Mr. Speaker, it should be a fairly simple process; however, I am continuing to find problems within the process itself. Like I mentioned earlier, I have a constituent who had to wait over a year to get another appointment. The process might be simple, but getting that appointment, if it is a specialty appointment with a specialist, might not be always available, so that simple process is not always there.

Can the Minister provide some information on how many no-shows the department has incurred over the past year for patients who are missing their

appointments in the NWT and southern travel as well? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

From my understanding, we are moving about 11,000 patients annually through medical travel, so the last number that I have from the Stanton Hospital annual general meeting was that the no-shows are 12 percent. Thank you.

With the 12 percent just for Stanton Territorial Hospital, but we are not talking about appointments that are missed down south or even appointments that got cancelled or people not making their flights because they couldn’t make the arrangements in such a short time period where they were approved for medical travel and approved for their appointments but couldn’t make it because of the late process in getting them the information. That 12 percent alone for Stanton, I am sure, didn’t come cheap. Does the Minister have, for Stanton alone, a cost for that 12 percent, where it cost the government for all these no-shows and missed appointments?

I don’t have the costs here. I’m sure that we would be able to determine the cost of what it would be when someone misses an appointment, but this is a missed appointment for an individual that doesn’t show up at the doctor’s office and a percentage of that time will come down to a cost. Sometimes they replace the patient with a waiting list, but what I can do is develop a cost for the percentage.

That percentage was a percentage that came from medical travel. It was all medical travel that includes the medical travel within the territory coming to Yellowknife, going to Inuvik, or also travelling down south to Edmonton. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Without just Yellowknife and Stanton travel, would the Minister commit to providing all expenses on missed appointments and no-shows in the Northwest Territories as well as southern travel for patients that went down south and this government covered the expenses and either the patient missed the appointment, they didn’t make it on time, or the appointment got cancelled? Would the Minister commit to providing us with those details?

Really, that money could be spent more effectively and we might even be contributing to the problem of these no-shows and missed appointments with the medical travel process.

Mr. Speaker, yes, I will commit to providing the information to the Member of this House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to keep the Minister of Health and Social Services hopping today. I’m sure he will get a break eventually.

Earlier in our June session, I asked the Minister questions on the status of efforts to reduce pharmaceutical costs. I did get some follow-up response from the Minister after the session, in which he indicated that work is underway to create a pharmaceutical strategy for the Northwest Territories. I would like to begin by asking the Minister what the current status of that work towards a strategy is. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In early 2012, Alberta Blue Cross completed an analysis and report on the NWT pharmaceutical strategy policy options for the Government of the Northwest Territories. This included a number of observations and recommendations to the government.

I know that that report had been completed sometime before June. I am wondering what the recommendations say. Can the Minister say what the recommendations were and what progress is being made to develop the strategy with those recommendations? Thank you.

I don’t have the actual recommendations from ABC with me here today; however, I do know that the plan is not to continue any work on the pharmaceutical strategy until after the end of this fiscal year due to other priorities in the department.

That, indeed, is a surprise. Members and committee have highlighted this as an issue, and we’re not aware, certainly I was not aware that this has been put on hold. So I’m wondering, the Minister, I believe, was going to take the ABC report out for consultation with, for example, the NWT Pharmacy Association, other stakeholders. Has that happened and what has been their input? Thank you.

No, we have not taken this report out. We’re looking at some of the key recommendations in there. There were about four or five key recommendations in there that we are looking at closely before we take it out to the public. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, this is very disappointing and a real lack of progress in an area that committee has identified

as important. So I just want to express my great disappointment there, and ask when we will see a draft strategy and if the Minister will table the ABC report in the House. Mahsi.

I don’t think there is any issue with the department tabling a report. I think we want to take a look at it to have a discussion with ABC on the recommendations that they made. They made some recommendations specifically to why they feel that the pharmaceutical expenses are so high in the Northwest Territories. So we need to have that discussion with them. We’d like to have that discussion with ABC one time before we do a tabling of the report.

I can commit to saying that we will have that discussion to ensure that the information in their recommendations made is based on information that is 100 percent accurate. So after we do that we will be able to table the report. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Earlier I spoke about the Child Tax Benefit being included as income in the Housing Corporation’s changes to their programming. Seemingly little changes that happen often have big impacts in our smaller communities and in this case that is such the case.

We had a commitment, as a full Caucus of this territorial government, to lower the cost of living, yet we make a change to impact parents and single parents like this.

I’d like to ask Mr. Premier, can the Cabinet review this situation where we are, in essence, clawing back the federal Child Tax Benefit. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The new public housing rent scales came into effect July 1, 2012, and largely at the call of all the Members of this House to have a system that was much fairer and treated all of our residents in housing more equitably. At that time the decision was made that to be fair, all sources of income would be included in the calculation, and to change from that would mean we’re going back to the old rental scale approach, back to a shotgun approach where all different types of support were exempted. So that’s why the new public housing rental scales were drawn up so that it would include these forms of income. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I recall the debate that we had two Assemblies ago and there was a reason we exempted these federal tax benefits to single parents and people of low income. So I’d like to ask, Mr. Premier, how is this consistent with our goal of lowering the cost of living for our residents by including Child Tax Benefit and clawing back the much needed little income that these people need.

On average a mother with one child receives about $300 a month in Child Tax Benefit. Two-thirds of that is exempt. One-third of that is included in income assistance. So that works out to about $100 a month and this is consistent with all across Canada. Thank you.