MR. SPEAKER: This being Private Members’ Day, the House will hear the private member’s resolution as put forward by the hon. the Member for the District of The Straits & White Bay North.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, the private member’s motion for this afternoon being put forward by the Member for The Straits & White Bay North – in fact, he left to go to a meeting in his district last evening. He is on the flight, and the flight was supposed to be here at 2:15 today. I understand it has been delayed.

Normally, the person who led the motion would speak first on the motion, so we seek leave here in this case to reverse the order and the Leader of the Opposition, who seconded the motion, would proceed first and hopefully the member can be here by that time, if that is okay.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, we have no problem with leave to do that, but I just want to clarify. The person who speaks first, is that the person who will conclude the debate?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, again, there is a meeting scheduled between the Leader of the Opposition and the Minister of Fisheries in regard to an issue that was raised in the House yesterday. If possible, the person who spoke first would have spoken last; but, again, I do not know. I am aware of the meeting taking place, but I am not exactly sure if she is going to be available to clue up. That is the predicament we have. Normally, the opener would open and close.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I guess I was just trying to clarify that, as we do the debate, the debate goes from one side of the House to the other. I would not want to get into a situation where one person speaks and then immediately gets an opportunity to speak again to close debate. So, as long as we can avoid that situation from happening we have no problem with giving leave.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, to the private member’s resolution.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy today to rise and speak to a motion that is being put forward by my colleague, the Member for The Straits & White Bay North. Mr. Speaker, I would like to read the copy of the motion into the record for Hansard.

WHEREAS air ambulance service is critical to the health and lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians; and

WHEREAS government commissioned a consultant to complete a review of air ambulance services in northern Newfoundland and Labrador; and

WHEREAS this report did not include all regions of the Province or all aspects of the air ambulance service; and

WHEREAS the consultant and government did not consult with local stakeholders including air ambulance staff and Labrador-Grenfell health board members during the process and before the decision to move the air ambulance was made; and

WHEREAS air ambulance staff have identified a number of problems with the consultant’s report; and

WHEREAS the report only looked at a few aspects of air ambulance service and missed key variables such as geography, weather, services available and staffing levels; and

WHEREAS there is a CF(L)Co plane in Churchill Falls owned by the people of the Province that could serve as an air ambulance, but was not considered in this review; and

WHEREAS a more comprehensive review of the entire air ambulance program would ensure a more effective service for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this House of Assembly calls on the provincial government to place on hold the current decision to move the air ambulance out of St. Anthony until a complete and comprehensive review takes place that includes all regions and aspects of the air ambulance service.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is simply asking for government to be somewhat more thorough in its review of air ambulance services before making any rash decisions. I know that they had the Drodge report which they tabled and released; but, Mr. Speaker, it was a report that was very short on information. It failed to look at the entire air ambulance system as a whole within our Province.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, if one wanted to, you could look at that report and you would think that their only mandate was to provide an argument to the minister to remove the services out of St. Anthony in the first place. It is almost like if you were to write the terms of reference for this consultant you would be saying to him: You go find a way that I can move this air ambulance out of St. Anthony and I have something to stand on to defend myself.

That is almost the way that this was done, Mr. Speaker. To me, that shows several things: one, failure on behalf of the minister and the government to provide for the services for life-safety issues for people in this Province, and to study that and to do it thoroughly and make decisions based on information that is all-encompassing. We did not see that in this report. We did not see that at all.

Mr. Speaker, what we saw were pages of statistics, which I have no problem with - those are important; numbers are important - however, numbers do not always reflect the real situation that you are dealing with. We have all used numbers, Mr. Speaker, to provide for and substantiate arguments in one way or another all of our lives. Does it mean that numbers alone should determine how a service should operate in the best interest of the people of the Province? Does it determine that population alone should determine how services are delivered to people in the Province and what would be essential? If that was the case, Mr. Speaker, what would ever happen in rural communities around this Province where you have small populations? These people would end up with nothing if government used that philosophy and that mindset and that way of thinking in every decision that they made. You would have nothing left in rural Newfoundland, Mr. Speaker. Everything would be gone.

We do not buy into those arguments, but we see why the minister buys into those arguments. Because it is the only defence he has in reaping the service and taking it out of St. Anthony, Mr. Speaker, as opposed to doing what really should be done, and that is enhancing our services, expanding our services to ensure that all people in the Province have a better air ambulance system than we did yesterday, than we did six months from now, and than we did a year from now.

Mr. Speaker, the reason the member brings forward this motion is not only to do with the fact that the terms of reference were skewed, they did not look at things like the entire region of the Province, they did not look at response times to air medevacs. They did not even investigate the three particular cases, Mr. Speaker, that were brought forward from Labrador to see what were the real factors, why there was a delay in responding to those services. Those particular findings were not even included or asked to be included in the scope of the project, or the scope of the study.

In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, there was no consultation. The very minister who, when he stepped into the shoes in the Department of Health, went right into that district on the Northern Peninsula, stood before people when he was looking for their votes and wanted them to kiss the feet of his government, Mr. Speaker, stood up and apologized to them for not doing more consultation as a government, apologized to them for making decisions without having the correct information. It is the very same minister.

Now, the difference a day makes, Mr. Speaker. The difference a day makes, because when he is the minister then, in those shoes, he cannot blame the predecessor who just exited the room and took his leave from politics because he bungled the issue so bad on behalf of the direction from the Premier and the Cabinet. He is the one who became the scapegoat. When the new minister walked into the job, Mr. Speaker, he is now responsible, and what did he do? When he commissioned the study on air ambulance he did not consult with people. The real people who should have been consulted here, Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, were the people who were working on the frontlines, the people who were delivering air medevac services every single day to sick children, to sick women and men in this Province. They should have been asked: Where do you think there are gaps? How can we improve the service? No one asked them, Mr. Speaker. No one talked to them. So what did they do? After the fact, they went out and they did their own study. Because they have a right to be heard, I say to the minister. They have a right to be heard. They are saving lives in this Province every single day. Some of them have been doing it for years. Yet, they were never asked their opinion. They were never asked how to improve the service. They were never asked where the gaps were.

Mr. Speaker, they went out and they did their own report. In this report - the minister knows, he has a copy on his desk. They went through it with him, Mr. Speaker, every single point in this report. He knows that he did not do diligence, or his officials in his department, the official who travelled with the consultant – which, by the way, I thought was an independent process. Yet, Mr. Speaker, we have a senior official in the department who accompanied the consultant to two, I believe, consultations that he did hold - that we are aware of that he held. He may have held another one but we are aware of two, maybe it was three. I think it might have been three - but, Mr. Speaker, the consultation was limited to a few people in St. Anthony. I think it was the town council and only the Town of St. Anthony. They were called the night before. They were asked to come to a consultation the next day.

I know in my own district, where over that period of time, there were 236 medevacs out of the Labrador Straits alone, Mr. Speaker, but no one there was consulted and asked their opinion. I know that for a fact. I know that no one in the rest of The Straits area was consulted. I know that no one on the West Coast of Newfoundland was consulted. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the services affect all of these people.

The other questions that come out here is with regard to the flight medical team. The same flight medical team, Mr. Speaker, which was identified to the minister’s office for nearly two years as being one of the most critical components of that air medevac service in St. Anthony, because when they bought the new airplane and they put it in St. Anthony, and the member at the time and the minister and everybody was up there. Mr. Speaker, do you know what they said? A direct quote of what they said: This is the central location for air ambulance services in the Province. This is the best location for the operations of these services. That is what your government said, Mr. Speaker, when they put the new air ambulance in St. Anthony. It was identified then, the need for a flight services team.

St. Anthony had its own flight medical team up until about three years ago. About three years ago, under your Administration, that system changed. It was under your Administration that you decided that that air ambulance would use the air medevac team out of St. John’s. As a result it did pose delays in responding to services, and the minister knows that. Those issues were not looked at. Those things were not even considered. Mr. Speaker, what is the ugliest thing about all of this, the ugliest hateful thing about this decision that government has made is they fail to consider the lives of people who would be impacted by leaving a gap in the system. That is what the sad, hateful thing is about all of this.

Back last summer I raised three different cases with the government on air medevac service. All of these cases were out of Goose Bay and Lab West. Mr. Speaker, we asked that there be full investigations around the reasons for delays in each of those particular air medevac cases because we knew there was a huge gap in the system and in the service, and the people who were suffering the most as a result of that gap were in Labrador West. That was where the bulk of the problem was, Mr. Speaker. That was where the bulk of the problem was, and that was the reason the lobby started. The real lobby for all of this started in Labrador West, because there was an identified need in that part of our Province to have a third air ambulance. Nobody in Labrador West, Mr. Speaker, did I ever hear, through the process of the summer of 2009, until now, say that that air medevac should be moved out of St. Anthony and put in Labrador West. It was quite the opposite, Mr. Speaker. They continued to say that we need to add a third air ambulance to the system.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, everyone in Labrador supported that. I was at the Combined Councils meeting. The Minister of Labrador Affairs was not there, the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs was not there, or the Minister of Health and Community Services was not there, although they were all invited.

