Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services getting back to my Member’s statement where I talked again about the closure of the Edmonton City Centre Airport.
There’s been one runway closed there, the one that had instrumentation available. Now when bad weather takes place in Edmonton, medevac flights from the Northwest Territories are being diverted to the International Airport. I’m aware of one incident where a medevac patient spent two hours awaiting ground ambulance transport into the emergency room in the city of Edmonton. I’d like to ask the Minister how that’s possible that a medevac patient from the Northwest Territories could wait two hours at the International Airport for transport into the city.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How is it possible? That’s the weather. People who move patients around all over the Territories work with our weather system. The health care professionals work very hard to make quick decisions and necessary decisions and medical decisions on an ongoing basis. It is possible for patients to be weathered out of somewhere. It happens in the Territories once in a while. I mean, that’s the weather. Surely I’m not responsible for weather.
No, the Minister’s responsible for the safety, transport and care that our patients are receiving when they travel on a medevac flight into the city of Edmonton. The weather was to blame for the flight being diverted to the International Airport, but there’s no excuse for a ground ambulance taking two hours to take that patient from the International Airport into the city of Edmonton to an emergency room.
There was no evidence of any political involvement by our Minister of Health on the closure of that airport, the impending closure of that airport, and that remains to me to be a real shame. I think the Minister has to be front and centre when these discussions are going on with the Province of Alberta on how our patients are going to be handled when they land at the International Airport. I’d like to ask the Minister if she could provide an update to this House on the proposed plans to deal with medevac patients arriving at the International Airport in Edmonton.
I thank the Member for asking for an update because he is working with very outdated information. As the mayor from Edmonton, when he was visiting here, had told us in the briefing meeting we had with all the Members, the Premier of Alberta, which I have advised the Member many times, has set up a Health Quality Council of Alberta with a mandate to come up with a plan on how we deal with emergency medevac programs at the airport. The city of Edmonton, citizens of Edmonton have voted resoundingly to approve the plan to close that municipal airport. Members should know, and I tell them again, that that last runway is not going to close until there is a plan in place to deal with medical travel. This government, this department, my officials are part of that Quality Council review and we will have a plan before it’s closed. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I know that the plan is in progress and it’s being developed. In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, when there is bad weather in Edmonton and flights are diverted to the International Airport, what is the plan of care for patients arriving at the International Airport by medevac? There seems to be no plan if somebody can wait there for two hours for ground transport into the city. Thank you.
For the Member to say there’s no plan, that really speaks poorly to the people who are taking care of our medevac planes and travels everyday all over the Territories. We are involved and we are responsible and our staff does a very good job of moving patients around, bad weather notwithstanding. They have to accommodate that.
Mr. Speaker, I am not at all aware of the specific situation he’s talking about. I do not have the information on the situation where somebody waited for two hours. I don’t know how he can say there was no involvement by anybody, because I’ve not had a chance to look at that. If the Member wants to give me specific information that he has, I’d be happy to look into that.
In general, Mr. Speaker, I think we should be careful about making a general statement that makes it sound like we’re not in charge of taking care of our patients, because we really are. There are hundreds of people involved and we spend millions of dollars moving patients from place to place. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like the Minister to elaborate, then, if she could, on what exactly are the plans for a flight diverted because of bad weather to the International Airport. What is the plan of care for a patient arriving at the International Airport by medevac from the Northwest Territories today? What is that plan, Mr. Speaker? If she wants to go there, what is that plan?
We contract medevac services to our providers. We have people qualified to handle that. Medic North does that on the ground. We have staff and people equipped to handle medical situations on the plane. We spend millions and millions to do this medical travel. Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Member and the public that we take care of our residents.
I want to offer to the Member again, before he makes generalized statements that sort of impunes the staff and the contracts that work for us, maybe he should just present to me the details and I will get back to him. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
