Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to the Minister’s comments, a lot of times in the House, I think sometimes we lose the perspective of the territorial health care delivery system we have in the North. A lot of the time the focus is on the Yellowknife delivery system. I think that we have to ensure that the people outside of Yellowknife are being taken care of and that we are ensuring that their issues are being dealt with. So I’d like to ask the Minister, at some point can you make a statement in this House clearly identifying the delivery service that your department provides to the Northwest Territories as a health care provider. Thank you.

We do have a dichotomy of our residents going down to the Primary Care Centre and they’re concerned that they have to wait for half an hour on the phone for an appointment, whereas in many of our communities we have people who have to wait for days and if they miss a doctor’s appointment, it’s weeks.

So, Mr. Speaker, when Action Canada, the research tank, was up here, when they looked at the fact that we are delivering health care to 40,000 people in 33 communities over a land mass that’s four times bigger than France, he just said that is a challenge. Medical travel, medical technology and efficiency, we need to find those so that we do as much as possible to provide equitable health care service delivery all across the Territories. I will undertake to make a statement on that in the House, as per the Member’s suggestion. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services how much it costs her department to provide the supplementary health benefits to residents in the North.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe I’ll have to get back to the Member on that. I believe it’s about $8 million, but we often ask for about $3 million for supp health.

I’ll look forward to the Minister’s answer in terms of an exact figure. If it’s around seven or eight million, I want to ask the Minister about the supplementary health benefits that we do provide for our people in the North. What’s the percentage of increase every year of this special program?

I believe the incremental increase for that budget has been somewhere between 6 to 8 percent over the last number of years. Thank you.

Okay, so that looks like we’ve got a couple of million every year to support this program and to support the benefits of this program for people in the North. I want to ask the Minister about the sustainability of this program on a yearly basis in regard to some of the needs in the smaller communities and some of the basic access to health care. It seems like we’re going through crunching time. How much can we sustain and

continue on with this program? Can the Minister answer that?

Thank you. Sustainability is a question on all health care programs, including the Supp Health Benefits Program, and this is why I believe that the recommendations made by the Supp Health Benefits Joint Working Group is timely, because it’s tasked us to find ways to encourage people to get third-party insurance.

Mr. Speaker, as I have stated many a time in the House, this is one of the few government programs where some people can get the assistance elsewhere, and we need to encourage that. So a part of our work is to encourage employers to offer health care benefits and then individuals to take on private insurance where they can, also to extend retirement health care benefits when they retire. So there are many parts to the instructions we got from the Joint Working Group and this is why we need to do that in the name of sustainability going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister advise this House as to the type of dollars that they will be required to provide to the lower income families without any health coverage? The department surely must have done some assessment as to what it’s going to cost this government to provide coverage for the people that don’t have coverage as we speak today.

The working poor and the excluded coverage that the Member is talking about, we are talking about those who don’t have dental or vision care coverage, because they would get health care and drug coverage and such from the regular health care coverage we have. At this time we could only guess how many numbers there are. We believe there are about 2,000 people in the Territories without employer coverage that gives them dental and vision care. We cover $1,000 for seniors for dental and $250 for glasses every two years. So that’s the cost we’d be looking at if we were to cover them immediately.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, the policy to hold back a percentage of the contract is something that’s right across the government in all our contract practices. That’s to ensure that we have a product that’s free of deficiencies prior to releasing all funds. Thank you.

There’s probably different ways it’s written up, but typically at what point are the holdbacks released? Thank you.

The holdbacks are usually released upon the deficiencies being dealt with. Thank you.

The reason I’m raising it, I’ve got a business in my riding that ran into an issue with the holdback. I think the issue was that there were circumstances beyond their control and that led them to not cleaning up a site. I’m trying not to get into too many specifics, Mr. Speaker, but if there’s something beyond their control, will the department consider special circumstances with regard to that? Thank you.

We do take into consideration if there is an issue that has been unforeseen or an issue that comes about that is beyond our control. However, that has to be raised by the proponent and brought to our attention, and the rationale has to be drafted accordingly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad to hear that answer that they will consider mitigating circumstances, and I will follow up with the Minister on the specifics of what I was talking about. Just one more question on the holdbacks. How soon are they typically released? Thank you.