Mr. Speaker, WHEREAS Northwest Territories highways are remote and communities are not equipped to respond to emergencies on our highway system;
AND WHEREAS communities must apply for reimbursement when they respond to accidents outside of their municipal boundaries;
AND WHEREAS there have been an average of 130 collisions per year on Northwest Territories highways over the last three years, and the volume of traffic on the Mackenzie Highway between the 60th parallel and Yellowknife will likely increase with the opening of the Deh Cho Bridge that now allows uninterrupted travel year round, 24 hours a day;
AND WHEREAS increased traffic increases the risk of fires, injuries and fatalities on the Northwest Territories highway system;
AND WHEREAS the Government of the Northwest Territories has engaged a working group to advance the provision of ground ambulance and highway rescue services;
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Range Lake, that the Government of the Northwest Territories enhance its work in the area of ground ambulance and highway rescue by emphasizing training and preparing for emergencies outside of municipal boundaries;
AND FURTHER, that the government bring forward legislation within the next 12 months to update the Fire Prevention Act and to make any other amendments required to make provisions for ground ambulance and highway rescue services;
AND FURTHERMORE, that the Government of the Northwest Territories provide a comprehensive response to this motion within 120 days.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleague from Range Lake for seconding this motion. Essentially this motion asks for the establishment of ambulances and, at the same time, highway rescue services to deal with people that are in distress either in communities or on the highway.
Of course, it also calls for the enhancement of first responder training, training for fire departments, as well, and likely the establishment of protocols for dealing with emergency situations both inside and outside of communities. I understand there has been an interdepartmental exercise in terms of trying to add some focus in terms of the discussions of looking to establish some solutions on this initiative. In that instance, I think three departments have been working on this for some time.
Initial comments include that there’s a lack of trained personnel. There’s a lack of equipment, lack of money, plus a matter of liability is a major concern. Our conscience will be our liability if we do not act immediately on this matter and put in place adequate services for transporting medically distressed people or assisting vehicles, accidents or fires on our highway system. At this point there’s a lack of will to establish the vital, basic service for the well-being of all Northerners, and this motion addresses that.
With the bridge opening, we should have anticipated that it’s going to necessitate the need for increased services on the highway in terms of trying to be able to respond to accidents that could happen. At this point we have our volunteer fire departments in communities that need to be properly trained. One example is just in terms of putting them into a capacity so they do know how to deal with defensive fire techniques, and at the same time, first responders need to have adequate training so they’re confident and, when the call of duty comes, they don’t hesitate on a moment’s notice. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. To the motion, I’ll allow the seconder to make comments. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve risen in this House a number of times during this session to speak about ambulance, first responders, as well as emergency services on our highways.
Mr. Speaker, recently we suffered a dangerous tragic accident on our highways and those are always – and hopefully and thank God – rare on our highways. But the statistics show that we have had 130 vehicle accidents on our highways in the last three years, and if you add the numbers, that’s almost one accident every eight days somewhere on our highways. They may seem small compared to the roadways in Alberta or our southern counterparts, but indeed it’s something that is gravely concerning to many of us here.
It has been brought up in this House a number of times, as I said, during this session, where I’ve had concern where we’re at with respect to our emergency services or highway emergency services and our first responder protocols.
I’ve had the chance to speak to both Municipal and Community Affairs and the Department of Health and Social Services, as well as the Department of Transportation to find out where we’re at with respect to our highway protocols and our highway services. It appears that we actually did not get very far on those questions. In fact, it did probably shed more light on the fact that we had more gaping holes in our program than we did have in terms of process. So we’re hoping, by virtue of today’s motion and those Members who are speaking in favour of it and with Cabinet listening, that we, indeed, can make some progress and some milestones towards the safety of Northerners across the Northwest Territories.
We’ve known for years now that the three departments in question that I mentioned have been working on programs and services to develop emergency training management programs, but years have passed and yet we still have no solutions in site. In fact, we’ve asked whether or not there could be interim solutions or temporary solutions to these problematic issues. We’ve heard that there will be none forthcoming.
