Whatever she wants to do and she’s suggesting these policy changes. As it is now, the Supp Health Policy that would have come into effect on November 1st has been rescinded.

Everything is status quo until we change anything. If we need to include anything or change anything else, that’s a policy change. So we need to do more work on that and I’m making a commitment, as I did in my Minister’s statement, that we are working to come back with a proposal on the recommendations made by the Joint Working Group and anything else. Until we bring in new policies, the status quo remains.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I guess we have to agree to disagree. I’m puzzled that we need a policy change or a new policy in order to implement some of these efficiencies and changes to supp health and chronic conditions coverage.

The last thing I want to ask the Minister is whether or not... There have been a number of changes that have been mentioned in her statement. I have to assume, I’m hoping these are not all the changes that are being proposed. Are these the short-term changes and are there medium- and long-term changes coming?

Those are the changes that I will be coming forward with next week with a time frame and short-term, mid-term and long-term implementation plans, what we need to do and work together on in order to implement the changes that were suggested in the Joint Working Group and where we could move forward.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we heard over the last number of weeks and the press release that has gone out to media advisers from the Gwich’in and Sahtu, statements by the Tlicho and the president of the Dene Nation, Mr. Bill Erasmus, that we do have a disconnect between the aboriginal leadership and the aboriginal

community regarding how this devolution process will affect them. I would like to ask the Premier about the olive branch handed out to formulate a meeting between yourself as the Premier of the Northwest Territories and the federal Minister of Indian Affairs and trying to find some solution to these outstanding issues that have been raised. I’d like to ask the Premier what we are doing to try to engage the aboriginal leadership and try to find resolution to this standoff.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process we’ve engaged in is we’ve already made calls to the regional leadership to see if we can pull a regional leaders’ meeting together to discuss this issue. We’ll be following up with a letter today.

As you noted, there is a deadline that has been in place. I’d like to ask the Premier if that deadline will be extended to allow for this meeting to take place before we have a drop-dead date where they either respond to participate or don’t participate. Can we at least attempt to have that meeting before we come to that conclusion? Also to keep the Members in the House informed.

The deadline established was that through the chief negotiators’ joint letter that went to the leadership. We’ve started to see those responses. We’ve always had a meeting planned for near the end of November. We have now contacted their offices to see if we can move that up. We’ll follow up in hard copy. The deadline was put there in the sense of a response back from the regional leadership to the AIP. A decision going forward has yet to be made. In a sense, the comment was, can you respond back by the 31st on

how you would be a part of it as the AIP states, and Members are aware that there’s always an open door for them to join, whether it is on the 31st their

indication of what are the concerns or issues they have. Many of those we can address through our regional leaders’ meeting.

We have heard a lot of issues, whether it’s regarding the cap that’s been put in place or the aboriginal 25 percent or the whole area of how the powers are going to be shared, and what exactly the aboriginal role is going to be with regard to the negotiations and implementation of this arrangement. I’d like to ask the Premier if he is dealing directly one on one with those aboriginal groups that have those issues and are trying to find solutions to resolve these outstanding issues and trying to assure both the Government of the Northwest Territories and the federal government that these outstanding issues have to be resolved in some format. Would you deal directly with those aboriginal groups one on one and find resolution to those issues?

The agreement-in-principle that is before the regional leadership for their comment and feedback as well as that is before the federal government and ourselves, allows for that government-to-government bilateral process to proceed once an agreement is signed. There is a process built in to have the bilaterals with each group as we progress, if that is the decision made.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I stated in my Member’s statement, this issue is more than simply a transfer of power from one government to another. It is a transfer of responsibility to indigenous people in the Northwest Territories by this transfer and the affects it’s going to have on the indigenous population under treaty rights, land claim agreements, and Section 35 protection rights. I’d like to know if we have an aboriginal lawyer or aboriginal legal counsel to look at it from the aboriginal perspective on aboriginal rights and inherent rights. I’d like to ask again if that issue is going to be dealt with prior to a decision to sign off.

