I’m sure the Member would appreciate that our overarching goal in this House cannot be about reducing the deficit to zero without understanding what the impacts of that would be. I don’t think the Member would support reducing or eliminating programs at Stanton that would impact our residents and the regions across the Territories.
It is important that we work as leaders of the Assembly and work with our health care partners
and health care administrators to get advice from them on exactly where the cost drivers are, what are the things that we must have, what additional resources should we support them with, but what are the system efficiencies that we need to make decisions on. If that means moving some of the offices out of Stanton, if it means charging for parking or whatever else the Member mentioned, they have to be ranked with all of the other priorities.
These are very, very serious issues. Every day on the national media you cannot go a day without somebody talking about the pressure in the health care system. My part as the Minister is to make sure that I’m not trying to balance the budget for the sake of balancing the budget. That would not be the easiest, but it would be the most blunt way to do it. I think it’s important that we do it the right way so that we protect the core services and important services.