I applaud the Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli, who has brought forward this motion. I think it speaks loud and clear the needs of our citizens, and it speaks loud and clear the needs of this government to finally get to a point in question where we have the right services and safety for the people on our highways. I will be voting in favour of this motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting this motion given that at least several communities in my riding don’t have an ambulance, or even the training and the support services to support an ambulance service. I think that our government has to start taking a look at this. I know that we had a nice ambulance committee, joint committee on the government side at the deputy level. I’d like to see that reactivated, look at the issues and certainly provide for the safety of all those travelling our highway systems. Mahsi cho.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. To the motion. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion is overdue. Action on this front is overdue. I thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. Highways in the Northwest Territories are a part of GNWT infrastructure and, as such, we are the responsible party. Communities are clearly willing, if properly resourced with equipment and training, to fill in here, but they need proper support. The horror of having severe injuries and being left to suffer with nobody responsible to respond and/or no one with capacity to do so by those who are willing is completely untenable. I will be supporting this motion, as I said, and I thank my colleagues Mr. Nadli and Mr. Dolynny. I urge all to support this motion and get it done.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting this motion. Our NWT highway system, in some cases, is very long distances between communities and if somebody should get into an accident, it could be hours before anybody could get to them. That’s very critical to the safety and life of an individual. I do applaud Mr. Nadli for continuing to address this issue in committee, and bringing it to the forefront and to the House today in terms of a motion. As I said, I will be supporting the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, rise in support of this motion. I would like to thank the mover and seconder of the motion for bringing it forward. I feel that we have long needed an improvement in the provisions across the NWT for emergency services on our highways. We have been making do and we’ve been doing things a bit piecemeal. We have provided a small amount of money but it’s not nearly enough, and it’s time we look seriously at what is required and put in place a system that is going to provide the services that are required.
I’ve advocated in this House many times since I’ve been here, on behalf of my community, for increased funding to cover the costs of the Yellowknife fire department, who regularly acts in response to an emergency outside of the city limits. It may be down the highway, it may be out on the Ingraham Trail, but they are very often called out to fires or traffic emergencies. There are also emergencies that happen in the wintertime with ice and people falling through ice on lakes and so on. It’s definitely a need within my community, and I recognize that all the other communities that are on the highway system feel a responsibility to respond to an emergency that is outside their municipal boundaries but is on a highway that goes through their community.
As our territory grows we are going to add more and more highways to our system. As we do that, we as a government have to consider the safety of our residents. We’re going to have more people on highways. We’re going to have more people at risk in the remote areas, as people have already mentioned. As a government, I think we have to recognize that need for increased emergency services and we have to seriously look at what we have and don’t have, and that there is a need for us to provide greater emergency services.
Some investigative work was done a number of years ago. The departments of Health and Social Services and MACA got together and they looked at providing an emergency service program across the NWT. That work was stopped pretty quickly when they ran up against a fairly large bill in terms of setting this in place and funding. I think it’s important that we have to start that work again. The cost may seem to be prohibitive, but there are ways of doing it. We can start minimally and work our way up. I think the government must investigate, as this motion requests. The government must look at the funding that is required, and that we, as a government, have to find a way, government and Regular Members have to find a way to find that funding and put the services in place that are required. I urge all my colleagues to vote in support of this motion. It is something we need.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Along with my colleagues, I will be supporting this motion. I know this is an issue for Hay River. We are in the centre of three highways and we do respond quite a bit to rescue outside of the community. We have issue with this and we think this motion moves us in the right direction.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. To the motion. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think this is a good thing to look into, to investigate. I think that everybody probably sitting on this side of the House has a different idea of what an adequate emergency response network would look like in the Northwest Territories. I’m sure that some people have an idea about what it should look like that would probably be out of reach, from a financial point of view.
