Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I share the Member's concern and her assessment that when you look at the indicators and we look around us on simple things at the number of people who don't drink anymore or the number of people who don't smoke anymore, I would think we are making progress. But when we look at the overall consumption levels, one of the things it leads me to think is fewer people are drinking more.

---Laughter

Can we count things differently or are we asking the right questions? That could be the issue. The other problem for us as well is we have a relatively small population and in many cases nationally they don't even count us because we aren't statistically significant.

The other problem with being a small jurisdiction and a small number of people is relatively few incidents of any one thing can be seen as a big percentage, though overall it's not really.

So I guess I don't have a clear answer for the Member. We struggle to make sure that we count things the most accurate way possible, but in terms of our outcomes, we know nationally we spend about 20 percent of our budget on health and social services. Other jurisdictions on health alone are spending over 40 percent of their budget. On the other hand, we know on a per capita basis in the Northwest Territories, we are probably second nationally in terms of how much money we spend per capita on health per person, second only to Nunavut. So once again, we have the same dollar figure looked at from two different ways.

In one way, we are only spending half as much as other jurisdictions are and on a per capita basis, we are spending the second highest in the country.

Madam Chair, the whole issue of quantifying our outcomes is a difficult one. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the Minister if he could try to find one area in which there is something good to report that we could say there are fewer people smoking in the Northwest Territories today than there was 10 years ago. I know one indicator that seems to be good is people are living longer, but sometimes I just think we pronounce doom and gloom on ourselves by always coming out with the negative indicators. I would like the Minister, if he could, to try to find news that wouldn't overwhelm our people and just get them to throw up their hands in despair and thinking we are just the worst in every category. I think it would be encouraging to people to try harder. It would change maybe the psychology or the mindset of things. Of course, we have problems but if we could report some progress or we could say we invested this money and this is the result and things are better today than they were yesterday and they will be better tomorrow than they are today, I think that would possibly change people's perception of ourselves as northerners when it comes to those health and social indicators.

We hear so much bad news on that front in the North, if there is any good news, let's shout it from the rooftops so that people can feel good about something in that area.

Another area I just wanted to touch on, Mr. Chairman, was the area of fairness and transparency. I have raised this in the House before and it is still something I find kind of curious. That is the non-insured health benefits that relates to the formulary for status, treaty, First Nations as opposed to what our health insurance for the GNWT covers in terms of pharmacy. That's been raised to me again by a constituent just in the last month. Again, there would seem to be quite a disparity between what NIHB provides to aboriginal citizens for what they have responsibility for versus what the GNWT benefit pays for for others. So just to put it in a succinct way, you could have been born and raised in the Northwest Territories, you could be 80-years-old and you could be a First Nations person and you would receive far less in your old age in terms of coverage under the pharmaceutical formulary from the federal government than you would if you were an 80-year-old who arrived in the Territories last year and you were covered by our insurance program on that same item.

People who work in the frontlines find this a peculiar statistic and I don't know what's being done to address it. The programs for seniors in the Northwest Territories are very comprehensive. Everything from vision care to pharmaceutical to all the different types of support and services that seniors receive in the Northwest Territories. It just seems unthinkable to me that people who have lived here their whole lives could possibly receive less. One would think that where the NIHB benefits end, our government would pick up but that is not the case and people are treated very differently. I wonder if the Minister could comment on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Member makes a good point in terms of the good news. As my colleagues keeping pointing out, sometimes you tend to get mired down in the department of pain and suffering and you don't get to look up and see where the successes are and there are some successes. As Mr. Braden indicated, there is the drop in tobacco tax revenue. To me, it's a lost revenue but a good news story. The birth rates of babies are on the way up where they should be. We have an immunization program that has been very successful that we have been adding to across the Territories. The Member is right; we should probably make a better effort. We've had singular success in the tobacco strategy. So I take the Member's point and it's a good one.

With regard to the fairness and transparency with seniors, the Member has raised this issue and it's a legitimate one. My own sense of this is that seniors should all be entitled to the same benefit, but if there is a client eligible under NIHB, then all the federal government would pay for is what is covered under NIHB and the rest of the cost would be ours. That's how I would see it work to be fair. In our review of supplementary health programs, we are going to be looking at that. I can also point out that the Member is correct; we have one of the most comprehensive benefit packages for seniors in the country. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Minister's response to some of these issues. They are definitely very, very general comments, but just to flag them and remind the Minister and his officials of some of them.