This process, as I said in my statement, of the engagement, role, involvement from chief negotiators to legal counsel from the aboriginal groups, they have been involved in this. They are well aware of what’s in there. We are as well. In fact, as I stated, we stand by the government’s position on self-government and the inherent right. We stand by that. This agreement-in-principle will not take away authority from any aboriginal group that has their rights established through treaty and the modern treaties, being the land claims and self-government agreements. We stand by that in our commitment to continue to work with those. This agreement-in-principle is talking about Crown lands that are in the North that would then be the authority and regulations, and how we deal with those would be decided by Northerners. Their role, again, is clearly spelled out and the continued role of their involvement as we progress is spelled out in the AIP.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For an hour this morning I was very pleased and very optimistic. When the Minister came out and said they’ve rescinded the Supplementary Health Benefits Policy that was great news. Unfortunately, since then I’ve heard a bunch of my colleagues ask some questions and I’ve heard responses from the

Minister, and that optimism is pretty much gone. Mostly from one statement.

The Minister said that the problem with supp health is that people just don’t want changes to the supp health. That is not true. That is not true at all. I’ve heard people talk about changes. People do want changes to supp health. People who have catastrophic conditions are concerned about that. People want people with low income to be covered. I think the Minister has missed the point.

Coming to where we are today, the Minister has indicated that she’s going to make further announcements regarding implementation to these changes next week. Great, but we don’t know what changes those are. Could the Minister tell me what those changes are? What changes are going to start being implemented?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Members, it sounds like they’re hung up on that sentence in the Minister’s statement that said I’ll be making announcements regarding the implementation of these changes. What changes? What changes are the three paragraphs prior to that sentence? Changes: to require the use of third-party insurance as the first option; a pharmaceutical strategy to include generic drugs, drug pricing and efficiencies, and cost containment; a pharmaceuticals procurement distribution and access; also changes to eliminate grandfathering that happened in 2004. May I remind all the Members on the other side, those were the exact suggestions that were made in the Joint Working Group report and the communication.

That’s what I wanted the Minister to say again. I know she’s already said it and the answers are yes, yes, yes, and yes. The problem is that each one of those are so broad and so big that before anything can be implemented, some research has to be done around those on how we’re going to implement it. What aspects of each of those are going to require implementation today, tomorrow, and in the future? To tell me that they’re going to start implementing something right away seems pretty premature to me.

That’s the point I think we’re trying to make. We don’t oppose what you’re saying, Minister Lee. We support it. We agree with those things. What we want is to make sure that information is researched and how we do those things is done. I don’t see that here. Is the Minister, when she’s talking about an implementation plan, is she talking about the implementation of a work plan and how we’re going to research those things, design those things and implement those things, or does she already have something she wishes to implement? It’s a subtle difference but it’s an important difference.

These are important items. We take these recommendations very seriously. No, I will not be announcing on Monday that we are implementing these. I agree with the Members that these need work. We have knowledge in the department and I will be coming back on Monday to set a time frame and the process on when we’re going to get this work done and how we can work with the other side on implementing them. I will be consulting with the Members and sharing information and work through these ticket items, because those are important and we want to get them done.

Optimism is starting to creep back up. That is basically what we needed to hear, is that this is a work plan and not an implementation plan. A work plan may have implementation steps further down. We can’t implement things without it.

I want to talk to another statement that the Minister made that caused me some concern. Based on where we are today, we’re status quo, which is unfortunate but it is what it is. We do have to move forward on finding some ways to help the low-income people and I think that should continue to be a priority. But the Minister said that if we didn’t rescind this policy, that she was going to make changes on Monday for the low-income people. We’ll check Hansard tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure she said we would implement on Monday. I’m curious, what would she be implementing on Monday? Because I, on this side of the House, have never seen any program, policies or procedures about anything that the Minister was planning to implement on Monday. When she said that, quite frankly, I was very surprised. Thank you.

The Supplementary Health Policy that was rescinded would have come into effect on Monday. That’s what I said. But it’s not. It’s gone. I said that.

On Monday I will be making an announcement about how we move forward to look at the recommendations made by the Joint Working Group. What I was saying was had that Supplementary Health Benefits Policy not been rescinded, we would have been able to have coverage for those working poor that we were trying to extend the coverage to. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.