In a community like Hay River where we have many volunteers who are willing to devote their time to being first responders, to taking all the training, to going out on calls, it’s a system that needs to be supported and can work well, but if Members have an idea of people who are on a payroll full time in communities waiting for accidents to respond to, I don’t think that in this day and age and in our territory with its vast expanses between communities, and its vast miles and miles of highway, I’m rather doubtful that our government could afford something like that. But if it means getting communities together, identifying volunteers, our government supporting them with training and skills, including the ones that already currently exist like I mentioned, the Hay River fire department, offering more service to, I guess, harness the volunteers and the people who are willing to go out and do that, I would totally support that. But I’m not getting a sense, from what Members are saying, exactly what their expectations are here. But if it means moving forward to look into this, I will support that, but I think we also have to be realistic.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. To the motion. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Members who have brought this motion forward, Mr. Nadli and the MLA for Range Lake.
This past winter Minister Ramsay and myself travelled over 702 kilometres on the Mackenzie Valley winter road. Mr. Ramsay and I also took turns driving on the Mackenzie Valley winter road, and there were several close calls. Even though the vehicles were going 50 kilometres an hour, the roads were so narrow and so bumpy, and not quite up to the standards where we’d like to see our roads up in the Mackenzie Valley.
I’d like to see if there is some way that this government can put together a comprehensive regional type of emergency rescue protocol. Even the Town of Norman Wells, in the last government, met with me and said we need to know who are the first responders, what’s the protocol. Is it the RCMP? Is it the church? Is it the town? Right now there’s no territorial coordination to help us with these jurisdictions and authorities.
When we were driving the winter road, Mr. Ramsay and I, there were three or four inches in between the space of a semi-truck and our vehicle, and there was hardly any space to pull aside. I also heard that the communities in my region have said that they’ve been hit by some of the vehicles. Thank God there have been no serious accidents on our winter roads. We had one in Wrigley that the vehicle went off the road and they had to get some aircraft and helicopters to help this person.
I will be supporting this motion. I look forward to seeing how the Minister can work with the different regions on different flexibilities and see where it makes sense in the Sahtu, what makes sense up in the Beaufort-Delta, Nunakput or down in this area. Everybody has different needs at different times, and certainly, for us, seeing 1,600 to 1,700 trucks coming up in a short period of time. Plus, that’s the opportunity for people in the Sahtu to come out to Hay River or Yellowknife or Edmonton, do their shopping, take their children out. They use that road, also, we just need to be a little more coordinated. We know once you get into the communities if there’s an accident, who’s ready, who’s going to go, who to call right now. It’s sort of, okay, we have to do this and so let’s organize ourselves. I look forward to some leadership, direction and input from these committees as to what we can do.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will also be voting in favour of this. I’m hopeful that this also extends to the Mackenzie Delta riding, the Beaufort-Delta. During the summer months, I believe the Dempster is one of the only highways in the Northwest Territories that is all gravel. There is a lot of dust on the road during the summer and there are a lot of accidents also. I do believe the community of Fort McPherson has requested this service a few months back, and I do believe we are working with them, but it is much needed. I’d also suggest that this government work with the Government of the Yukon. As many of you may know, the Dempster Highway connects to the highway in the Yukon. We need to work out some kind of agreement with them to respond to any emergencies that are on that highway and share the costs.
With that, I fully support this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise, like my colleagues, to speak in favour of this particular initiative. It’s time that this government moves forward on an emergency health services type of act which outlines what we can do and what we will do for our citizens because they’re important.
In this day and age, it’s a great surprise that we do not have some time of ambulatory act that demonstrates and says that these are the types of services we offer. What we hear today is both the passion and the struggle brought forward by many Members and their communities, where they’re almost helpless, stranded by the process by not being able to help good people in certain circumstances. What we get are Good Samaritans running out doing the right thing, but in some cases they may end up causing more harm than good.
If we move forward on a particular act, spurred on by this motion that says ground ambulance services are necessary on our highway, this will stimulate the right type of action and we need to stand by it with the right type of funding.
