Thank you. I thank the Minister for that. The Minister states quite clearly that Cabinet listens to what the public has to say and listens to what Regular Members have to say. Then the obvious question is: will the Minister take another look at the proposed changes and defer the implementation date on these program changes? Thank you.

Thank you. As the Member knows, this has been consulted, and studied, and analysed. We have the final proposal out here, Mr. Speaker. My preference is to work with the Members and see how to make this workable. There was a question about the fact that MLA Abernethy raised, and I think MLA Groenewegen raised it too, we don’t want to have a system where everybody dumps their insurance. The program as it exists now, because we cover universally to anybody who is over 60 or with a chronic condition, we have a system where everybody drops their health insurance. We have one of the lowest rates of personal insurance holders in the country. The fact is, you know, we do income tax for all other essential programs in this government. Not housing perhaps, but we have income support, we have rental subsidies, fuel subsidies, we test the income on seniors’ fuel, Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of essential programs in this government already that we income test because resources are limited.

The fact of the matter is, we have a program where we are encouraging people not to insure. The last thing is this is the only thing where people could actually go elsewhere to get help before they come

to the government, which you can’t say about lots of government programs that the government has to offer. Thank you.

Thank you. I heard the Minister say earlier during the proceedings that she’d be tabling a document called What We Heard from the Public and I think that’s all fine and good, but what the Minister should be tabling in this House is what the government intends to do with what they heard, and I don’t hear her saying that. It’s fine and dandy to put what we heard, but what exactly is the government going to do with what they heard? I think that’s the important thing here.

We talk about sustainability. The Minister says these proposed changes are to lend sustainability to the supplementary health benefits going forward and the health system in general. How could this be possible, Mr. Speaker, when we know the people are going to dump their third-party coverage? It’s going to cost the Government of the Northwest Territories more money, in addition to that in the area of administration of the program. How can the Minister stand up in this House, in front of the Regular Members and say the proposed changes are going to add sustainability to our health care system going forward? Thank you.

Thank you. Obviously government and the House hears the people and we make decisions and take actions according to what we heard and in the interest of all the people that we serve. I think we’ve had much discussion about that already. I need to answer MLA Ramsay’s question...and I just lost my thought. Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given the divisiveness of this subject and the fact that it’s dominated the discussion here in the House, obviously we’ve had members of the public in the gallery the few days we’ve been back, the Minister has received numerous letters, we as Members have received numerous letters. Again, I’m going to ask the Minister, will she park the implementation of the changes until after the next territorial election and let the public decide? I suggested this to the Minister the other day, if she thinks she can get re-elected campaigning for these changes, go door-to-door in your riding and see if you get re-elected. That’s the true test of whether or not the public wants to accept these changes, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Yes, Ms. Lee, sit down. I will disallow that question as I did the last time. I don’t think it’s appropriate to have those types of suggestions put to the floor of the House. Next on oral questions I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few more questions, as well, for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I’d like to follow up on the questions that I’d asked previously. One of the town hall meetings was held here in Yellowknife and during that town hall meeting -- actually, no, that’s not true, it was at a meeting that was held at the Baker Centre -- one of the attendees at that meeting stated in reference to the proposed program that’s put forward that the government can do better than this. Somebody else then suggested that this is probably the best that this government can do, that they are maxed out on creativity and capacity. I, unfortunately, somewhat have to agree with that statement.

The Minister several times has said we are doing what we have to do. She’s also said we are looking at it, we’re looking at who should pay for that and how we should pay for that. It suggests to me if you say we are looking at it, that there is a possibility for change. And we ask the questions whether or not change could be made and the Minister has consistently said no. So I guess I would like to then ask the Minister if there is no possibility of changing this policy, why does the Minister and Cabinet feel that we have to do these changes in the way that they are proposed? Thank you.

Thank you. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Given the contentious and difficult issue we are dealing with, I don’t think we could have everybody agree to the proposals being put forward and it can’t be about coming up with a program that everybody is happy with, especially if you are realigning programs. At the end of the day, government has to make some choices and we have to make decisions together about how do we make sure that we have this program that includes the people that are currently excluded, minimizes the impact as much as possible and to see how we make this program not eat up other programs unreasonably, because as Member Yakeleya and others have suggested, we have an obligation to provide core services to our people, Mr. Speaker. We will and I am committed to continue to work with Members to see how we improve the proposal that we have before us.

