Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some opening comments here. I’m going to limit my comments more around one part of the budget and allow my opportunity to be more detailed as we get more in depth by department.

The concern I have is that we’ve seen our social umbrella expand to greater deficits, and when you look at past budgets and even this budget, there is no economic balance that we see for the Territories moving forward.

In 2011-2012 we spent roughly $360 million in health and that constituted about 26.4 percent of our overall budget then. As we progressed over the years, we are currently, according to the main estimates here, at $363 million and change, at 24.8 percent of our overall budget. So we’ve taken, basically, an erosion as a total means of our expenditure in Health, which really, when you look at it, has to beg some questions. Again, our social umbrella requires continued investment, we have got forced growth, we’ve got a whole flurry of initiatives that have been identified by this side of the House and in Social Programs committee, and again, the concern we have is where are we going.

To top that off, if you look at out of the $363 million that we have in Health, about $100 million or so of that is medical travel. So when you really analyze how much money we’re spending on health, true health – and I’m not talking about transportation from facility to facility – we’re only spending about 17.9 percent of our budget in what I consider true health.

When you look at the economics of scale, when you look at what’s happening across Canada, most provincial jurisdictions, according to the last reports, are spending well in excess of 42 percent, or .42 dollars of their budget dollars on health. Most experts and economists believe that with the continued pressures on health and, as you mentioned in your statement earlier today, people are living longer and putting more pressures on the system. The anticipation is that budgets across Canada, provincial budgets, will have to exceed over .50 dollars, or 50 percent, of their budget on health.

So it’s clear in this day and age that although the Minister has come forward and has provided a tight budget, or a budget of restraint, health, and a question in my mind, is one of those areas that we cannot restrain. We’ve got to keep up with demand; we’ve got to keep up with forced growth; and we’ve got to keep up with that social umbrella that our people in the Northwest Territories are dependent on.

I think we’ll probably find out more in the details segment when we get to the Department of Health,

the fact that we’ve got to look at some key areas to keep up with those expenditures, and those areas will be definitely in prevention and promotion, and we believe that the chronic disease management is definitely suffering, and a proper management model was not mentioned, per se, in this budget.

I think the people will look to this government to create some framework around specialized wellness, of course, and mental health and addictions. What we’ve got before us and what has been presented is more of a piecemeal approach, and we were hoping that the 2013-2014 budget would have had more adequacies to achieve what I considered our Assembly’s goals and mission. I think the NWT residents expect us to deliver on these most important priorities in the specialized wellness.

I think, more importantly, in concluding my area in Health and Social Services, there has been some degree of investment in this budget with respect to midwifery. You know the studies have been done. There has been some very serious and solid recommendations made, and I think the time has now come for our children to be born in their homes and in their communities. I believe that the amount of money that has been put aside is really a good gesture, but really by no sense or any means an era that we’re going to see midwifery in this term, or at least in this fiscal budget term, which is unfortunate.

Madam Chair, I know I’ll have a lot more details as we proceed. I just wanted to open up my comments on a bit of my disappointment on the fact that I believe we’re losing ground in health care, and I’m hoping that we’re able to look at some opportunities in the near future through any type of supplementation by this government and this Minister to put more emphasis on those areas I mentioned before. So thank you, Madam Chair. Those are my opening comments.