Page 6-32.

Page 6-33, supplementary health programs, operations expenditure summary, $17.661 million.

Page 6-34. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is related to the coverage that northern residents by and large enjoy with our health care system, whether they are resident here in the NWT or part of the overall Canadian system.

I encountered a situation with a constituent earlier, or last year, Mr. Chairman, where, regrettably, an illness in the family occurred when this constituent was traveling outside the NWT. Emergency health procedures were required. These were performed in Calgary and they were performed quite satisfactorily.

Mr. Chairman, where we ran into some difficulty was when this constituent, who was caring for her mother, also a northern resident, really found it necessary to be with her mother in Calgary for a period of several weeks. There were hotel and living expenses incurred and it took several more weeks for our health care system to make a decision, Mr. Chairman, fortunately in my constituent's favour, to reimburse her for her living expenses while she was out of the Territories caring for her sick mother.

The point that I wanted to make here, Mr. Chairman, is that I appreciate the decision that came down in favour of my constituent and so do they...By the way, it was several thousands of dollars; however, it took our system many weeks to make a decision on whether or not to reimburse this family for their expenses. I wanted to ask at least in our policy area, if not our funding area, is there some work that we could do to clean up the policy here; the definitions, the limitations on where we can go when we are covering our residents when they are outside of the territory?

This issue caused this family some hardship and quite a deal of stress and uncertainty while this decision was being made. I am wondering if the Minister could see if he could perhaps do some cleanup in that area. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the plan will be that when we come forward in the spring, as we talked about with the report on the review of supplementary health benefits, that we will have been able to address some of those issues. Of course we are trying to respond to many issues on any given day; the majority of them are satisfactorily handled.

Southern travel tends to present sometimes unique circumstances, but I appreciate the Member's concerns. We encourage people to make sure they have, if they don't have third party coverage, to make sure they have insurance for any kind of requirement to move between health facilities or to come back to the North. Invariably there is a unique mix of circumstances that sometimes cause exceptions and we try to respond to those as expeditiously as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will look forward to seeing what we can do there. I concur with the

Minister that when people do at least undertake to travel outside of the NWT, that we all have some responsibility to make sure that we have that kind of coverage. Many northerners do, through their employers. They do have some kind of additional coverage there, but oftentimes it is non-existent or it is inadequate. Perhaps one of the things that could be done is some kind of advertising or a reminder campaign to people who are travelling to make sure that we do take the responsibility to look after ourselves. I am onside with that kind of thing. That is all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister. That's okay. We are on page 6-34. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can the Minister just explain to me with regard to the Metis health benefits, with regard to the 2004-2005 Main Estimates which were $415,000; the revised was $415,000. In 2005-06 we are going to $945,000. Can you give me an explanation on that? Thank you.

Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is an area of growth that is causing us some concern. What we think is occurring is that the Metis Health Benefits Program, is supposed to be a program of last resort. What we are assuming, as we are trying to sort through this, is in fact many people are eligible under Metis health benefits or going first to the Metis health benefits and they are accessing the program and we are only catching up after the fact. This occurred mainly once the benefits were raised from 80 percent to 100 percent in non-insured health benefits. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak. That's good. We're on page 6-34.

Page 6-35, supplementary health programs, grants and contributions, contributions, $10.343 million.

Page 6-36.

Page 6-37, community health programs, operations expenditure summary, $62.289 million.

Page 6-38. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Moving right along here, again, I'm taking some aspects out of the business plan, Mr. Chairman. Looking at the forecast for acute care patients, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we want to do is to move or help patients move from very expensive hospitals and institutions after they have received treatment and care or their medications or whatever and then move them into home care situations. Mr. Chairman, I think our forecasts from 2003-04 suggested that we had 211 such cases where people were able to be moved from acute care situations into home care situations.

Our forecast for 2005-06 is for 265 such movements. That's about a 25 percent increase over three years and I just wanted to ask the Minister how we are doing in terms of capacity. Is this a realistic forecast or are we again maybe exceeding our reach a little bit on this? I just want to see how doable this is. Thank you.