I think I heard the Minister commit that she’s going to work with Members and that’s the first positive thing I may have heard. I would hope that the next thing that she’s going to do in committing to work with Members is to take some of the suggestions from Members and change the policy and change the proposed plan. The Minister has stated as well across the country that we have the best plan of any across the country and these

changes are going to make us equal to other plans across the country. I guess I have to ask the Minister, why are we aiming low? Why are we not aiming to keep the plan that we have and not reduce it to something else? Thank you.

Because, Mr. Speaker, we are far from aiming at anything low. I am going to table this Slave River Journal article written by a small newspaper agency in Fort Smith. They took their time to do a cross-country survey on what is available. Even the Yukon has a program for seniors that are over 65. Every program is income tested. Every program has deductibles. Why do we have to compare with the rest of Canada?

The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, health care is important. We need to be able to fund it. We need to focus our energy on core health. When we are talking about delivering programs in small communities and across the Territories, things are more expensive and challenging here than anywhere else. We need to look at a broad spectrum of programs that we need to provide for health care for all our communities, for all our people. Thank you.

I guess I don’t really have a response to that and I’ll just leave it at that. I think we could argue the philosophy in that article, on the comparisons in the article, for quite some time.

I need to ask the Minister, again, I think I’ve asked this before but there are any number of different ways that this coverage of people who are not currently covered could get funded. I want to know from the Minister why that hard work and that analysis was not done. There was hard work required to find the different way to do it that didn’t marginalize certain people and I don’t believe that’s been done. So I ask the Minister why they couldn’t do the intensive analysis, the intensive search for savings within the government and find a way that would allow us to cover the people at the lower end and not disenfranchise or marginalize some of the people who will have excessive costs. Thank you.

Because, Mr. Speaker, this is the non-insured program and the non-insured program is not where everybody gets service, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s insured service. Mr. Speaker, we are looking at including people who are excluded and asking those on top of the income threshold to make a contribution.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is concerned about high cost of drug expenditures and we know that there are some outliers and there are some people on the border that will be hard hit. So we are working on and those things are addressed by a cap. So that’s something that we need to address with the Members on the other side and which I’m willing to discuss. Thank you.

Your final question, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to mention that I believe later on today we’re going to receive a number of petitions protesting the changes to the Supplementary Health Benefit Program. My understanding is that the names on these petitions total about 3,000 people. That’s some 7 or 8 percent of our population and that’s a significant number.

So I’d like to ask the Minister: in hearing that there are 3,000 people who have concerns about this program, what does that say to the Minister? And I would ask her to comment on this information and will that have any impact on her determination to proceed forward with these changes? Thank you.

I’m sure if I read all of those 3,000, which I will, I probably know almost all of them. This is not impersonal to me. This is not just an issue that we’re talking about. This is very near and dear to me, as well. I talked to the people. I know who was at those meetings. I know people who are writing me. I’ve known them for all of my life here. I understand that this is a very, very pressing issue and dear issue, Mr. Speaker.

So we will continue to work on this package. We have done everything we can to… We have done a lot of work. The Department of Health and Social Services spent a majority of their time for the last three years working to make sure that we come up with as generous a program as possible. This is a consensus government and I am looking forward to working with Members on the latest proposal we have to see how we could improve that. Thank you.

The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the number in front of me, but we have a number of staff that run the Supplementary Health Benefits Program. We believe that the new program would cost $200,000 to $300,000 to administer. Thank you.

I have other beliefs on what the cost of the system will be and I think the Minister is aware of those. The current system provides equal coverage, full coverage to both Metis, seniors and

non-aboriginal seniors. Under the new proposals, I’ve heard from the Minister that will no longer be so. In fact, we will no longer give full coverage to non-aboriginal seniors. Can the Minister explain to me how that can possibly be seen as not being divisive, a racially divisive policy? Thank you.

I don’t believe there is anything I can say that would make people change their mind on that issue. The fact of the matter is we do have an NIHB program in this country and in Canada that the federal government funds. The GNWT funds Metis health benefits that is on par with NIHB. The changes we are trying to make are because we have a non-aboriginal program that excludes a whole bunch of non-aboriginal people that need us, and that’s where my focus is. We are coming up with a program that is as generous and as fair as possible to cover all non-aboriginal people into that program. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’ll just remind the Minister that our Elders Parliament was clear on that question and I refer her to their sage insights on that issue. I’d like to ask what input from the Minister’s stakeholder panel did she include in the current proposals. Thank you.