Mr. Speaker, I certainly do support the motion that is before us today and I’d like to thank the chair of the Social Program committee, Mr. Beaulieu, and Mr. Abernethy for all the work that they’ve done on putting this motion here. The work that Mr. Abernethy has done was quite extensive. It covered off a lot of bases. Also, I wanted to thank everybody who has contributed in one way or another to getting this motion here today and that’s the Yellowknife Seniors’ Society, the Northwest Territories Seniors’ Society and everybody else that’s out there that called us, e-mailed us, phoned us, talked to us on the streets and gave us their opinion of what the government was trying to do. I appreciate every bit of input that I did receive on this.
Mr. Speaker, I’m left wondering how the government could even take out such a controversial change in supplementary health benefits without first getting an analysis to these changes and how they would impact the residents. I certainly do look at this as a shoddy, poorly thought out and disjointed plan. Answers have certainly been hard to come by even for the Minister. How is it that the department and the Minister could take this out and cause such an uproar amongst our seniors and persons with chronic conditions? The department, the Minister and the government should be embarrassed for themselves over the lack of evidence, analysis, and figures associated with the proposed changes. The Minister can’t even tell us how many people we’re trying to help by trying to address the gap which is the working poor and low-income families. I agree wholeheartedly that this is something we should try to address as the government, but it
should not be on the backs of seniors and those with chronic medical conditions.
Mr. Speaker, I’m very sceptical of the September 1st implementation date. I believe that these
changes have been in the works for years and another six months over the summer is not going to do this justice. We need to get it right and allow the oversight of the Social Programs committee and other Members of this House to make sure that this is done properly. We owe it to our residents to get this to a stage where we can take it back out to the public. The move to September 1st to me is a way
for the government to dodge some of the tough questions that will come up, to take some of the heat off of the government. Mr. Speaker, I think it’s just a delay tactic and that’s why, again, I fully support the motion to look at advancing that implementation date to April 1, 2010, to allow the proper type of work, analysis and consultation that needs to go into these changes.
Mr. Speaker, once again, I just wanted to thank the Social Programs committee for all their work and Mr. Abernethy and everybody else who has contributed.