Thank you, Mr. Chair. If there is still time to get this in before we’re done here today... I’m just kidding.

---Laughter

First of all, I wanted to say that I also recognize from the Minister’s comments this is a huge

challenge. The costs in many of these areas are going up and some of the areas are beyond our control. I believe we spent about 25 percent of our budget on health and I suspect, based on my rusty knowledge of other jurisdictions, that it’s even been higher in other jurisdictions. Given the challenges that Mrs. Groenewegen has highlighted, that’s some sort of a marker that we’re doing not too badly, but clearly the challenges are rising.

I wanted to mention I really appreciate the support that the department is providing to some of the things like the social services child and family services review. That’s important support and it’s nice to see the consolidated primary care clinic coming to fruition here soon, I believe right about the new fiscal year.

I am concerned about some of the costs that we need to be planning for in terms of delivery that are required if all of the Joint Review Panel’s recommendations are approved by the NEB. I believe there are additional health care services as well as drug and alcohol treatment programs and facilities, et cetera.

Certainly we are facing the same trends in demographics. I am very happy to see the Alzheimer’s facility coming on stream here soon and I am interested in knowing how that will serve the need out there. I don’t know exactly what the capacity is here. I think we will be hearing about that soon and celebrating that facility, but what is the capacity of it in relation to the need that is out there and where are we headed on that given this changing demographics and trends?

The Minister mentioned rising health care costs, especially in pharmaceuticals. We know that in the western jurisdictions, the Premiers have agreed that they should get together and start purchasing drugs to help reduce those costs. That is an opportunity that I hope we are aggressively pursuing. Technological advances in health care, and again, we see amazing amounts of money going out the door for those technological advances. Some of those are real issues, others are things like handling information and so on, and I am starting to wonder how much we need with a population of 42,000. We can’t come up with some system by throwing half the amount of dollars at people instead of new computers and software, if we couldn’t actually make some savings there as well as some other benefits, and chronic disease.

I think many of the things Mrs. Groenewegen mentioned that I had on my list were about prevention, a focus of this Assembly, and I see the role for other departments to be integrated with health and social services here. We are doing some of that. But I think, again, as I mentioned earlier today, there are some real opportunities for integration with ECE programs, Justice, MACA programs, for example, ENR on the environmental

side. The Foundation for Change is something we have heard about and we are supportive of and I am looking forward to more discussions on that as it gets initiated and towards full implementation. But we have a record of such new thinking and strategies that have not been brought to full realization in the past and I know there is a nervousness amongst the public that here we go again, sort of thing. I think that there is an opportunity to make some progress on these major issues the Minister has raised, but I want to know that the commitment is there to see it right through to the end so we can realize some of those opportunities.

Finally, of course, the loss of the Territorial Health Access Funding is a big one and I will be interested in hearing how we plan to deal with that. The Minister ended by saying that we will need to choose those programs that will end and those that we choose to go forward with. If we do not get that support in March, what is the process for that and how will the public participate, if they will? I hope there is thinking being done on that. I think it is no surprise that the federal government is in a pretty good deficit situation. It would be nice if this worked out, but it doesn’t hurt to start thinking about that right now early on. I will leave it at that. Thank you.