Thank you. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to come back to the deficit that was mentioned by my colleagues earlier. Going forward, though, this next fiscal year we're going to be -- you said the 189. But overall, I just want to know, like how do we -- what are your management plans to deal with this deficit, I guess, going forward? Thank you.

Thank you. Health and Social Services, administrative and support services. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Okay. Well, look, I don't want to prolong this. Thanks, Madam Chair. I think there's actually a good number of people in the public that want to know how we can find efficiencies and ways of improving our expenditures and tracking and so on of health care costs. So I'll just leave that with the Minister and the department. I think they need to find a way to explain some of the good work that they are doing. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I don't think the department has contemplated that. I haven't ever heard a request for that before now. People do realize that the system is running a deficit, but I don't think they relate that to the services that are delivered. And so it seems to be not as interesting to the public as it is to us sitting in the House.

Thank you. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Yeah. No, thanks, Madam Chair. The reports to FMB, and, you know, probably end up being on a confidential briefing to Regular MLAs are okay. But I guess I'm trying to find a way for the good work that these folks are doing to be explained publicly. Is that something that the department will look at? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

We provide the financial management board with semi-annual reports about the work of the sustainability office, and we are available to come and brief committee confidentially on that work on request.

Thank you. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Yeah. No, thanks, Madam Chair. And thanks for that explanation. Yeah, and I don't doubt that these people are not at -- I think they're very hard at work; that's great. But is there anywhere their work is kind of summarized or reported on, even at a high level, perhaps once a year? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the office, I believe, is fully staffed or almost fully staffed at this point. And they have -- they have been looking, as I think I mentioned earlier, at cost containment. And so one thing that they've looked at as an example of that is reciprocal billing. It turns out that we were not issuing all the invoices that we could to other jurisdictions for caring for their residents and so that's something that we have paid more attention to in order to ensure that we're getting all the revenue that is properly owed to us.

Another example is going into product listing agreements with pharmaceutical companies to take advantage of discounts they provide on bulk orders. And that has saved us quite a good sum of money, in the millions.

We've also introduced a biosimilar initiative where we fund preferentially biosimilar or generic drugs rather than brand name drugs if the formulation is exactly the same.

So those are some of the things that we've tried to do the cost containment piece of this work. But this is long-term work. We won't be on top of all the ways that we can save money even in the next fiscal year. And this is going to blend together with the government renewal initiative which, you know, we've now done an inventory of all of our programs for. And so I can see that in the next year we're going to be paying more attention to that and what value for money we get for our different programs. So there are initiatives underway that acknowledge the situation that we're in and remedies to it. Thank you.