There was a discussion in Labrador City, in February, around this issue. Every town that was at the table that day from Labrador was unanimous. In fact, even the mayor of St. Anthony happened to be at that conference. It was said at that meeting, Mr. Speaker, that they wanted a third air ambulance for Labrador. It was decided there that it would need to go into Goose Bay or into Labrador City and that it would be left open to review as to what the best location was.

No one at that time, not one of those mayors at one of those tables in Labrador on that day, Mr. Speaker, spoke up and said that we should take the air ambulance service out of St. Anthony. In fact, quite the opposite was said in that room. In that room that day people actually said we do not want to move the air medevac out of St. Anthony; we want a third system and we want it for Labrador.

That is what people still want today, I say to you, Minister. It is only you and your government that has been bitter enough and uncaring enough to take this service out of one region of the Province, move it to a tarmac in another region of the Province and expect that you are going to solve a problem. Well, you are not going to solve a problem. There will continue to be gaps in the service unless you address them appropriately. Now it is going to be on your government’s shoulders, Mr. Speaker, and on your shoulders as a minister when something happens.

Why would you want to take that on, Minister, when you could have fixed the problem appropriately? We are asking you today to do just that. After all, your government has made lots of mistakes. We have heard about a lot of the mistakes that you have made. If I only had more than a minute left, Mr. Speaker, I could outline some of them.

I am asking you and I am pleading with you on behalf of the people of this Province, the people in Labrador who need this air ambulance, the people on the Northern Peninsula and Western Newfoundland who need an air ambulance, to do the right thing, Minister – do the right thing. Show compassion and care for the people of this Province. Do not let another person die as a result of the decision that you have just made. Improve the service, put a third air ambulance in this Province, staff it appropriately and ensure that people’s lives are saved, not lost. We beg you to do that, Minister.

MR. SPEAKER (Kelly): The Chair recognizes the hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this decision was made with due consideration, it was made having regard to the impact on people’s lives, but what it was made was based on the interests of the people of this Province – not one particular area.

Mr. Speaker, why did we move the way we did with basically – I will look at the chronology of events. Before she gets ready to leave, I did not hear the member opposite refer to her 3,000-name petition today, which started this whole thing. She got what she wanted and now she is complaining. We put the air ambulance in –

MS JONES: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a point of order.

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, if the minister wants to give me leave, I would be happy to talk about the 3,000-name petition that I presented in the House of Assembly before I go to my next meeting.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. minister.

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, Mr. Speaker, and I will come to that in a second.

You cannot suck and blow at the same time, and that is what is going on here, Mr. Speaker. That is what is going on. On the one hand, the Leader of the Opposition is saying: Well, do not move it to Labrador. On the other hand she is saying: Leave it in St. Anthony. Well, what is it?

The evidence that we have before us – the evidence is quite obvious here. We are basing it on the evidence. We are looking at the situation of the incidents in Labrador. To put a human face on this, Mr. Speaker, I want to deal with the way that this has played out.

Let’s look at some of these incidents that took place in Labrador, Mr. Speaker. Let’s deal with the first one that takes place on July 15. We have a twenty-six-year-old lady who was in premature labour, Mr. Speaker, and at 1:30 a.m. in Lab West there is a request for an air ambulance. She is in premature labour. That air ambulance, Mr. Speaker, does not arrive the next day before the baby dies. It is an eight hour delay, Mr. Speaker. I sat and I met with that family. I met with them again last week. I met with them on November 27. I have to tell you that that kind of situation is very emotional and has an effect on the hardest of hearts.

Then, Mr. Speaker, on September 18 we have a situation where we have a two-year-old who goes to the hospital on a Sunday morning. At approximately 7:30 a.m., the two-year-old goes to the emergency room, Mr. Speaker, and is taken to see a nurse. At approximately 1:00 o’clock that day, the medevac is called. The next day, at 1:00 o’clock, the young child leaves on the medevac. What we have, Mr. Speaker, is a twenty-four hour delay. This young man, Mr. Speaker, from Happy Valley-Goose Bay had a very serious condition which led to a perforated bowel, and then there had to be a four inch section of the bowel removed.

Mr. Speaker, this is September 18. So what we have are two situations prior to November – what we have is as situation where I become Minister of Health on October 9, I think it is, by November 27 we are meeting with individuals in both Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Lab West, and I am talking to these parents. I am talking to the lady whose son had been waiting for that medevac.

Mr. Speaker, again, the emotional impact and the personal impact of that is significant. So, for the Leader of the Opposition to say that it is hateful that we have impacted upon the lives of individuals by not considering the impact, I think that is just totally atrocious, and really speaks volumes to the way that they are trying to politicize this situation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: We made a decision based on the best interests of the people of this Province.

If you look - I come back then to November 27 - on December 14 I committed to doing a review of the air ambulance situation. The petition then, presented on December 15 to the House, specifically refers to the fact that there is a medevac service required in Labrador. Mr. Speaker, we take that petition, I remember it clearly, asking the Leader of the Opposition: We have two planes, do you want us to move one plane to Labrador? Is that what you are saying here? Mr. Speaker, November 27, the communities in Labrador West wanted the air ambulance service. The Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay argued for the air ambulance service, and we had the air ambulance service situated in St. Anthony. What we have, Mr. Speaker, is that the Leader of the Opposition got what she wanted at the end of the day, that there is an air ambulance service in Labrador right now.

Mr. Speaker, based on a 3,000-name petition asking to have this air ambulance relocated to Labrador, we looked at that and a consultant was commissioned. The consultant’s report, Mr. Speaker, looked at numbers. For the Leader of the Opposition to say that we are politicizing this, we have tried to remove the politics out of it. We cannot make up the numbers, Mr. Speaker. The numbers are what they are and the numbers indicated that there were twice as many people, twice as many flights out of Labrador as there were out of St. Anthony.

We also looked at the situation, Mr. Speaker, that the population of Labrador was twice that of the Northern Peninsula region - at least twice that. Mr. Speaker, what we looked at, what was looked at, we have a more central location and that is why Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the NDP raised the issue today, and the people in Lab West spoke loudly last week; they want air ambulance in their town. So, as a government, we have to make difficult decisions, but for anyone to allege that these decisions are made in a cavalier way or without concern for the residents of our Province, I really think it is very unfair and it is something that I find truly offensive.

What we looked at is how we can best serve the majority of the residents of this Province, Mr. Speaker. The numbers are the numbers. Now, what happens then is the central location. So we have the population. Mr. Drodge, the consultant, looks a number of different recommendations; there were eight recommendations.

Mr. Speaker, from day one after the release of his report we had the members of the Opposition criticizing his report and saying his report is substandard, it does not address the issues; but, Mr. Speaker, the Lab-Grenfell employees subsequently prepared a report and those Lab-Grenfell employees, in preparing that report - go read it - they agree with Recommendations 2 to 7. What they don’t agree with is the placement of the plane.

So, in the Budget this year we announced significant enhancements to the air ambulance service. We announced a new $8 million plane. We announced a second medical flight services team. So the plane will now be located in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, where it will be centrally located.

Now, let’s look at a couple of the other issues that arise in Labrador, Mr. Speaker. We have the heavy industrialization of the Labrador region. We have the Vale Inco mines. We have the mines in Western Labrador. We have the potential development of the Lower Churchill and, very significantly, we have Aboriginal communities that need to be served.

What will happen now is that there will be access for the residents of the North Coast of Labrador to have the benefit of a medical flight services team to travel on the Twin Otter with them. So, their service is enhanced, Mr. Speaker. We are now much closer to the Lab West region and, as I indicated last week, I had discussions with the doctors about how we can improve the Lab West delivery of services.

So, Mr. Speaker, the Lab-Grenfell employees agreed with the recommendations. They elaborated on some of them, but they agreed on the recommendations; but the thing they could not change, Mr. Speaker, could not challenge, is the numbers.

So, when we commissioned this report it was based on: Where is the best place for this plane in terms of: we need two air ambulances - what the experts tell us - in combination with charters, a Twin Otter in Labrador and the use of charter planes, that will suffice for this Province; we do not need a third air ambulance.

Mr. Speaker, we have the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi today asking for a third air ambulance for Lab West. We have Happy Valley-Goose Bay and we have St. Anthony. We have to make do with the limited resources we have. St. Anthony does have - it has been raised by the Member for The Straits - they have a modern hospital. It is not like they are left there without facilities. What we are looking at is the plane being put in a situation where it serves the most people.

Mr. Speaker, then we look at the issue of the service to the North Coast of Labrador. Mr. Speaker, we know that the Liberals argue that what would happen is that the rest of the Province, the service would be diminished. In a letter to the Leader of the Opposition, and to the MHA, on April 20, I outlined the fallacy behind that proposition.

We simply look - again, Mr. Speaker, statistics do not lie. The numbers are the numbers. I outlined, as I have outlined in this hon. House, that in 2009 approximately 61 per cent of the total number of air ambulance pickups on the Island portion of the Province outside of St. Anthony were done by the St. John’s plane and 13 per cent serviced by a charter aircraft. So, 74 per cent of all flights, where the majority of the flights are originating on the Island portion of the Province, are picked up by a St. John’s aircraft or charter.

Then, Mr. Speaker, we broke it down further into Deer Lake, where it goes as high as 78 per cent. In Stephenville, being picked up by St. John’s or by the charter - in Stephenville, again, it was up as high as 76 per cent, and in Gander we are up to 83 per cent. This whole argument, this fearmongering that the service to the rest of the Province will be diminished, is simply incorrect. Again, Mr. Speaker, we recognize the significance of this decision on people’s lives.

Mr. Speaker, the process gets moved along further when, on March 18, we have the incident in Lab West. I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I met with that family last week. As the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi rightly points out, there are a lot of what-ifs. Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated, the air ambulance did not respond properly again. These are three incidents in Labrador. These are not based on what might happen in the future, Mr. Speaker. This is a decision based on incidents that have occurred.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if we were here taking a year to conduct the review, they would be saying to us: What is taking so long? Why don’t you do it faster? Mr. Speaker, the issue is not that complicated in terms of the central location of the plane; that is Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Mr. Speaker, all areas of this Province are now within sixty minutes of an air ambulance; something that did not occur while the plane was stationed in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, because Lab West is outside of that sixty-minute area.

So, here we are, a location where we are having incidents, and they are outside of that sixty-minute location, Mr. Speaker. As a government, we have to make tough decisions. It is easy to be in Opposition and to criticize. What we are trying to do is to make decisions and to make the decisions as best we can.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if you look then further at the recommendations of Mr. Drodge – the Liberals were asking that there be a review. Well, the review, Mr. Speaker – the Leader of the Opposition said today, there is no problem with the numbers; they are not questioning the numbers. Well, that being the case, we do not need a review now to determine how the recommendations are going to be implemented.

Two days ago, I met with Dr. Doug Baggs, who is the provincial director of the air ambulance system, and Corey Banks, who is the paramedic in charge of the air ambulance system. I have asked them, Mr. Speaker, to come back within fourteen days with the recommendations as to the implementation of the recommendations from numbers 2 to 7 of Mr. Drodge’s report. They do not need to be reviewed. It is: How do we implement them now? How do we improve dispatch? How do we integrate the system? How can we assure that the people of Lab West - as I indicated to the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, if we have to use Quebecair to charter in obstetrical emergencies, as asked by the doctors up there, we will do that. So, how do we improve the system to provide the services necessary? We only need two planes. That is what they tell me, Mr. Speaker. The other thing that the Opposition fails to recognize is that if there was a third plane, the recommendation of Mr. Drodge is that it be in Deer Lake.

So, how can we improve the system? Within fourteen days we will have certain recommendations. As I indicated in this hon. House, Mr. Speaker, the provincial director and the chief paramedic support the decision to move the airplane to Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

How much consultation is needed, Mr. Speaker? That is the question. There were meetings with the mayors. The issue arose in this House; I indicated there was a review. The Lab-Grenfell employees were aware that the review was ongoing. The MHA was aware the review was ongoing. So, there were discussions that took place in all three areas, but what we heard, Mr. Speaker – and this is a point when you get to the practical effect of consultations – what we heard is all three communities saying: We should have the air ambulance.

So what we looked at, Mr. Speaker, is: How can we best protect the interests of the people of this Province? What we are doing by the moving of this plane, along with the significant enhancements we have made in the air ambulance service, in conjunction with improvements and the following of the recommendations of the Drodge report, will result in improved air ambulance service. It does not mean that the people of St. Anthony are not going to have access to air ambulance service. They certainly will, like all residents of the Province, but the people of Deer Lake, the people of Gander, and the people of Grand Falls have never had an air ambulance there.

What we are looking at, Mr. Speaker, is trying to address the situations that have arisen. We tried to remove the politics by making a decision based on a consultant’s report where he looked at numbers and was asked to determine: where is the proper location? He determined Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Mr. Speaker, and we followed that recommendation.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for The Straits & White Bay North.

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would suggest you need to suck and blow to get through that one as well, as the minister said to the Leader of the Opposition as she was leaving there a few moments ago.

This move of the air ambulance is just so disconcerting, as we have said in reports and so on, and the evidence that is presented, or the reason that is presented, the research that is presented is just missing to such a degree that it becomes more difficult to even speak to it, Mr. Speaker, to be honest. The fundamental question that is missing here is - we are talking about the lives of people in Labrador and I am totally sympathetic towards what has happened. It is very unfortunate, and I would suggest it is very unfortunate were it to happen anywhere. Yet, it is almost as though we are willing to see what happens on the Northern Peninsula, we are willing to see what happens in Southern Labrador so that we can fix some of the gaps that have been obviously very much confirmed as being there. That is very concerning for me today, that we are willing to place a bet or put other people’s lives at risk so that we can fix one problem. Undoubtedly, the problem has to move. The problem has to move somewhere. If we do not add more resources to the system, if we can anticipate the same number of response calls next year as we did last year, then we can assume there are going to be the same delays.

To suggest that the air ambulance is delayed for twenty hours responding to a call, then that is a very unfortunate situation, but is that delay because it is in St. Anthony? I would suggest no. That would make no sense at all, any more than because it is in St. John’s or it is in Deer Lake or it is up in Port Hope Simpson for that matter. There are other issues at task here that would have caused those delays. So by relocating the aircraft, certainly goodness we are not going to suggest that we are going to correct the problem.

The minister talks about the petition that was presented in the House in November or December. If you go back to the briefing notes that were available to the department back in September, it recognizes some of the issues that were there in the air ambulance service at that time. One of the things that it recognized at that time is that there is a staffing challenge in Labrador that contributes to the air ambulance problem. That is in their notes. So we are assuming then that this staffing problem in Labrador, I suppose it will go away once we move the air ambulance. Is that right? I would assume, Mr. Speaker, that is the way it will be.

The notes say that the result of this staffing problem is that the planes fly extra hours unnecessarily, simply because there are no staff available and they have to be picked from other parts of the Province, I would suppose, and so on. So, it is interesting to see that was out there six months ago, or seven months or whatever the case might be, before the review was even concluded. Obviously, it was ignored. There was a meeting that was supposed to have taken place a couple of weeks after the notes were prepared and it was suggested in this meeting that it would begin a review of the overall operation of the air ambulance program. Then, when we look at the Drodge report that came out, we see it is an actual review of the Northern part of the Province and of Labrador. So, somewhere along the way the focus was changed from being an overall review to a partial review and one that came down the way that it did come down.

One of the reasons for the necessity of the air ambulance in St. John’s I have heard, in debate in this House about whether or not that ambulance could move out, obviously is the availability of services in our fair city and so on. So, it is interesting when we consider that we are moving this air ambulance service out of St. Anthony, from this great hospital that the minister just mentioned that we have, and we are very proud of it and proud of our legacy. I am not sure how much longer it will take for this government to strip it to pieces but they are doing a fine job and they will continue to do it, I am sure. We are going to take the air ambulance from that hospital and we are going to locate it in Goose Bay.

Now, I do not have a conclusive list of the services that are available. I can get it and I will bring it back probably, but I know that we have general surgeons in St. Anthony, the most qualified or of the most qualified in this country. They have been there for years and years. We have internal medicine, we have gynecologists, we have orthopaedics, and we have a great ICU program. Yes, it is a great hospital and we are quite proud of it. Then we have this new building in Goose Bay, and I would suggest that 90 per cent of what I just listed, including the ICU, is not available there.

Drodge concludes that one of the things that we should do is take this air ambulance from this qualified centre in St. Anthony, move it into Goose Bay, and from there we can better service the people of Labrador. I make note of some of the comments that he made. In one of his notes he said something along the line that – if I can find it to just make sure that I am reading from the right paper and so on, or referring to the right paper. He said, based on the analysis, based on all of those numbers that we just heard again from the minister a moment ago, 18 per cent of the patients who are transported to St. Anthony, they live on the Southeast Coast of Labrador. The conclusion is that once the air ambulance is in place in Goose Bay, where there is no ICU, where there is no general surgery, where there are no so many other things that are not in that hospital but are in St. Anthony, but once we have made this move, that 18 per cent which goes to St. Anthony now and is able to avail of those services, guess what we will do with them? We will put them in Goose Bay where there are no services. Now that is a conclusion. That is one of the recommendations.

MR. HICKEY: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Labrador Affairs on a point of order.

MR. HICKEY: Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Member for The Straits & White Bay making some absolutely - he has no idea what he is talking about. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. The statements that member is making in this House of Assembly today is outrageous. We have one of the best hospitals, and it is a teaching hospital in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, I remind the hon. member. We have an excellent ICU unit there, I say to the hon. member, and I will not sit here and listen to you downgrade the men and the women, the doctors and the nurses who work in that hospital.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for The Straits & White Bay North.

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess at least we let him get it off his chest. Hopefully he feels a little better about that I suppose.

Again, the recommendation is that these people can be easily transported into Goose Bay and receive the same service that they are receiving in St. Anthony. That is the assumption. We can go away and we can conclude fairly easily, I would suggest to the minister, the difference in services so that we do not have to debate it back and forth across the House. Then we can know exactly what that 18 per cent of the people who were moved in the last four years will get going to Goose Bay compared to what they received going to St. Anthony. That should be a relatively easy thing to do.

Now, this great report that the minister has stood on throughout these past three or four weeks of debate on this decision as well, it also takes us to another piece of interesting change that we are going to experience in our air ambulance service in Newfoundland. When the air ambulance is located in Goose Bay, and St. Anthony is no more, then here is what the conclusion is. We have a Twin Otter that runs the South Coast, and it would be able to transport a patient to St. Anthony. Well, at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, in January, thirty below, this Twin Otter leaves from some point on the Labrador Coast and heads to St. Anthony. What we can also do simultaneously is we can have the King Air in Happy Valley-Goose Bay dispatched to St. Anthony. When that gets to St. Anthony, the Twin Otter, we will do the exchange from the Twin Otter to the King Air, Mr. Speaker, and we will take that patient on to St. John’s. That is interesting; I do not know how that is going to unfold. That should be a great experience for this patient who needed the air medevac at 2:00 a.m. in the morning.

Assuming that we are not going to keep the hangar in St. Anthony and pay the expense of having an empty building that is resourced and is heated and so on. Assuming that we are not going to keep that there as a part of the Labrador-Grenfell assets if you will or the air ambulance program; my question is where is this transfer going to take place? There is no other building; it is the only building at the airport.

We are going to pull a Twin Otter in alongside of a King Air at 2:00 a.m. in the morning in January with a great northeast wind blowing and it is thirty below and we are going to make a transfer. Now come on, Mr. Speaker –

AN HON. MEMBER: Or go straight to St. John’s.

MR. DEAN: That is not what this report says; we are not going to St. John’s according to the recommendations. We are going to St. Anthony; we are going to transfer out there that percentage of the population. I want to suggest to you that I do not want my family member and I do not want myself to be involved in that transfer because I can only imagine how smoothly and how great that would be. It would be just such a terrible thing.

We talk about sixty minutes. I know there is a program called Sixty Minutes but also we have a sixty minute response time that is going to be all throughout the Province. Our aircraft is in Goose Bay again, centrally located, serving the Province well and we have a request for a neonatal air emergency. Now there is one team; it is in St. John’s isn’t it minister. The aircraft leaves Goose Bay, flies to St. John’s to pick up the neonatal team and back to Goose Bay or wherever the case is to do that transfer. Now that is not a sixty minute response time, I want to assure you.

Again, improving, improving, improving our air ambulance program in the Province. Was it considered? No, it was not. Why wasn’t it considered, because it was not known I would suggest. It was not known to be a factor by this Mr. Drodge who did this ultimate consultation. Yet, we are willing to say that by moving this aircraft from this location in St. Anthony to Happy Valley-Goose Bay is going to be a better service. Mr. Speaker, in this case it cannot be a better service. In this case it is an additional two hours flying time to get that neonatal team from St. John’s to accompany to that particular incident. You know there is so much of that in this report. There is so much lacking in this report that it is just amazing.

The minister referenced again the report that came in from the Labrador-Grenfell air operations team and yes they did agree with many of the recommendations of the report because quite frankly I agree most of the recommendations are fine. It is the ones that really interfere with the presentation and the offering of an air ambulance program in the Province is what we all have concerns about. When we look at taking this service and disenfranchising a part of, a great part of the Province and so on, then I would suggest that that is the wrong thing to do. We have an aircraft, probably I should stand and offer a solution, he probably will not listen to it anyway but I will offer it, we have a third aircraft, we have a fourth aircraft obviously including the one in Churchill Falls but we already have a third aircraft. We are replacing the one in St. John’s that is getting older, that we all know is down more than it is up so to speak in terms of being available, why can we not replace, take that aircraft that we will I would assume just get rid of, sell whatever the case would be, take out of service. Why is it not possible that we can take that aircraft that is still in reasonable condition, place it in Goose Bay and have it as a backup to the two air ambulance planes that are on the Island and also obviously able to service the people of Labrador as they deserve to be serviced. Have we looked at that? No. Are we willing to look at that? No. Because the decision is made and even though the report is flawed, even though it is short on information, like let’s just get on with this thing and get it over with is the attitude. I think that is very unfortunate and I would suggest and I do not want to play with traumatic events, I have been down those roads as all of us have unfortunately, we are all touched by those things as we get older but you know I would hope when this move is made I would hope that we cannot look back down the road and find examples of where things have happened on the Northern Peninsula simply because there was not an air ambulance service available. I want to suggest to you we will. We have offered evidence of cases where if the air ambulance service was not located in St. Anthony that lives would have been lost.

We have talked about the climatic conditions of the Northern Peninsula that are very unique, the offerings of the airport itself that are different from the rest of the Province. All of these things seem to bear no weight. I am not sure if they touch the conscience of any member. I am sure they do, but unfortunately they do not seem to touch the conscience of those who make decisions.

Again today, we have presented this private members’ motion as a means of being able to debate this, of being able to talk about it again and to hopefully, again, I believe in everyone, I believe there is good in all people and if we make a wrong decision at some point we can recognize we have done it and we can correct it in the best interest of all of our Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair recognizes the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and Community Services, the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HUTCHINGS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.

It is certainly a pleasure to stand today in the House and to speak to this private members’ motion related to air ambulance. Certainly on a bigger note in terms of the investment, in terms of what has been done, in terms of the Province, in terms of air ambulance services and certainly in health care in general just across the Province in terms of the investment made by this government.

Mr. Speaker, this issue of air ambulance, certainly from our government’s perspective is a critical component of the overall health care system. Medevac services for patients, whether that is due to lack of road ambulance, whether it is due to the reasons for a commercial flight is unsuitable at some point in time due to a particular condition of a patient or a loved one, for the demographics or transportation or geographic location, a whole number of reasons, Mr. Speaker, in terms of services that are needed, certainly on the Island and in Labrador for such a service.

We all know, we are all touched, Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member just mentioned earlier in terms of specific issues, in terms of our lives, in terms of health care and loved ones, accessing health care and making sure we can access it to the best of our ability.

As the government, obviously, in this vast Province, the islands in Labrador we do what we can in terms of meeting those needs. There are a lot of needs. There are fiscal requirements in terms of how we meet those needs and we do the best we can. We certainly analyze, review and modify what we have done, often change and update to make sure that we are making the best utilization of services that we have so we can meet those needs and make sure we can do what we need to do. That is so important, Mr. Speaker.

We know through this process, I know the minister over the last number of months had many consultations; there were issues, certainly over the last number of months in Labrador in July in terms of incidents that happen, very personal incidents to people. That certainly made government stop and take a look and see what do we need to do here. Can we do things better? How are we doing it? Do we review our policies and procedures in this regard? Certainly, that was done and moved forward.

It is also important, Mr. Speaker, I want to mention in terms of this Budget 2010, in terms of an investment made, in terms of the air ambulance overall, in terms of meeting our needs – an investment of $8.7 million in this Budget – certainly to look at the change and enhance what we are doing, and certainly in terms of air ambulance – you know, things like replacing the existing aircraft right here in St. John’s, which I know from speaking to people that are involved with that, it was much needed – through stepping up and doing that. Certainly adding a second medical flight team to the other ambulance in the Province is much needed as well. So that expertise and those professionals are on that flight that can provide that service that is so important that when people need the medevac plane and so forth, that those services are available and we can give them the best possible service we can.

As we know from what has happened, we have a comprehensive study that was taking place and an outside consultant was hired, as the minister mentioned certainly, to do a non-biased, objective look at all of this in terms of what was the best direction to be taken to deal with the issues that arose and how do we ensure with the services that we are providing. In addition to the $8.7 million investment we are making this year in the Budget, how do we ensure that we are using that as best we can to make sure we are covering all of the Island and Labrador in terms of medevac services. That was the road we took, Mr. Speaker, in terms of getting there and doing that. That was what needed to be done.

In that report, there was a list of recommendations and certainly it was a recommendation of resources related to ambulance services. The recommendation was that the aircraft move from St. Anthony to Happy Valley-Goose Bay. This was based on statistical data in terms of the patterns of flights, what the pattern has been in the past number of years in terms of flight coming, where they were in need of the service and where it would best service the overall population. Those recommendations were made in this report. As I said, the recommendation was that it would be moved and as well, through that move, it was recommended that it be centrally located and it serve the populations of Lab City, Wabush, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Churchill Falls, the South Coast of Labrador, the North Coast of Labrador and the St. Anthony – Port au Choix region, Mr. Speaker, to make sure that – and it was not done ad hoc. It was done through a process where an assessment was done; it was done ‘non-biasedly’ in terms of looking at objectively what was done.

It is so important that you look at the statistical information too, Mr. Speaker, as I said, in terms of looking at usage and how it can be best used in the future, certainly as we move forward. I said we looked at statistical flights, understanding (?) and consolidated from 2006 to 2009 and that indicated there were twice as many patient pickups from Labrador as compared to St. Anthony. Certainly looking at that, this was factored into the whole decision, Mr. Speaker.

It is all about too, Mr. Speaker, in terms of this service, an air ambulance program, that it be centralized, that it accesses as many regions and groups as it possibly can in a timely and efficient manner. The response times certainly are very important, related to Labrador and Northern Newfoundland, and certainly all over the Island, and how that air ambulance, transfers are required, and they can be done within what we have available to us. So it is important, certainly, that all residents of the Province get a timely response to air ambulance, and that is what this review and where we are to today is all about, Mr. Speaker.

As had been mentioned earlier in the debate, by the Minister of Health and Community Services, when he talked about communities in the Province are within, now, a sixty-minute flight time of an air ambulance, which was not the case prior, Mr. Speaker, in terms of being based in St. Anthony. Certainly, Labrador West was outside of the sixty-minute response time prior to that. So that is important as well. We are looking at that response time, and looking, ensuring that we can provide the best delivery of this service that we possibly can.

I just wanted to touch on too, Mr. Speaker, I spoke earlier when I talked about investments in this particular service, Mr. Speaker, in terms of flights. In prior years, as well, this government, as well, has invested in this medevac, seen it as important for the Island, and what we are investing. Just wanted to mention, we go back and look at 2006, we announced the implementation of the medical flight specialist program, which allows us to have dedicated, highly trained personnel to staff the air ambulance service in St. John’s. Important again, we are looking at enhancing, modifying, building the service that is so important. Significant investment, again, in 2008, the purchase of a new King Air 350, which was put into service in December of 2008, once again enhancing the service on a Province-wide basis.

Again, I mentioned in this Budget 2010, we are looking at an $8 million investment to replace the second aircraft in our air ambulance program, and that is stationed in St. John’s, Mr. Speaker. Also in Budget 2010, to implement a second flight specialist team is approximately $700,000. It certainly again demonstrates the commitment to the program and making sure we are looking at it objectively, to making sure we are enhancing the program and certainly doing what we need to do for the residents of the Province.

As I mentioned before, the minister reacted and responded to a number of incidents that happened over the year in terms of looking at this and reviewing it and seeing where we need to go and what enhancements we need to do. That resulted in a consultant’s report being done, recommendations and conclusions being drawn, and the minister and government acting on those to make sure and complementing what we are doing and the investments we are making in the Budget this year, 2010-2011, Mr. Speaker.

Out of that consultant’s report there were recommendations and as I said they were objective; what was needed to improve northern ambulance service in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker. There was some statistical information used and I think that is important to highlight here. We went back and looked at statistical data in terms of the number of flights; where were the transfers coming from in terms of looking how can we best with two aircraft service the whole Island and Labrador and where do we place those aircrafts?

Response time is very important and as I said it was not done as a matter of factly; it was done through a consultant’s report. They identified the data, they identified where best it was that these would be and based on that it was acted. Government stepped up and is continuing to invest in the air ambulance service. As I said with the update of the second plane, a new crew and as well as we look forward in the years to come, who knows, but we are continuing to do what we need to within our means.

Mr. Speaker, all of us are touched by different medical, whatever that is in terms of families, friends. We all represent districts and people, and we can highlight various issues in our districts; health care. The Province has invested tremendously in health – there are always issues that come up and we advocate for in terms of improvements. Those are things that we move forward to, but we have to operate in a context of what we have and how we best deliver that service. That is what we are doing, Mr. Speaker, and as government is moving forward.

As I said it was about making sure we have wait times that are limited in terms of access to the medevac flights right across the Island and in Labrador. It is so important that we can offer that to the residents of the Province, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in terms of health care, in terms of all of us understanding and knowing that it is a priority for this government and what we are doing in the Province. This is just one component of it. Others have a right to advocate and express their opinions and thoughts; that is where we get sound public policy. That is part of this whole process and part of debate we had prior to this and debate we are having today in terms of the private members’ motions in terms of what people – people from the area, people from St. Anthony, people from Labrador, people from the West Coast, people from all over the Island in terms of their needs and their expectations and what they believe the service could be and rightfully so. They have the right to express their opinions and their ideas in terms of what needs to be done. That is part of it, Mr. Speaker, no doubt. Then at the end as a government you have to render decisions, you have to look at the data, look at the reviews that are done and how best can we meet the needs and services that are out there in Labrador, on the Island to the best of our ability. That is what this is about, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, that will conclude, really, my remarks on this. I thank the member for putting forward the private member’s motion. It is an issue worth debating. Anything with health care, whatever it is, is certainly worth discussions and provokes good public policy, that is what it is all about and that is why the hon. members are here in the House.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Before the Speaker recognizes the next speaker, I would like to welcome to the House of Assembly a group from St. Bonaventure’s.

Welcome to the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair recognizes the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker.

I am very pleased to stand this afternoon and speak to the Private Members’ motion that is on the floor of the House today. I would like to read what the resolution is that I am speaking to: "Be It Resolved that this House of Assembly calls on the Provincial Government to place on hold the current decision to move the air ambulance out of St. Anthony until a complete and comprehensive review takes place that includes all regions and aspects of the air ambulance service."

I think, Mr. Speaker, in the context of what we are experiencing in the Province right now with regard to the air ambulance service and the way in which it is coming about that this resolution is definitely called for and I am really happy to support this resolution. I have to say that I am very concerned about the way in which the government made its decision to move the air ambulance from St. Anthony to Happy Valley-Goose Bay. You know at the time that the government decided to put a study in place, a study that was done by WJD Consulting, they did it as an immediate reaction to a third very serious fatality in Labrador West. A third fatality, a third death caused by air ambulance not arriving in time. We will never know if any of those deaths, if either of them could have been averted if the air ambulance had arrived in time but the reality for the families is that they will never know because the air ambulances did not arrive in time and people died. The final one, of course, that caused the government to finally realize it had to do something was the death related to the construction accident or industrial accident rather of the worker of IOC in Labrador West, Mr. Perry.

What disturbs me is that the government, in doing the knee-jerk decision making, did not take a long-term approach to looking at the review that needed to be done. When we read the Terms of Reference of the study that was put in place it is a narrow Term of Reference and says very specifically that the report that comes out from the study would review the current statistics relative to the air ambulance patients’ transports with a focus on the Labrador-Grenfell area, consider the appropriateness of the location of the current fixed-wing King Air aircraft in St. Anthony versus the alternate locations of Labrador City or Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The Terms of Reference, very specifically told the consultant who was doing the study that what you are to look at is not how many ambulances we need in the Province, but whether or not the one in St. Anthony should be moved to Labrador City or Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

We have, right off from the very top, a flawed report because the bases of the report, the Terms of Reference of the report are extremely narrow and do not give the necessary breath for the person to really explore what the situation is.

The other thing is, this report was prepared over a very short period of time and did not – because of the fact that the Terms of Reference narrowed the study down so much – take into consideration all of the factors of what it means to travel by air in Newfoundland and Labrador, and what that means for an air ambulance. It does not matter whether you are traveling air ambulance, traveling Dash 8 or what you are traveling; there are many, many factors that affect us in traveling by air in Newfoundland and Labrador, naturally, the weather being one of the major factors.

Right from the beginning, the whole process was flawed. I am disturbed by the game playing that the government continues, and that the Minister of Health and Community Services continues to use with regard to manipulating language and continually to say, whether it is talking about something that I have said or that the Official Opposition has said, implying that we got what we wanted, I got what I wanted or the Leader of the Official Opposition got what she wanted. My position has always been, and will continue to be that I wanted to explore a third air ambulance. What we need is what is being called for in this resolution. We need a full study, a complete and comprehensive review that includes all regions and aspects of the air ambulance service. One thing, for example, just to look at the weather conditions on the northern tip of the Northern Peninsula especially in winter, but not only in winter. We know that there are some really bad weather conditions there. We also know that with air travel, having something on the ground, having an aircraft on the ground is much better in bad weather – is much better than having an aircraft outside of a community. If there is bad weather in St. Anthony and somebody needs to be airlifted from St. Anthony; I am willing to bet that there is a better chance of them being airlifted if the aircraft is already in St. Anthony if there is bad weather, than if the bad weather is happening and an aircraft has to try to land in St. Anthony to get them.

What kinds of studies were done? Did the studies look at the difference between the weather conditions in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, for example, and St. Anthony with regard to being able to get planes off the ground? There are so many factors, Mr. Speaker, that I do not think could possibly have been looked at by this report. As I read the report I certainly saw that they were not looked at because (1) of the timeframe, and (2) because of the narrowness of the terms of reference that were given to the consultant.

When one just even takes the document that was prepared by the staff of the air ambulance department based in St. Anthony who operate the Air King 350 currently, and if we read their response to the WJD Consulting report; you already see how much more needs to be explored, how much more needs to be looked at than was looked at.

It is very disturbing for me as a member of this House to see how the government is treating this issue. They keep talking money. You know, Mr. Speaker, right now we are going through the Estimates meetings. In those Estimates we are meeting with all the departments of government; looking at their budgets and looking at how they spent last year and what they want to spend this year.

In those Estimates, Mr. Speaker, anybody who looks at them will find millions and millions and millions of dollars of unspent money in 2009-2010. Either because a project did not get off the ground or something for some reason did have to be put on hold or because an expense was not as much as they thought it was going to be. When you put all of the departments together, there are millions of dollars - much more than $8 million - millions and millions of dollars of unspent money. That happens every year and we know that; we know that it happens every year. Sometimes money just gets carried along for three or four years. There was an item this morning in the Estimates meeting I was at that we were the third year into money being in the Budget and being unspent in that department.

So, Mr. Speaker, when I look at the fiscal reality of the Province and when I look at that fiscal reality, that so much money can be carried from year to year in the Budget, being earmarked and yet not spent, I have to really ask why this government thinks we can sit here and take seriously what they are saying with regard to not being able to afford another $8 million for a third aircraft to take care of medevac here in this Province, if it were determined that we should have a third medevac, if a full comprehensive review determined that.

This is really something that boggles my mind, Mr. Speaker, when I look not just at the millions and millions and millions of unspent dollars every year in the Budget, when I look at something like the fact that we now know that $15 million that was spent three Budgets ago in the fibre optic cable we are now told is wasted money. It is wasted money because the plans for that fibre optic cable are not going to come through. So we have $15 million that was wasted, just like that, nothing to it.

We know that we have, you know, the government admitting, and I am glad they are admitting it, an inadvertent mistake, an inadvertent expropriation with regard to AbitibiBowater, and we do not know yet what the rest of the legal costs around that are going to be. I am not talking about cleanup; I am talking about legal costs. We have no idea what the rest of the legal costs around that might be. That is a question I have asked and there is no answer to that at this moment.

Yet when it comes to something – $8 million – that could save the lives of people in Labrador, when we come to looking at that reality, that we can save the lives of people with a third aircraft, not trying to make it two aircrafts, all of a sudden it is too much money and that really bothers me, Mr. Speaker. It seems to me that when we look at the geography of the Province, the geography of the Island itself, and the geography of Labrador itself, I really do have a feeling that if a full comprehensive review were done, if every aspect of the reality were really looked at seriously, not just how many people, not just how many runs, but all the other aspects of what it takes to run air ambulances in this Province, and when we take into consideration that Labrador West is such a highly industrialized area with such dangerous work being done there in the mining industry, that if all of that gets factored in, I would be really surprised, Mr. Speaker, if a consultant would not say that a third plane is needed in Labrador, and two planes are needed on the island. I would not be surprised at all. This is what we are asking for, Mr. Speaker. It is why I am supporting this private members’ resolution brought forth by my colleague here.

MS SULLIVAN: Point of order.

MR. SPEAKER (T. Osborne): Point of order being raised by the hon. the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment.

MS SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, I am just listening to the comments by the Leader of the NDP over there, and I am wondering what she means when she is suggesting that this government should not have expropriated and taken back our resources, taken back the resources of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. She indicated that there were legal costs involved with that. Of course there were legal costs, we anticipated there would be legal costs. I want to know what it is she is suggesting. Is she suggesting that the people of Grand Falls and everybody else should have been thrown to the wolves, that nothing should have been done?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

I recognize the hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just so people on the other side of the House, since they do not hear clearly, understand what I said a minute ago, and I will say it. I am talking about future legal bills that may have to be paid because of the mistake that was made. I voted for the expropriation, and I would do it again. I am talking about the mistake, and I am talking about future legal bills. That is what I am – just to make it clear for the record, Mr. Speaker. So if I can continue, Mr. Speaker, because now I have less than two minutes left.

I have to say that, as I have already said, we do not need any more tragic deaths, and we do not need those deaths either in Labrador or on the Island itself. I have a real concern that the study that we have done has not given us the correct picture, because it has not looked at the whole picture. I really do ask this government, and ask the minister, if the minister really means, Mr. Speaker, what he has said several times in the House today already, if he really means that he really does want to make sure that the kind of fatalities that happen in Labrador West do not happen again, then I really ask the minister to realize that we need a broader study done with regard to air ambulance in this Province.

I will repeat again, I do not think that money is the issue. So I really have to ask him to come up with what really is the issue here, because it is not money. We have the money to do it. The money can be found. We find the money when we really believe something needs to happen.

So I am asking the minister to look at this resolution, to realize that the study that was done was not the study of the whole picture, and I implore the minister, with that, the government side of this House, to recognize we need the full review and to vote for this resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Business.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad to be able to get up and make a few comments about the Private Members’ resolution. One of the things that is interesting, Mr. Speaker, in debate in this House, the heath system and issues in and around the health system affect each and every one of us, not only in this House but throughout the entire Province and generally it effects us in a very profound way. We are sometimes dealing with people and they are in crisis, where they are at the most vulnerable time in their lives, so any time when we talk about health services it is difficult and always challenging to separate the emotion from the debate and focus on the facts. Unfortunately when we debate in this House sometimes issues around the health system it gets down to personal attacks, it gets down to you know fear mongering, it gets down to suggestions of bias in decision making and we heard some language today, the Leader of the Opposition Party talks about ugly and hateful, language like that. We are talking the Leader of the NDP just used some language about manipulating language. These are very, this becomes a very personal debate and I say, Mr. Speaker, I think it is appropriate for all of us, we have a responsibility in this House to look at our debates and the content of our debate and reflect on our comments to ensure that they are objective, their reflection is about facts and we focus on the facts before us and not bring into, stoop to some of the personality attacks but also to separate the emotion from the facts. For example, Mr. Speaker, the member opposite who made the motion and let me read the end of the motion it says, that this House "….calls upon the Provincial Government to place on hold the current decision to move the air ambulance out of St. Anthony until a complete and comprehensive review takes place that includes all regions…" I say, Mr. Speaker, as you listen to the member’s comments today though, all the comments today were not around the merits of a review and what that review should encompass and how broad the terms of reference should or should not be and what factors should be considered but he stood and made a very personal plea, a very personal plea for an air ambulance to remain in St. Anthony. It was not that we need to do a more comprehensive review. It talked about a plea for an ambulance to remain in St. Anthony. Sometimes, because of its historical attachment to the community, I think no one in this Chamber, no one throughout the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador would ever talk about, would ever at all suggest that there has not been quality care provided in St. Anthony.

If you look for a moment at the history of health services in the St. Anthony region, in fact, the entire Northern Peninsula, and the South Coast of Labrador in particular, if you look at the history of the evolution of health services in those regions it is a rich history.

Dr. Grenfell did a tremendous service to the people of that region, established a tremendous health service and no one in this Chamber, no one in this government would ever suggest that quality health care is not being provided today by very capable, very competent people, but circumstances have changed, Mr. Speaker. I think if we start looking at what it is we need today, how we should structure an air ambulance service, because I think if we take for a moment – and the member opposite talks about having a look at the Terms of Reference being somewhat narrow to look only at the St. Anthony piece, but I think we would all agree, and the minister has stated in this House, without any contradiction from the opposite side, that there is a given that an ambulance will remain in St. John’s. We have the neo-natal team flying out of St. John’s, so we need to have one here.

The only other one in question that we had in the Province was up in St. Anthony, so it is reasonable that the Terms of Reference would in fact ask for an evaluation of the location of that particular ambulance and what it should look like in the future.

