Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Rankin Inlet (Aug 01/01) - Repulse Bay is pointing an accusing finger at the Department of Health and Social Services for the loss of Calm Air passenger service into the community.

Hamlet senior administrator Brian McQuarrie said last week that one of the main reasons Calm Air suspended the service was the imbalance of medical travel.

McQuarrie said the lion's share of medical travel to Rankin Inlet, Churchill, Man., and Winnipeg has been awarded to Calm Air's competitor for the past 18 months.

He said statistics from the Rankin airport show five times as many medical passengers going out on Kivalliq Air in the month of June than on Calm Air.

"We've been requesting the travel records from Health and Social Services for the past 18 months," said McQuarrie.

"We've seen this coming since last winter, when there was a string of four months straight where Calm Air was only getting one or two patients a month."

He said the hamlet feels that, had medical travel been fairly split between the two airlines, the community wouldn't be losing Calm Air's service next month.

"Calm Air would be able to continue serving our community without putting itself in a deficit situation if it was receiving a fair and equitable amount of the medical transportation."

Deputy minister Keith Best said his department has found no evidence to support the allegations of medical travel manipulation coming from Repulse Bay.

"Since we began receiving these allegations, we've been reminding our staff (that) patients have a choice of airlines, but it has to be in context with their appointment," said Best.

He pointed out that an employee would have to be a genius to manipulate medical travel to the point where one airline was being heavily favoured.

"If you were to analyse travel for the past 18 months -- looking at the times people were being scheduled for appointments, how long they were staying at the boarding house and the airline chosen -- you would be able to identify if people were manipulating travel to favour one airline and that's just not the case.

"Any airline is quite welcome to analyse our information to plan their business strategy to accommodate our needs, but don't ask us to move patients around to fit your schedule," he said.

"The needs of the patients come first."