Health care is such a critical issue amongst all Canadians, not just people in the Northwest Territories, all Canadians. We see the groundswell at every single budget across Canada as it grows and grows and grows because it emphasizes how important health care is.
This is one of the elements in northern health care that cannot be stranded and ignored. These are the types of services that our policies and protocols must address because, in some ways, they are already addressing them. Under MACA, we have the Highway Emergency Ambulance Protocol, which I was trying to get at a couple of days ago, which basically says we had an incident but we didn’t follow our protocols. I look forward to the response by the Minister of MACA as to what actually happened in that situation.
But equally, as I balance this issue out, it’s tied in with skills as well as tools. Yes, we can fund them, but we have to make sure that we can get behind them so they get the right training. We have to make sure they get the right tools, such as the proper ambulance services, for the right conditions. There are many elements of this particular motion that cannot be forgotten.
By and large, I start off by saying it’s time this government comes forward with a health emergency services type of act that addresses ambulances, highways and says how we reach outside of our typical municipalities.
The last area I’ll mention, although it’s not directly related to the motion, it sort of speaks to the essence of the motion. As we know, the incident a few weeks ago, we could not send a medevac out there to rescue that one person. Timing, as we all know, in incidents can range from we need to respond immediately or some with lesser priority. The way our medevac services are set up, we can’t send anyone out to rescue anyone who isn’t at a health centre. So where are we left? We’re left with motions like this today that say we have to find a way to respond to our people who are in urgent need of help.
This motion I think speaks to that. I applaud the Member for bringing forward this motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all in here I think appreciate the value of this type of service. However, there are a number of things we need to look at. I think a couple of Members have pointed out some of the challenges we face. One of the therefores in the motion is that we update the Fire Prevention Act. The Fire Prevention Act regulates the investigation, reporting of fire hazards. It does not address ground ambulance or highway rescue in the Northwest Territories. We’re working on updating the Fire Prevention Act right now and we need to keep that work going to ensure that that act is… If we were to try combining the two policy initiatives, it may delay the Fire Prevention Act, which we don’t want at this point.
I have said in this House on a number of occasions that we have formed a new departmental committee. They’re tasked with looking at the overall picture across the Northwest Territories. An important part of the committee’s work is going to be dealing with exactly the situation that Mr. Hawkins mentioned yesterday on the Highway Emergency Alerting Protocol. They’re going to update that and have a look at that.
Work is going on. I have said that before. We continue to do our work.
Our municipal legislation allows our communities to establish, and deliver, and operate services such as fire rescue and ambulance. It also allows communities to extend fire and ambulance services outside the community boundaries. The point is being made, and is well taken, that we need to do what we can to assist our communities.
One of the things we’re looking at is training opportunities. I think that’s first and foremost, and most important is to ensure we have properly trained folks that are running out to respond to any type of emergency. Then part of the committee’s work is to work with the communities to identify equipment and maintenance, administration and training. We are doing that. We’re undertaking that right now. We’re working very closely with Health and Social Services. They are looking at moving forward with developing standards on this particular issue. So we’re working closely with them. We’re working closely with Transportation.
All the issues that the Members speak of, I think we’re doing a lot of the work. Because there is such interest and it’s a very important topic, and there’s is no denying that, we’ll commit to our colleagues that at the first available opportunity, we would like to provide a briefing to committee to share our vision, get their input on a territorial-wide strategy. We look forward to that opportunity. It will give Members some clarity and help provide some direction. We are looking forward to that opportunity.
I would like to assure Members that this is a very important issue and it’s one that we take quite seriously. We’ve already done a lot of the work. Again, the most important part here is to ensure that our community first responders are trained and able to respond to emergencies. I think one Member may have pointed out that, in our desire to be helpful, some people just rush in and help because that’s just the way we are. We’re Northerners. That’s just our nature. But sometimes we may do more harm than good. So we want to make sure that all of our folks are trained.
As this is a direction to Cabinet, we will be abstaining from the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I’ll allow the mover of the motion to speak to final remarks. Mr. Nadli.
