Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to talk about the proposed changes to supplementary health benefits. Canada is a shining inspiration to the world. It continues to make great strides to represent itself as a beacon of hope, opportunity and fairness. I don’t believe the proposed changes to the supplementary health policy mirrors those principles in any way at all.

By taking away supplementary health benefits, this will go down as a great case study many years from now when people watch and wonder what happened. Why did the GNWT start acting like Ottawa? If the Minister and this Cabinet continue to circle around this policy, it will truly be a dark day for consensus government.

Let me be clear. Could our health care system benefit from a fiscal review? Absolutely. However, should a policy on supplementary health benefits passed by the last government tie the hands of this Assembly? It should not. If you will notice, some of the major distractions of the 16th Assembly have all

been around what was signed off by the last Premier and Cabinet, then this Cabinet continues to circle around them and protect them without any question. I believe they have lost their way, and at times I wonder if they can think on their own.

May I remind this House of some of those brilliant policy decisions this Cabinet has been following. Remember the butchering of the board reform? What I like to call now the Deh Cho Bridge-gates? And certainly now the bitter pill served up as supplementary health benefits changes? All things that are important and certainly need to be discussed in their own way, but not at any cost and certainly not to our residents.

When will this Cabinet work to develop territorial policies with a vision of the 16th Assembly and not

the ghosts of the 15th Assembly that keep haunting

or lurking in the halls upstairs? If you ask the Minister, she’ll say it’s not about the money. But

let’s be serious; who is she kidding? Of course it’s about the money. But when I ask her to hire an efficiency expert to look at how the department does its business just like big and small companies out there, it got brushed off like it didn’t matter.

The Ministers say it’s about the working poor. What’s stopping her? If this government really cared about the working poor they would have stopped dragging their heels over three to four years ago to provide coverage immediately to those working poor who definitely need it.

I view this Territory as a family, regardless of their background.

I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted