This is page numbers 4577 - 4596 of the Hansard for the 16th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was need.

Topics

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The manifesto is crystal clear. The Health Minister’s ambition to trim health benefits is obvious. Raising the cost of living for our constituents is obvious. Creating consultation that appears more like shoehorning the public into a direction by their design is certainly clear.

Can the Minister of Health and Social Services explain to me how this does not look like a predetermined process that has a predetermined, scripted outcome?

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

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

Sandy Lee

Sandy Lee Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member stated that he read the document on the website, but I don’t believe he understood what he read.

---Interjection

Sandy Lee

Sandy Lee Range Lake

We’re not dictating anything. We’re asking questions like number 2: Would assistance with co-payment costs based on income make a difference to your preference? Yes or no? If no, why not? What are your concerns? Which income brackets do you think should pay a co-payment? Under $30,000, $40,000 to $49,999, $50,000 to $69,999, all the way up to $150,000 and over?

We have at least 10 questions. We are most open. We are most willing. We’re most engaging. We’re just presenting the public with the basic facts about what the Supp Health Program is as opposed to the core Canadian health care. It’s a program that in the rest of the country that are income tested and that very few people get. I say once again, we are going to have the most generous Supp Health Program anywhere still. Right now we have a group of people who don’t have access and we are engaging the public as to how to improve this program.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

I guess I’ll have to spell it out a little slower so that the Minister picks it up this time. A predetermined process does not start out with an automatic implementation date. It has a closing, a consultation date, and allows the consultation discussion to drive the implementation date. The last point on this issue is when you tell people what income level it should start at, it tells me that the department has already decided that income testing is going to be a factor. It doesn’t say should it be, period, no questions asked.

What has this mysterious group that exists out there, what has this Minister done in terms of health regulation, ministerial directive, Cabinet directive, to pass any direction to provide immediate services to this mystery group we keep hearing about? Because that could be done. What work has been done on that issue?

Sandy Lee

Sandy Lee Range Lake

Number 3 tells that answer. So I would encourage the Member and everybody else to look at this questionnaire that we posted on the website. The Member is suggesting, and others are suggesting, that we have a predetermined course of action and that we have a date in place and that we’re shoehorning the public into a decision, which is absolutely not true.

Number 3: Knowing what we know now about the costs and needs of the various existing uninsured health benefits programs, the Department of Health

and Social Services is considering rolling the three programs this paper has discussed into a single program that is available to all Northerners not eligible for another program. Eligibility will be determined by your income, instead of age or specific condition. Do you agree?

I cannot think of another example of a more open, better designed, better evidenced, more of a two-way dialogue than this consultation process. I ask the Members to give it a chance. Give our public the benefit of the doubt that they have the intelligence and the knowledge and the interest that they will come out, even if it is the Easter weekend. Or if they don’t have time, they will respond to us on the website. I have faith in the people. I ask the Members to have faith in our public as well.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

The ones with the shoehorn of course don’t feel shoehorned. Try being on the side of the shoehorn, not the ones with it. The reality is the Minister is blaming Members of the House -- this side of the House, we have to be very clear -- for not supporting that group of people who don’t have benefits. This Minister immediately could pass a ministerial directive that says this number of people need to be covered and this is how much it costs. How much money would it be to provide coverage to this mysterious group of people, as well as how many people? They can’t seem to answer that. Can the Minister answer that officially in this House?

Sandy Lee

Sandy Lee Range Lake

I blame no one. I am just asking to let us have that dialogue. This is a very important conversation that we need to have. We need people to understand what supp health programs are, who they are provided to, what they cover, what the other jurisdictions do, and how do we go forward in terms of sustainability and protecting the integrity of this program. I believe at the end of the day that we will have the information that we need from the public.

In terms of, say, how much will this cost, I have said a thousand times in this House that health care services are demand driven. We pay what people need. Once the policies are set, we pay for whoever gets the service. For anybody to say how much it will cost, if anybody knew that answer, I think they would be a lot richer than I am at the moment.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yet again the side of this House that has the shoehorn seems to be proceeding with blinders. They have no idea how much this will cost to cover this group that is mysteriously not covered. It doesn’t sound like they even have a clue how many people need to be covered. Will this Minister commit, before any decision is made, that we will identify the costs associated with this and with the number of people

who need this assistance? Because we could do it immediately, we could provide support if the Minister could provide that cost, which she refuses to.

