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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department recognizes that prevention is probably the key to long-term savings for the department. Some of the money that we’re putting into the system on prevention, at the end of the day, downstream, will have positive financial benefits to the department. So that is probably the main thing.

In as far as medical travel goes, we recognize that maybe medical travel is not as efficient as it should be. There are a lot of pressures on medical travel. People put pressures on medical travel and sometimes individuals that may not be eligible for an escort, as an example, will request one and then there’s pressure put upon departments for the department to provide that additional cost. So, some of those things are there. Then we rely on Stanton to deliver it, thinking that Stanton was the best location for the delivery of the program, but because of a lot of the politics around it and everything, we’re now reviewing that one item, medical travel, one program, and we’re thinking about centralizing that at the department. Thank you.

Thank you, I appreciate the Minister’s response, but I’m referring to the budget dialogue, the voices of the people. More importantly, what opportunities for efficiencies in medical travel services has the Department of Health and Social Services identified as a result of such talks with residents, and are these recommendations in action today or are they coming soon? Thank you.

As a Minister of Health, I’m trying to develop things today that will have a savings in the future. I recognize that the Minister of Finance has done the tour on the ways that they can put the savings into the budget and, as the Member indicates, a lot of them are related to Health as a department, and consulting with my senior managers and finding out how do we think that we can meet some of the objectives of the people in the Territories and that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting together things that we think are huge cost drivers in the system and we’re trying to curb that now so that they will stop being huge cost drivers in the system. An example of that is addictions, early childhood development and many other items that we have in our budget that are working in that direction. Thank you.

Thank you, I appreciate the Minister’s response, but again, I want to focus my questions and response to the medical travel and the concerns the residents have. So a medical travel review has been promised for years now. What assurances can the Minister of Health and Social Services offer and to the people of the Northwest Territories that we will see an improved and more efficient service and travel policy in the life of the 17thAssembly? Thank you.

Thank you. I don’t know how long the promise of reviewing medical travel has gone on. I do know that at this time we are a bit behind in our schedule for reviewing medical travel. Like I indicated in the House yesterday, there are a lot of pressures in our system, a lot of pressures to do a lot of different things in the system. As we had the human resources in the department allocated to certain projects, this is one of the projects which is kind of stumbling out of the blocks, because there’s a lot of real high-priority issues for the department. We are planning to do a review of it and we’re planning on trying to make it more efficient. If the plan was to review it and we didn’t think we could make medical travel more efficient, then we probably wouldn’t do the review, but this is the thought that somehow, some way we will make medical travel more efficient and also dealing with the politics of medical travel too.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m still concerned and confused. We’ve heard the voice of reason of the people. We should treat these as ladders of opportunity to make meaningful changes, especially with what we’ve heard on medical travel from our residents. We’ve heard that the Minister is a great proponent of common-sense approach policies so I’m going to ask the Minister: Will we have a common-sense approach to this policy, in terms of using what we know from the residents and applying those today, so that we have meaningful changes to our Medical Travel Policy at this juncture within the life of this physical Assembly?

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.