Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to talk about the waiting times in the emergency rooms and our clinics in Yellowknife. Mr. Speaker, I’ve heard that you can wait three to four days if you’re absolutely lucky to get into an appointment at a clinic. You’re lucky to find a spot. Normally you have to wait two, three, and even sometimes four weeks to get an appointment with the doctor in one of those clinics. That’s, of course, again, if you’re lucky enough to have a family doctor. Mr. Speaker, at this time, clinics offer you suggestions, if it’s a high priority, to march on down to the emergency room, which people do. But, Mr. Speaker, I know even from my own experience, but my constituents are complaining that the emergency room is more like an endurance contest to be able to survive waiting hours on end.

So I can say this from personal experience. But do you know what, Mr. Speaker? There are many people who talk about sitting there for six and eight hours and more just to receive basic care. I’ve even heard, through my own research, that in Vancouver you can probably get faster service through the emergency room than we do in the NWT. Mr. Speaker, one of the sad things is that we sometimes forget that the waiting in the emergency room just doesn’t end there. You’re waiting in the waiting room, then you get moved into the examining room and wait even longer.

Mr. Speaker, the problem as I see it is that you could get 100 nursing staff there and that would not solve the problem. The problem is the shortage of doctors in that emergency room making this happen. Mr. Speaker, the way our system is designed, a doctor needs to diagnose your ailment before they can allow the nurses to go ahead and do the treatment. That’s the real problem. People are waiting there in dire circumstances for hours on end to be seen. Mr. Speaker, some of those chairs -- and I can speak from personal experience -- feel more like milk crates as you’re sitting on them and I’d like to see a supplementary appropriation someday for lazyboys for the amount of time we’re making people wait there. Six and eight hours is truly unfair and unreasonable, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the real emergency is we don’t have enough doctors in that emergency room. What would the cost be to offer that service? Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt in my mind that two to three people waiting there hours on end is equivalent to the cost of the service of having a doctor there in real dollars. So I guess I ask, what is the cost of not having more doctors in that emergency room?

Mr. Speaker, may I seek unanimous consent at this time to finish my Member’s statement?

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to conclude his statement. Are there any nays? There are no nays. Mr. Hawkins, you may conclude your statement.

Robert Hawkins

Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think it’s a real crisis because real people mean real money and they are just sitting there. That’s real time lost to both our government, as well as to our world out there. Mr. Speaker, if someone gets tired of waiting after three, four, five hours…I mean, there are priorities and people understand that, but you have to sign a waiver to leave the hospital now. So people do get exhausted and are taking their kids home because they just cannot sit there.

Mr. Speaker, I will have questions later for the Minister, but there are just some points I want to raise in closing. This should be a high priority, not a low priority. What do we need to happen for those low priority people who sit out there for six hours? Do we have to wait until they become a low priority moving to a high priority? Then it won’t be a news story, it will be a real emergency. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause