Yellowknife (June 09/03) - Physician specialists are taking their fight for a new contract with the territorial government down to the wire.

Range Lake MLA Sandy Lee says Health Minister Miltenberger's contingency plan is weak.

They will not resume negotiations until June 28, three days before the resignations of 12 of the 15 doctors take effect.

The pressure tactic became a hot source for debate on opening day of the current legislative session, last Wednesday.

"We're awfully disappointed," Dr. Ken Seethram, president of the NWT Medical Association said last Wednesday after doctors rejected the government's appeal for binding arbitration.

Meanwhile, health minister Michael Miltenberger has a contingency plan to provide temporary doctors. But it doesn't work, according to Range Lake MLA Sandy Lee, who badgered the minister on the topic in the legislature.

"(Miltenberger's plan) is so weak I could put a hole the size of Great Slave Lake in it," Lee said.

Miltenberger dismissed Lee's criticism and said "my job is not to promote fear and needless apprehension among the people."

The appeal for binding arbitration was made after the two sides failed to agree on a salary and benefit package. According to information released by the territorial government, doctors want to earn $500,000 a year in the final year of the two-year contract. The government's offer fell short by $100,000 a year.

Seethram said the issue isn't money. "We have a serious and critical shortage of specialists -- the lowest ratio of specialists to population in Canada. There are 15. We should have 35."

The government has budgeted for 18 specialists. The total cost for their services would be $13.7 million over the two-year life of the contract, compared to the doctors' demand for $15.6 million.

Miltenberger said he hopes to reach a deal with the doctors, but his ministry has arranged for temporary anaesthesia, internal medicine and radiology specialists should the doctors walk. Cases involving ear, nose and throat, general surgery, ophthalmology, orthopedics, pediatrics and severe mental distress will be transferred to Edmonton.