Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm adding my name to the growing list of MLAs who have risen in this House in the recent past to speak to the potential benefits to our health care system of expanding pharmacists' scope of practice.
Applause
I need to finish this, you guys.
The Member for Yellowknife Centre beat me to it during oral questions yesterday, but I certainly don't mind joining the chorus because I have also been hearing about this one from Frame Lake residents who are looking for anything we can do to help create efficiencies in our critically overburdened primary care system. To summarize the issue, most other jurisdictions in Canada have expanded the scope of practice for pharmacists to include basic primary care functions such as managing prescriptions, initiating lab work, administering vaccines, which has been shown in research to have the potential to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by as much as 35 percent.
Mr. Speaker, I think we enjoy support from both sides of the House for this idea. As the Member for Kam Lake said herself less than a year ago that pharmacists continue to be an underutilized health care resource in the Northwest Territories. When they can't practice to their full scope, Mr. Speaker, it means that patients aren't receiving the best possible care and the system can't work to its full potential. The Member made a strong case, Mr. Speaker, and tabled a document comparing pharmacists' scope of practice across Canada and, indeed, our jurisdiction falls second to last on the list. There is a lot of room for improvement to bring us in line with neighboring jurisdictions.
In February 2023, in response to questions in the House, the health Minister at the time stated that the department was planning to draft regulations to bring pharmacists into the Health and Social Services Professions Act and to do that work early in the life of the next Assembly. Time has flown, and we now find ourselves early in the life of the very Assembly the previous Minister was referring to. If there's one thing I can seek to achieve today by raising this issue in the House yet again, Mr. Speaker, it is to help convey a sense of urgency and hopefully get a commitment from our health Minister to act quickly on this and make good on the commitment of her predecessor. To that end, I'll have questions for the Minister of health later today. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Great Slave.