With respect to the report itself, what is ironic, Mr. Speaker, the Member for The Straits & White Bay North said I agree with the recommendations in there, I agree with the statistics that are in there, but I disagree with the recommendation that impacts my district and the people in my district. I agree with all of the statistics. I think - just to make sure that I am accurate in my commentary - his comment was I agree substantially, or the word substantially was embedded in there somewhere, where he is acknowledging that the agrees with most of the recommendations, he agrees with the statistics, he agrees with the analysis of the statistics but he disagrees with a part of a recommendation that reflects on his district and the people who live in his district. I think that skews, that skews on his commentary today because it was really a political commentary. We recognize fully, Mr. Speaker, that the member opposite has a constituent group that he represents, all of us in this House represent our constituents, we bring forth arguments on their behalf and we do it all the time. I say, Mr. Speaker, it is important to recognize that this report does in fact - and I bring members’ attention to it because it does in fact speak to the potential for another ambulance in the Province at some future time. I will refer the member opposite to page seven of the report that says that should there be at some future time if there needs to be a third ambulance in Newfoundland and Labrador, that third ambulance would be located in Deer Lake. So you would have an ambulance in St. John’s, you would have an air ambulance in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, and you would have another one in Deer Lake.

So the report does – despite the criticism of the terms of reference, the person who did the analysis of the report looked at all the statistics provincially, looked at provincial statistics, and plotted out what this might look like in terms of location of ambulance services. So it in fact does address the piece around should there be a third ambulance. The report does not make any reference at all to retaining an ambulance in St. Anthony as a part of the long-term; in this person’s review, the recommendations and the statistics and the history and the current utilization and geographic location and population distribution all suggest in this report that at some point there might be three, and those three would be Happy Valley-Goose Bay, St. John’s and Deer Lake. So I say, Mr. Speaker, the report does have a view broader than the members opposite would suggest in terms of reference limited, the consultant in looking at the review.

The other thing I think, Mr. Speaker, is extremely important: if you look at air ambulance services, they are a critical piece of our health system. It is important. I do not think anybody – even though the Leader of the NDP suggested that this is an economic debate, an economic discussion. The Minister of Health – I have not heard him stand in this House in this whole process, answering questions in the House of Assembly, responding to questions from the media, I have not heard the Minister highlight the financial restraints that may have come into play in making this decision. I have not heard that, Mr. Speaker. The comments by the Minister of Health and Community Services and the recommendations in this report do not talk about a decision based on economics, does not talk about a decision that is based on constraint, does not talk about a decision based on cost saving measures; it talks about providing the greatest access to the greatest number of people and what might do that. How might we geographically locate two ambulances to provide the quickest access to the largest number of people, therefore providing an enhanced service to all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians?

I say, Mr. Speaker, that is what these recommendations reflect – that kind of logic, that kind of thinking, and that is what the Minister of Health and Community Services has said repeatedly with respect to this decision.

We could listen to members opposite talk about a very narrow terms of reference, talk about a lot of questions unanswered. I say, Mr. Speaker, this was a fairly in-depth analysis. As acknowledged by the members opposite; both the Member for The Straits & White Bay North who has actually introduced this motion, by the Leader of the Opposition as she spoke in this House, as the Leader of the NDP Party. All of them have acknowledged the statistics are accurate, the analysis of the stats have been accurate, the recommendations are sound with one exception, that an ambulance would come out of St. Anthony and go some place else.

I say, Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that when you get debating an issue like this – because in fact, this government has been extremely sensitive to the issues facing Newfoundlanders and Labradorians with respect to the health system; very sensitive. That is why today we have the largest health budget in our history; some $2.7 billion. We continue to invest on an annual basis. Just reflecting on the last three or four Budgets, I suspect that in the last four Budgets we have probably increased our health budget on average about 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent a year which reflects, I think, Mr. Speaker, a significant commitment by this government.

You see what we have invested in ambulances and air ambulances. The air ambulance that is now in St. Anthony is a new one that was delivered last year. The ambulance that is in St. John’s today; this year’s Budget announced a replacement for that one because it has outlived its usefulness.

Mr. Speaker, to that point, just to speak to the state of desperation and the state of ridiculousness of the suggestions brought forward by the Member for The Straits & White Bay North. Just think about that for a moment; in this year’s Budget we are announcing that we are buying a brand new air ambulance to replace one in St. Johns’ because it is at the end of its life. We need to replace it, it is no longer what we need as a system, it should not be flying as an air ambulance; it is nearing the end. Before it crashes, we want to, in fact, replace it.

The member opposite is asking us to take it out of service and put it in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. He is suggesting here today that we would take a plane that is acknowledged needs to come out of service; it is not good enough to fly out of St. John’s. We are taking it out of service and the Member for The Straits & White Bay North is asking us to put that in Happy Valley-Goose Bay so that the people in Labrador can have a plane that we have taken out of service in St. John’s –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WISEMAN: The member had the audacity to stand in the House today and ask that question of this government. Can you think about that for a moment? What is he asking? Then he says I am objective, I am not personal; this is not about me as an MHA and my district. I am not selfish in my request, but government is. Government has not been logical in their argument, but the member opposite has the audacity to stand and speak to the people. I challenge the member opposite to travel to anywhere in Labrador, after this speech today, travel to anywhere in Labrador today and try to defend why he would suggest a plane that is currently in St. John’s is now somehow or other, because it is not – we are taking out of service here, because it should not be flying anymore. We are buying a new one, but the member opposite wants that second-hand discarded plan to go to Happy Valley-Goose Bay to service the people in Labrador, I say, Mr. Speaker.

I am assuming he is speaking on behalf of his party as he stands to do that. There are four members in the Liberal Party sitting in this House, and I am assuming that he is speaking on behalf of the four of them when he asking. I just wonder, I wonder if the leader of his party agrees with him, because she represents a district in Labrador, I say Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WISEMAN: The leader of the party opposite represents a district in Labrador, and here she has a member of her own caucus suggesting.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I will remind the hon. members in the House that the hon. the Minister of Business has been recognized to speak, and the Chair is having some difficulty in hearing him.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Once again, anytime that someone on this side of the House stands and speaks, Mr. Speaker, and says something that the members opposite disagree with –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Order, please!

I am asking for the cooperation of all members. The Chair is very hesitant to name members but will have no further choice but to do that if I do not get the cooperation of members of the House.

I recognize the hon. the Minister of Business.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank you for the protection you are giving me, as the members opposite obviously do not want to hear what I am saying. It goes against the grain and the thrust of their comments earlier, which is to be very political about this issue. They are trying to politicize a very sensitive issue. You have the people – and understandable, Mr. Speaker, understandable. The people of the Northern Peninsula, and the St. Anthony region in particular, this is very personal for them. It is a service that has been in that region for a long time, and we fully understand the emotion behind this, but members opposite have a responsibility to be responsible in their debate, be accurate in their comments, and rise above that fear mongering, Mr. Speaker, rise above that fear mongering.

Again, I have to come back to the point that I was making when I got so rudely interrupted and you came to my rescue, when I was talking about the plane that we are taking out of service in St. John’s because it has outlived its usefulness, and the member opposite wants to put it in. Speaking on behalf of the Liberal Party, and speaking on behalf of the Liberal Party, wanted us now to take that plane and have it service the Labrador region of our Province, I say, Mr. Speaker. That is shameful. I would be embarrassed, I say, Mr. Speaker, to be associated with those comments, but the member opposite - you watch, Mr. Speaker, my time is starting to run out and when the member opposite stands he will try to defend that. He will try to defend that.

One of the things about this House of Assembly, Mr. Speaker, one of the things about this House of Assembly if you miss the comments made by anybody speaking today and the comments all you have to do is pick up Hansard, because Hansard records it, Mr. Speaker, and Hansard will record forever and a day the comments made by the member opposite when he said he wanted a discarded plane taken out St. John’s to service the people of Labrador because he believes the people of Labrador only deserve a used plane, a plane that has been taken out of service somewhere else.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Minister of Business that his time for speaking has expired.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will conclude my comments but I appreciated the opportunity to enter into some debate around this piece, so thank you very much for the opportunity for my short comments.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: I recognize the hon. the Member for The Straits & White Bay North, if he speaks now he shall close debate.

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to remind the hon. member who has just finished speaking that Hansard also records the comments that he made last year as he introduced the new air ambulance in St. Anthony. If you have difficulty finding it I will certainly help you look for it. They were all great comments about how wonderful it was to be able to put a new ambulance in a place that was going to cover so geographically correctly located and so on. The Member for St. Barbe you know talked about how pleased they were that it was being there, that the location would service the Province well for years and will service the Province well for years to come and all of a sudden a few months later then no it cannot service the Province any more. We have to take it and we have to move it away. It is not political though, I agree, it certainly is not political. I am sure it would not be.

Just to conclude debate because I realize most people have tuned out of this a long time ago, in this House but you know as stated in government’s own briefing notes the air ambulance program is a critical component of the overall health care system that provides medevac services to patients where both road and commercial flight is not available and so on. It talks about the importance of it and the necessity of it. It talks about the traditional, it talked about medical flight specialists and it talked about the traditional processes that and the fact that the referring facilities would provide the accompaniment the medical escorts with these air ambulances, with these air medevacs and so on.

