Thank you, Mr. Chairman. An issue related I believe to this aspect of our sort of a health insurance program was a decision made earlier or last year at some point I believe by our principal insurer to not cover the provision of...Sorry, let me start over again, Mr. Chairman. The decision was one that impacted the staff of the GNWT and I believe the federal government where an insurance provider changed their administration on this and where our staff were required to purchase non-drug supplies. Now, this would be things like test strips for diabetes or ostomy products. The system that we had in place before, Mr. Chairman, was that a staff person or someone covered under the GNWT plan could go to a pharmacy, purchase the materials, pay I believe 20 percent, which was their share and the rest of it would be administered through our Inuvik health care system. However, Mr. Chairman, because of a change in administrative procedure, staff who needed these supplies were now required to pay all of the cost and submit individual claims to the Inuvik office. Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day, these employees received reimbursement for the cost of the supplies. So technically they're not out of pocket. However, this had to have created a much greater new administrative burden because instead of a few pharmacies or outlets billing our health department perhaps on a weekly or monthly basis, we have probably got dozens of eligible staff persons submitting bills on a monthly basis and it just seemed to be a whole administrative step that was quite unnecessary and in fact may be causing some staff who otherwise would not have to pay for this through the convenience of their health care plan to actually be absorbing the cost of these supplies because it's such a hassle.

The other impact that was felt, Mr. Chair, by some constituents was that in the case where they may have needed several hundred dollars worth of supplies a month, their cash flow could not sustain this and the speed at which Inuvik was able to reimburse this was usually several weeks and their own personal households took a real hit because of this change in administration. Earlier this year or last year when I made some inquiries about it, the Minister was not able to identify really why it happened or what could be done to change it and I was wondering if anything new had developed on this file, Mr. Chairman.