Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a return to oral question asked by the Member for Nunakput on March 4, 2021, regarding medevac services. In the 2020 calendar year, there were approximately 180 air ambulance transports for the communities of Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Tuktoyaktuk, and Ulukhaktok.
Mr. Speaker, the med-response program has bases in Yellowknife and Inuvik. There are three crews and planes in Yellowknife and one crew and plane in Inuvik. When med-response receives a request, it is triaged to determine need and severity. The team looks at available resources and dispatches planes and crews as required. If there are two situations at the same time and only one resource available, there are a number of possible solutions. The team may redirect a current plane that has been dispatched to a lower priority patient; dispatch a plane from Yellowknife base if the Inuvik plane is not available; or, in extreme cases, contact a partner air ambulance service in another jurisdiction, such as Edmonton, to dispatch a plane.
Med-response does have a contingency plan when there is a need to access additional pilots or crew. The med-response team can work with the air ambulance provider to pull in staff who are not part of the regular rotation. This is very rare, but it has been done in the past. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Returns to oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I seek unanimous consent to go back to item 3 on the agenda, Members' statements, to allow our colleague from Kam Lake to make her statement. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
---Unanimous consent granted