In August, 2007, it was announced that it would be this new medical flight specialist team and government stated also, in its own notes, that unfortunately, because of this introduction of this new team ultimately by government that it can only be currently situated in St. John’s and that would result in approximately 50 per cent of the air ambulance requests not being able to avail of their services. I would suggest it was at that time that the air ambulance program in this Province began to really experience the issues that we have experienced in the past year. It is inefficiency in the system and it states – the review from the briefing notes that were prepared by the department back in September, 2009 that I referred to earlier, it was suggested in there that as per the policies of deploying these aircrafts there is not only fragmentation between government air services and the RT??? in St. Anthony, but also the medical communication centre. The MCC, as it is referred to, is the centre of Eastern Health that screens to ensure that the request for an air ambulance service is medically correct, to make sure that we are not sending them out at inappropriate times, for inappropriate reasons and so on. That would make good sense but under this briefing note it suggests that problems with this centre that is really the responsibility for 'operationalizing', if you will, the air ambulance program that problems existed. Yet, what was done about it? Nothing, I would assume because it continued to exist and the problems continued to be there.

I would suggest, how can you fix a program that government offers such as the air ambulance program if you do not look at the entire program then how can you just take a piece of it, piecemeal things out and try and fix a problem without really looking at it in its entirety.

My point is that the system really, it is broken from the start. Obviously, the result of that is we see the inefficiencies coming through in the system and so on.

Talking about the St. Anthony plane for a moment and yes, it obviously is important to me from a personal point of view and from the point of my district as it would be removing any service from any district, but that is not what it is all about as the minister suggested in his comments a few moments ago. The point is that the St. Anthony plane is not a plane that services the Northern Peninsula and Labrador; it is a plane that services the whole Province, and if we take it and we relocate it into Goose Bay, is it not going to be a part of a two plane system that is going to service this Province? If the answer to that is yes, then why do we isolate a piece of that program? Why do we take a piece of that program and create a study that really focuses on that particular piece and allows us to draw conclusions that really are incorrect?

Well, member speaking a few moments talked about this plane that is basically junk, I guess. I cannot recall the words he used because I was kind of laughing a little bit at it at the time. If it is so untrustworthy and so on, I would suggest the hon. Minister of Transportation suggest that government is going to sell it. We are going to sell a plane that is not worth of flying. I am not sure where that leaves us, but I would certainly suggest that some may not be totally correct, whatever is there.

An important part of the process of reaching the conclusion that was reached in the Drodge report was consultation. When we look at the consultation that took place and the recommendations that came forward to them, we realize that the recommendations with regard to community representation in the consultation, if you will, the overwhelming emphasis was on locating an aircraft in Labrador. Obviously that would be so because the groups that you met with, with the exception of the town council in St. Anthony that you met with for twenty minutes, they were all from Labrador. So you could realistically conclude that if you went and spoke to the municipalities of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, and you went and you spoke to the municipality of Labrador City and of Wabush, and you spoke with the Nunatsiavut Government and other groups and so on, are they going to suggest that no, we do not need this here ambulance in Goose Bay; St. Anthony would be the proper place. Leave it there and just add a medevac program or whatever the case may be and I am sure it will be fine. It would be ludicrous to suggest that they would come back with that conclusion to you and so on.

So it is not difficult to see why the majority of the support was in favour of relocating the air ambulance from St. Anthony to Goose Bay because in my opinion the consultation was designed and it was presented in that fashion. I would suggest that if we had taken the time to go out and talk to more municipalities along the Northern Peninsula, along the Southern Coast of Labrador, we went into Western Newfoundland and talked to the municipalities of Corner Brook and Deer Lake and other places, and said: Look, we are looking at restructuring our ambulance program, the program that services you, and one of the possibilities we are looking at is taking the air ambulance plane from St. Anthony and sending it Goose Bay and we will respond to your 28 per cent, Mr. Minister, of your calls that is required by that aircraft, we will respond to them out of Goose Bay and we will still offer you just as good a service as you have today. I want to tell you, I do not think they would nod their heads and say yes, boy that is a good decision that you are making in that case.

Well you know the consultation that Dr. Drodge did states on Page 5 and 6 in section 7, it is entitled, Flight statistics, it says that if a runway was in Port Hope Simpson, if it was expanded sorry because there is a runway there, but if it was expanded to be able to accommodate the King Air and larger charter aircrafts patients could be flown directly to St. John’s rather than being flown to St. Anthony. However, since Port Hope Simpson is considerably closer to St. Anthony than it is to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, such an expanded runway would create a larger service area to St. Anthony. It makes that conclusion. It states that pretty much in this report. So rather than justifying the relocation of the aircraft in that comment, Mr. Drodge is justifying or suggesting the possibility only serves to highlight an additional rationale for maintaining the air ambulance in St. Anthony. The fact that St. Anthony is closer than Goose Bay would make sense that in a medical emergency that we would go there with that particular patient and so on.

The argument making the change has been much about statistics. It is based on a number of pickups and I have listened to the minister go through his numbers and present them at several occasions and several different ways and so on, the numbers out of St. Anthony. One in 2,009 there was 276 pickups in Labrador and there were 157 on the Northern Peninsula and we have heard that. That in and of itself would suggest that yes Labrador has more traffic obviously than the Northern Peninsula and if you focus on those numbers which is what the consultant did. The recommendations appear to make sense since they are only roughly half as many pickups on the Northern Peninsula as there were in Labrador. So we all say yes put it in Labrador, that makes perfect good sense, however, the other number that should be taken into account, Mr. Speaker, is the 623 patients from outside that limited area. In other words they are not in Labrador and they are not in the Northern Peninsula but they are some of the districts of some of the members who are sitting here in the House today. They are in Corner Brook, they are in Deer Lake, they are in Gander, they are down in Burgeo, they are in Port aux Basques. They are in other parts of the Province. In other words when you take the 623 patients that were picked up outside of that region and you take the 157 that are picked up on the Northern Peninsula we actually have 780 patients that are picked up in Newfoundland, on the Island portion of the Province. St. Anthony does some of that work, as the minister would acknowledge. When the St. John’s plane is not available, the St. Anthony aircraft is the one that does that work. It is involved in responding to 780 air medevacs each year, approximately.

So now we are going to, with the exception of the 157 on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, we are going to disadvantage, we are going to disenfranchise the other 623 or so, if you will, by having the flight come from a further distance away. Now, you know I believe in logic, as I am sure every one of us here does, I would like to know where the logic is in that decision, because I cannot find it, other than the fact that it is a political move, and goodness gracious that we would want to suggest that that would be the case.

The consultant says, Mr. Speaker, that one can conclude, from the population data, that the utilization of the aircraft services is generally consistent across the population areas under consideration. It says that because of that, the aircraft should be in Labrador. The consultant also left out a glaring fact, that the population of Western and Southern Newfoundland is 125,000 people, and that is where these extra 623 patients come from, and this change in population will move the plane further away from all of that population. So, if being near the centre of a population group is the best way to optimize a service, then I conclude that St. Anthony is better than Goose Bay. Makes sense to me, because that is where the people are.

Another serious flaw that this researcher found is the fact that the researcher omitted to look at the on-call hours that St. Anthony was on for St. John’s. It is important because it tells us the necessity the service plays for the rest of the Province. The report looks again at a small piece, and in doing so it makes some serious errors. It is just not a complete picture, Mr. Speaker. That is why I put forth this motion, that is why I believe that brake should be put on, that we should have a further consultation, that there should be more information brought to the table, that we make a decision that is not a wrong decision, but we make one that is right. It is not a complete picture. It fails to look at, and to recognize the air ambulance program as a system. A complete review should have been done of the Province then, instead of cherry-picking certain parts of the population.

The researcher has made serious flaws. The report concludes the following: after it has done a simple population comparison between Labrador and Newfoundland, it says "one can conclude from the population data and based on the assumption that the utilization of the" aircraft "service is generally consistent across the population," that the aircraft should be located in Labrador versus St. Anthony. The problem with that analysis, Mr. Speaker, is that it assumes the aircraft in St. Anthony services only St. Anthony and Labrador and nothing could be further from the truth.

So because of that, the St. Anthony plane needs to be recognized as an important part of the air ambulance infrastructure of this entire Province. I suggest to this House today, I suggest to the population of this Province, that if we proceed with this move as the minister has approved and has recommended and so on that this aircraft go to Goose Bay, that we are doing the people of this Province an injustice. I want to tell you right now, it will be regretful when the day comes when we will hear other stories – tragic as they have been in Labrador, there will be stories in the rest of Newfoundland that will be just as tragic when the air ambulance service has not arrived in time. I want to suggest that I do not want to be the one responsible for that, but I will be the one reminding this House when it happens.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Is the House ready for the question?

Shall the resolution as put forward by the hon. Member for The Straits & White Bay North carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye’.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, ‘nay’.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is lost.