Mr. Speaker, we have a proposal before us and we have an opportunity to work on that. I believe, as I’ve stated already, this is
a difficult issue and it does take some courage and resolve on our part to make changes, Mr. Speaker. We cannot say that cover the working poor, cover those 2,200 people, find the money to do it, raise taxes, go without. We can’t continue to say that, Mr. Speaker. The Members here have an obligation to listen to everybody as well. I keep being told that I need to listen to everybody. Yes, we are listening to everybody and we have to make decisions. We are here to make decisions and sometimes it’s the hard decisions, sometimes they are really tough for the short term but it might have a better long-term effect. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, we need to be mindful of the fact that we have low income families who are having to decide about getting their next set of glasses for their kids, going to a dental appointment for their kids, and we have no means of accommodating those. And the fact of the matter is, right now as the supplementary program exists, it encourages people who can afford insurance to opt out of them because we put no responsibility on those people to go to the private insurance and we top up people who have insurance who have high income while we are ignoring the poor.
Now, Mr. Speaker, surely we could do something; work together in the short term so that we can address this and not say study this thing for another four years, seven years, 10 years, and let the world go by. The fact of the matter is, there are lot of things that we do for seniors. We cover home care in our seniors program, which is not covered elsewhere. So I think we have a good package to work with. I’m looking forward to working with the Members to see how we can improve this. We need to balance what the people’s needs are. Thank you.