Just one of the other things that I want to say in closing is I would encourage the Minister, when it comes to stating the obvious at some times, I think as elected leaders we are reluctant to state the obvious because we don't want to offend people and people have taken up certain lifestyles and certain habits. Without being unkind or uncharitable or not to be judgemental, but sometimes we need to state the facts for the way they are in some instances.

When I was Minister, I was in a community at one point and they were talking about the quality of their water source in the lake from which they got their drinking water. They were also talking about the high incidents of diabetes in their community. In the meeting I sat in, without a word of a lie, some people drank three or four cans of Coca Cola while I was sitting there. Sometimes I think we are very reluctant to state the obvious. We dance around things in the name of being politically correct. When you see how things like alcohol and drugs and things like this are affecting our people here in the North, I think it's going to take somebody, maybe all of us, to call it like it is and to speak directly. I know it sounds like I am contradicting what I said before because I don't think we should be negative, but at the same time we could be pragmatic. We need to identify the real problems because I think it will go some ways to address them as well. Sometimes people do have an unrealistic expectation that somebody else is going to magically solve all the problems. So when it comes to the issue of taking personal responsibility, that's a message that has to continue to go out there. I know it's a message this Minister has put out there and sometimes just in what we listen to, we still get the impression that we have created some kind of enormous dependence on the government and the government is going to fix everything that ails us. In fact, that could never happen.

So how we engage people and get them involved in caring about their own well-being is a challenging thing, but it's definitely a theme we need to continue to work on. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wholeheartedly agree with the Member. Good health starts with personal responsibility and personal choices and it goes from there. I take every opportunity to make that case and tell people how truly simple it is. There are five things; what you eat, what you drink, what you smoke, and if you exercise and you don't eat too much of any kind of food, it's just that simple to start the road to good health. I appreciate the Member's comments. You're right; we are all role models in the positions that we occupy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to touch on one subject with regard to social workers in the communities. I understand they are very important people in the communities. Are the social workers who are in the communities qualified to be child welfare workers also? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, when social workers are hired, they get their appointments for various parts of the job that they do, including child welfare. To get your appointment, you have to go through the appropriate workshop and take the training to get your child welfare appointment. So there is a process to ensure that people who do child welfare are duly trained and social workers who are hired are either going to be diploma or university graduates. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the follow-up question I have is in my region, can you tell me how many social workers are qualified as child welfare workers? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as a general rule, in the communities all the social workers have the appointments to do the full range of general duties. In the specific case, I will get him the specific details of the numbers and qualifications. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. An example I will give you is I worked for the department about 20 years ago, but I was one of the lucky people who went through the whole program and I ended up with my child welfare worker papers at the time. As long as I worked there, I had three other workers working with me and they didn't have that paper to go and confiscate children. It's sad to say, when you get a complaint you have to go to the home communities and you have to have the papers to confiscate children. If you don't have that paper in the smaller communities, you have to have the RCMP there with you. I want to make sure these people in the small communities can have the option to get the papers to ensure they can go to the homes and investigate the situations. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member's comments. We will get him the information. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I have Ms. Lee and then Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few things that I want to raise with the Minister. The first one has to do with the social workers. The North has a long history of training and supporting social workers. We have had locally produced social workers for a very long time and I believe that this fiscal year was the first year where we were not able to have that program in Aurora College at Inuvik campus. There was some reporting about that in the media, but I have not heard any discussion as to what the reasons were that we were not able to have this program commence this school year. I think there are some indications that it might have had to do with a lack of housing for students at Aurora Campus. I don't know if it's because of the pressure that's on this profession, though I would think that the pressure has always been there and there has to be some people wiling to pursue this profession. I don't know if it's that those who are interested are going south. My questions to the Minister of Education in this regard have not been conclusive. I would like to know from the Minister whether the department has undertaken a review or looked at why it is that we didn't have enough interest in this program and what is the Minister doing about that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.