Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday in this session there was some talk about the extended health benefits and the Minister indicated that she was going to be bringing back their direction on that. I look forward to that, but there were also questions on how the department plans to provide support for what we once categorized as low-income families who didn’t receive insurance or any support for health benefits from their employer. Now I understand fully that that is gone. That policy was rescinded, but there are still employees out there who do not have health benefits or whatnot from their employer. I still think that we need to find a way to help those employees who do not have coverage from their employers. Many of them are low-income families.
When I look over the principles in the report from the working group, one of the things it talked about is companies must be encouraged or required to obtain private insurance and then there were recommendations that indicated that employers must be encouraged, both directly and through the structure of programs, to provide third-party insurance to employees. All members of Chambers of Commerce have access to its group insurance program, public sector employees. To that end, I thought the department was committed to trying to help these employees who didn’t have insurance obtain some sort of insurance. I thought that is how we were going to deal with those what we once categorized as low-income employers who do not have coverage. Can the Minister confirm that that is still one of the directions that this department is going to be taking to help fill that need of those individuals who don’t have any coverage today? Are we still trying to actively encourage or are we looking for a mechanism whereby we can actively encourage employers to provide insurance? Is that still something that is underway? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.