Yellowknife, N.W.T. - The closing day of the Canadian Medical Association's annual meeting in Yellowknife on Wednesday featured a passionate discussion among the delegates about the health issues surrounding the tarsands.

Delegates made it perfectly clear through a unanimous decision that they want to look into the potential effect that these natural resource extraction projects have on the communities.

CMA's past president, Dr. John Haggie, explained some of the concerns that the delegates had about these projects.

"There was a concern that up front, the idea of a health impact analyis for social policy, I think there was a concern from the delegates that we perhaps ought to look at a health impact analysis from any environmental impacts that might occur."

The new CMA president, Dr. Anna Reid, said that the association is starting to look at the upstream effect of things that affect their patients' health.

"It ties in quite well with what the CMA's going to be doing with looking at our health transformation theme. We know if we don't measure something that we can't assess the outcome of it, and I think it just follows along those lines."

Reid said she wasn't surprised that it came up during the meetings because it is a hot topic right now.

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