Sandy Lee

Sandy Lee Range Lake

The other side of that is the money is voted in this House. We could, as a House, decide that we would provide supplementary health benefits to anybody; we pay for dental, we pay for drugs, we pay for homecare, we pay for anything, just because we want to. Then the Member will just need to pass the budget on that.

That’s not how we do our business here. Supp health benefits programs are very generous in this jurisdiction. We will continue to keep it that way. We have a group of people who are excluded from it and it is very important for us to have a very informed, evidence-based discussion with the public about what it is and how do we protect it and how do we make the access fair and equitable. We’re going to do that by the end of this consultation process.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

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

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since 1921 to 2010 it’s about 89 years since we’ve had oilfields in the Northwest Territories. In 1998, the oilfields started to develop and earn some profit and revenue from the Norman Wells oilfield through the pipeline that’s going to Zama. I want to ask the Minister of ITI what has been done to ensure that some of those revenues being generated from the development of the pipeline through the Sahtu region, that these revenues will reach the people in the North and the people in the Sahtu.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Norman Wells oilfield revenues have been a longstanding issue and irritant for this government. I guess it started when the land claims were negotiated for both the Gwich’in and Sahtu, which had provisions for the sharing of royalty revenues. As the Member knows, the Norman Wells oilfield revenues were deemed to be, or understood to be, royalties, but we took the federal government to court to get them to formally agree that those were royalties. The federal government went to court and lost and in order to pay the outstanding royalties to the Gwich’in and the Sahtu, the federal government said they could only get the money if they signed a cease and desist order whereby they would no longer recognize Norman Wells royalties as revenue. So

they are saying it’s equity and we’ve been stuck ever since.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

I want to ask this Minister why this government has not pursued an equity position with the Mackenzie Gas Project.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

We haven’t pursued it because we don’t have the money. To put it bluntly, the royalties keep accruing to the federal government. We’ve been pursuing, collecting it through the devolution and resource revenue sharing negotiations.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Okay, well, that opens up a whole bunch of questions, but I will stay on this one here. Is the Government of the Northwest Territories working to negotiate some type of agreement with Ottawa in relation to the Mackenzie Gas Project in terms of receiving some money through equity or royalties or some regime?

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

We are supporting the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, who have negotiated a one-third interest in the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. That involves, as far as I understand it, aboriginal governments of all the land claimant groups.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

In terms of the whole issue of the oilfields and the pipeline, I want to ask the Minister if his Cabinet has ever looked at the issue of dealing with the ownership of the oilfields. I know the federal government has one-third ownership of the oilfields as part of the terms of the GNWT asking if they can have a percentage of that share of the oilfields.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

My understanding is that has been on the negotiating table from day one, with regard to devolution and resource revenue sharing. The federal government has different views on how the Norman Wells revenues or equity position should be dealt with, but it’s something that will have to be negotiated as part of devolution and resource revenue sharing.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve been waiting on the supplementary health benefits issue because I’m sitting here listening to the debate and dialogue. It is very easy to sit on this side of the House and ask for the world. It’s kind of a little bit irresponsible, though, because we know that it is not sustainable to give seniors over a certain age unlimited, unfettered, non-means-tested access to supplementary health benefits. We know that. We know it cannot be done. So where is the

creativity in the Department of Health and Social Services to look at things?

If we want to address the working poor, as we coin the phrase, those who do not work for the government, those who are not covered by other types of plans, when we look at that group, as Mr. Hawkins refers to them, the mysterious group, it’s not mysterious. I know who those people are. I’ve been standing up talking about them in this House for the last 15 years. Why could we not look at an insurance program that would be affordable? We could even cost share the premium to access something through an insurance program so that those folks could access supplementary health benefits in that way.

When it comes to seniors, rather than saying when you get to a certain age or a certain income bracket there’s nothing, why couldn’t we come up with something creative, something graduated where we say if you are in this income bracket, you are fully covered; if you are in this income bracket, we will cost share with you; and when you’re in this income bracket, darn it, you’ve got enough money you can pay for your own stuff unless it’s catastrophic and completely unaffordable. Where is the creativity in a plan that addresses this issue? Because we know, I mean, there’s nothing worse than ingratitude, and, Mr. Speaker, the people of the Northwest Territories should be very grateful for the services provided by this government through the Department of Health. But where is the ability of this department to look at some creative solutions? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.