Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to sort of change the tack of the questions here a little bit for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, we have a process issue here. If the policy to change the supplementary health benefits was adopted in the previous government, and if it is now being implemented in this government, what opportunity do we have to represent the views and concerns of our constituents to stop this from being implemented in its current format?
Mr. Speaker, we have about another five days of this Legislature sitting, this is due to be implemented before we come back here to sit again, but there’s nothing coming forward from this side of the House that gives us an opportunity to have a vote, and even if we were having a vote, the Minister has said today she can’t even answer us to tell us how much this is going to cost. Like, normally if we vote on things in this House it’s based on the principle of the service or the program or the infrastructure, and there’s a dollar amount attached to it. So we’ve said how much does the current Supplementary Health Program cost? How much will the revised Supplementary Health Program cost? We can’t even get those kind of numbers. We don’t even have a vote. This really is putting consensus government at risk here, I would suggest.
Consensus government doesn’t work if we, representing the numbers of people that we represent on this side of the House, are bringing the voice of our constituents to this table and there’s nothing to even vote on. So what do we have at our disposal? What can we do to stop this before the implementation date? Thank you.