail of communication.

All indications are that there is information that flows from Capital Health to the Northwest Territories through Capital Health, maybe through to Stanton, then it gets to the Minister’s office. So, Mr. Speaker, I will have to find another way to say the same question: is there any type of communication that gives the detail that beds are full or not?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be to the Minister of Health today. I’ll be following up on both my Member’s statement and my questions from yesterday, which addressed my concern about this young mother, two in tow, a three month old nursing baby with her, who had trouble getting a hospital room and waited 34 hours.

I was reading Hansard questions yesterday. To understand some of the complexity, the frustration I’m feeling on this side of the House…. The Minister said we send people….that we use Capital Health services, because services like urology…. Well, Mr. Speaker, I was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to use my Member’s statement today to trumpet the efforts of one individual in our business community, in our Yellowknife private sector, who stepped up to the plate, when government sometimes is uncomfortable, on environmental education for youth.

That person is Yellowknife’s Chris Johnston. He heard last week the lukewarm answers from our Premier about purchasing the documentary film “Water is Life.” He heard — and I quote from the October 7, 2008, page 22, unedited Hansard — that we will be prepared to “try and see what we can do to get this information out to...

I’m sort of perplexed. It sounds like we’re not getting any additional services than anyone else who would walk in off the street, yet we have a very specific contract with Capital Health. I find it an odd situation that this government wouldn’t try to negotiate some type of preferred experience, preferred customer. I’m certainly well aware that the GNWT makes every effort to make sure we pay our bills in a timely way — to get recognition for that — so Capital Health doesn’t need to sit and wait for payment.

Why do we contract specifically with Capital Health? Why don’t we consider going...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I still have a few more questions for the Minister of Health regarding our experiences or relationship with Capital Health and our contract.

A lot of people in this House know, I’m sure, that Capital Health is an approximately $13 billion sort of conglomerate of hospitals and whatnot; that’s their budget area. To put that into perspective, the GNWT’s budget is only 10 per cent of that. It’s a sense of magnitude I’m drawing on that.

In negotiating our contract with Capital Health to provide services to Northerners who need services, I’d like to know if the Minister is...

Mr. Speaker, I’d like the Minister to explain a paradox. At one moment she’ll take responsibility, and at another moment she’s not responsible because it’s a doctor’s situation. At the one moment it’s Capital Health’s decision where to send the patient, yet she acknowledges that she spent all day on the phone. I’m really confused. If she doesn’t have control, why does she bother calling? If she’s the Minister, I would think she’d be in charge and respectful and do the honourable thing by providing a written apology to the family. But then she says it’s not her responsibility.

So who’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to continue questioning, and I certainly want to thank Mr. Ramsay for helping on this issue, because it is an important issue for this family in Yellowknife.

I continued to ask the Minister four times yesterday: would she provide a written apology to this family in light of the way that this family was treated and certainly in recognition of the duration that this process went on? Is the Minister willing to write apology to this family and also recognize what she will be doing to make sure this does not happen again in the future?