The Minister has indicated the possibility of implementing this policy in September. I plead with the Minister to reconsider those dates as that leaves about eight months to implement this policy. Eight months of copied e-mails from the other Members to me in my office in terms of the questions that are out there for clarification by the seniors, concerns by different Members in the Northwest Territories in terms of some very technical and scientific economic formulas that have been used in terms of how do we implement this policy. I don‘t believe we can satisfy all these questions within this eight-month period. I think that this implementation date should be scrapped and the whole program should be looked at, reviewed, get scrapped, and see if it does make sense and they have some hard answers to questions that we are going to pose in regard to this whole program.
I do agree with the MLA from Mackenzie Delta that there are some fine issues we don’t need to bother getting into in terms of this whole thing about the medical health care plan, because there were certain agreements made from our grandfathers in terms of how do we take care of health under certain treaties with our people here.
The seniors in the Northwest Territories, we as Members here, and we’ll go right across the board, are the ones who need to speak up for them. That’s what we’re doing today. We’re protecting the need to heed their voice in this House on this issue. I didn’t realize the amount of concerns and issues that were out there until I started to see the e-mails in my office here and discussions that have happened. I thought we were doing something for the low-income support families. I thought we were going to help them. I didn’t realize the amount of concerns that seniors had about what we were doing. That caused me quite a concern.
I think, if anything, we should make some type of legislation for any seniors in the Northwest Territories. We should really be taking care of them as our first priority, number one. With fuel, with energy, with health, they should be given primary care in terms of how we run this government.
These seniors have walked a long life way before us. These seniors have guided us in some of our teachings as we grow up as to how life is going to be. Falling back on that, if these seniors and elders are the ones that are guiding us, shame on us for causing disruption to their well being, their emotions, their health, and for allowing this to happen.
I think we need to take a step back. I think that needs to be done. The timing is not right. The action is not right. I think we need to really think about how as a government, how as legislators we view our seniors, our elders. Really think about what that means. I had a discussion last night about how this government could be in a position to treat our seniors and elders in a certain way. How is it that we’ve come this far in our life that we can do this to our seniors or our elders? Where have we gone? The fact that the seniors are the fastest growing population in the Northwest Territories I think that’s the value of our elders. We place the values of the elders on our list of values in terms of how we treat seniors in the Legislative Assembly.
Our seniors live on a fixed income. I think by doing the proper thing, by having proper consultation, interpretation, I got a call from Tulita asking what this is all about. Can we get a plain language presentation as to what we are really doing with seniors? What are the impacts?
I plead to the Minister and the rest of the Cabinet to really think about this in terms of how we look at this overall. If it has any type of impact on the seniors we should really back down and support our seniors in the years that they have left with us is this world here. I think that’s something that should be considered in terms of this whole issue here. Maybe this whole issue here with the Supplementary Health Benefits Policy, I like to look at this issue here as having brought out some good in terms of how we view our elders and seniors in our government. This causes a lot of things to think about.
I will be supporting the motion to look at the bigger picture as to how we take care of elders and seniors in the Northwest Territories generally. What is our view of them? So they totally have my support from the people of the Sahtu.