Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Nadli.

I’d like to thank the Minister for making a commitment, but I’d like to take it a step further. Can he commit to an immediate discount of rates to seniors, in terms of using the daily campgrounds, effective immediately? Mahsi.

That would be difficult in that we have contractors operating some of our parks around the Northwest Territories who would be looking for a certain revenue stream in the operation of those parks. So for this coming season I wouldn’t be able to commit to that, but as I mentioned to the Member, for next season we could work with contractors that aren’t offering discounts to senior citizens and see if we can come up with a plan to offer discounts to senior citizens in our campgrounds. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Justice and I want to follow up on his statement from today about a Community Safety Strategy.

I was really pleased to see, and I totally agree with the Minister’s statement, that the people of the Northwest Territories know their needs and priorities, and communities should take the lead on determining how to address issues. I think that this is going to be a great initiative and I just would like to ask the Minister some questions about getting a little further information about this particular strategy and what it means.

My first question to the Minister would be to advise me and the House on how this particular strategy was developed. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What has been developed, the strategy is basically a skeleton or framework that will be able to go into the communities, we’ll be able to work with communities so that they can set their priorities based on this framework. The framework was

developed in cooperation from a number of different organizations, including the Department of Justice, the RCMP, as well as input from communities, so the types of things that they would like to see that will help them develop their own individual strategies. So it’s more of a framework that will be able to be used by the communities to help them set their priorities.

Thanks to the Minister for that explanation. I guess I would like to know if the Minister can tell us at this point – I recognize that it’s a framework – what sort of content is going to be within each individual community strategy. What sorts of activities are you anticipating the community would undertake? What sorts of particular initiatives or what services would a program require to set up their Community Safety Strategy?

That would be presupposing what is specifically appropriate for every individual community. The framework offers the tools to help them set their priorities based on resources they have in the communities, resources that are available regionally, resources that are available territorially. Communities need to set their priorities and each community will have their own individual Community Safety Strategy. I’d hate to presuppose what anyone would look like, given that every community in the Northwest Territories has their own unique realities.

I guess I also don’t want the Minister to presuppose, but I was hoping I could get a few examples of the sorts of things that might be in a Community Safety Strategy.

I’d like to know from the Minister, in terms of implementation within each and every community, is this going to be an initiative or a strategy that is going to require a certain amount of funding? Is it going to be a request within the budget for funding for community safety strategies?

There are a number of programs that already exist in the Northwest Territories. It’s about creating access to the different programs and services, whether they are health programs, whether they are education programs, or whether they are justice programs. We need more money. It’s difficult to say at this point in time. We will have a better assessment of that after we have created the pilot in these first three communities, Tulita being the first community that we are going into. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

He mentioned three communities, and there’s one mentioned in a statement and I would be interested in knowing the other two.

My last question to the Minister goes to how a community can get a Community Safety Strategy. If

my community, for instance, wishes to have a Community Safety Strategy, what steps does my community or I have to take to ensure my community gets on to the list to get a Community Safety Strategy? Thank you.

I would like to know what the three communities are as well. We did have the three communities identified. We had discussed them in business planning. Since that time, we’ve had a couple of changes and we have had to reconsider the communities that we are going into. We haven’t decided fully on what the other two communities are going to be, but we are working on that right now. We hope to have those communities listed in short order. So for now, it’s Tulita. We will get back to the Member as soon as we can with the names of the other two communities.

I forget the other part of the question, so I’ll sit down. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Well, she’s out of questions, so we won’t get it until tomorrow. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement today on the renewal of NWT health care cards, I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if he could articulate for us some of the challenges that they have faced in the process and how those challenges have been addressed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Health, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is working with all of the health authorities and also the health centres right across the territory to try to make this renewal of health cards as smooth as possible.

As of the middle of this month, we were to process 11,600 health care cards starting in January 2013. We have about an 86 percent compliance. We have about 86 percent of those processed, so there are a lot of health cards being done. Overall, we need to process about 38,000 health care cards in 2013.

For the most part we think it’s going fairly smoothly. We do have some glitches in the system, but for the most part it’s going well. We are trying to ensure that people are not left without coverage. I think that’s the main point. Thank you.

When there are glitches and people are not getting health care cards in a timely manner, what we have been doing… Constituents have been providing us with a list of names and scenarios and we’ve been taking that to the Minister’s office. Some, as Mr. Bouchard had

indicated, have not had a lot of success in contacting the insurance office in Inuvik. Mailboxes are full when you call to leave a voice mail and so on. I’m sure this is a big undertaking for them, too, but what would we tell people, what would we tell our constituents if they are not receiving their health care card in a timely manner, if they are frustrated with the process? What would the Minister like us to do? Would contacting MLAs, going through his office, is this a satisfactory method of resolving this, in his opinion? Thank you.

Clients who have applied for renewal will continue to get coverage. The fact that they may not have the physical health card in their hand at the time may not be that important. I recognize that individuals want to have that card in case of travel, but for the sake of seeing a physician or getting pharmaceuticals, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Individuals, if they apply and their health card is not there on time, has not arrived by the time their old health care card has expired, we are still going to be able to provide coverage for those individuals.

That is very good to hear, and I’m sure the public will be glad to hear that, too, because it is a little different than when I questioned the Minister during the last sitting of the Legislature. That is a little bit different.

Has the department, in response to the concerns about a lack of health care card, revised the policy so that people who haven’t got a physical health care card in their hand are still receiving coverage? Has this been an amendment to the policy in light of these problems?

The anticipation is that things would go smooth and that an individual that gets a postcard 45 days before their birthday will then have, essentially, some time – I believe it’s four months even after their birthday – to apply. But their coverage is intended to continue as long as they have actually applied, whether they have the card or not.

That is just something that we’re doing now, because, of course, ideally, people would apply for their cards, go through the regular system, the card would come on time and they would be covered. That was the planning that took place. That was the intention. We were planning along the lines of success.

However, since there are some failures in the system, we’re saying that if you’ve applied and the individuals know where you’re trying to get a service from the doctors, from the drug stores, then we will continue to cover. People that haven’t applied or people that don’t have an old card but are indicating that they are a resident that would be eligible will have to pay up front and then bill for

reimbursement if they are eligible for a health care card.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure I understood everything that the Minister just said, but it seems like in there somewhere he said that if you have applied for your card and you were a holder of a card previously that you will get coverage. I’d ask the Minister if he would commit to communicating that out to the folks at the front line so that there’s no confusion when a person who is a bona fide NWT resident shows up and their card has not come in the mail yet. If that could be communicated somehow, because there does seem to be some misunderstanding about that even on the front-line worker level.