Thank you. Page 8-23, activity summary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A little follow-up here. For this one-time funding, I believe we are responsible, then, for coming up with our own dollars for these services subsequently. What is the plan for that? Obviously the planning would have to take place during 2014-15 if it disappears at the end of that year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A number of these items were covered in the THSSI funding that I described yesterday. We’ve put it in 2014-15 and the Department of Finance has agreed to cover these on a one-time basis. The original plan with the THSSI funding, we were always supposed to have an exit strategy. That exit strategy was never fully developed and/or implemented. If we had cut many of these programs that are in place now without having some sort of transition plan, we would have adversely affected these services going to all NWT residents. So we were able to put money in for this year and we have to come up with some sort of plan to move forward on those for upcoming fiscal years.

I believe the THSSI money is not necessarily meant to cover these things. They will be starting again in one form or another. Has THSSI been approved at some point?

We’re not sure what the federal government is going to call this $70 million, but THSSI, as we know it, no longer exists. They have given us some broad statements that we were able to get out of their budget statement about what these dollars are intended for, but it doesn’t seem to directly correlate to things THSSI funding in the past. It may, some of it might, but at this point in time we’re not 100 percent sure. When we know and we’re in a position to pursue those dollars, we will certainly be having discussions with committee. I can say they have been very clear up front that no money will flow unless there’s a clear strategy. These dollars are not intended to be put into ongoing programming, but are designed to give us the dollars we need to build a system that will meet

needs. So it’s more short-term funding. It’s not permanent funding in any capacity.

I know some of that was repetitious. I hadn’t got the full picture on that before. Again, there’s nothing new here. The Minister said himself we were to plan this out of our base levels in the past. We failed in every instance. The Minister says we’ve got the same expectations again, but I haven’t heard anything that tells me how we’re going to do that or that we are. It sounds like we’re just going to ignore it again. We’re obviously not thinking about it. I’m looking for something that says, federal government, we’re hearing you. We’ll do the work and this is how we’re going to do it, or we’re going to hang our hat again on the hopes that new money will come forward. We need to know that. What model are we doing here?

The Member is correct. We need to make sure we have a plan that includes an exit strategy and that we use these dollars to help improve the system and put structures in place that will control things that the federal government will require. As I said, in the budget address by the federal government, they identified the $7 million over three years for new targeted and time-limited fund to increase health services in the three territories in priority health areas and to reduce reliance on outside health care systems and medical travel. These are the parameters. We will get more detail and as we get more detail, we will sit down with the Finance Minister to figure out how we put in a plan and what programs we move forward with that will meet the targets that they have recognizing that anything we do cannot become part of the base.

It is time limited with the purpose of improving our services in the long term. We need to have a plan, otherwise they won’t give us the money. We need to make sure there’s an exit strategy or they won’t give us the money. I’m confident that we can do this.

This THSSI funding seemed to drag out from the THAF days to the THSSI days and they always said you need an exit strategy. A lot of work was done, but as far as having a comprehensive exit strategy to get away from those dollars, it wasn’t done to the degree that maybe would have been appropriate.

I think it would be great if these dollars continued to come, obviously, but in the meantime it makes me very nervous. We’ve been through this before. We were all in the panic when it happened in the 16th because we are using this

temporary money for basic service delivery. I think we have made some progress. I’m hoping midwifery, for example, is no longer in that one-off funding.

I will leave it at that. I don’t need any more information right now, but perhaps the Minister can

recommit, if he hasn’t already, to work with committee on this as soon as he has information. I would think committee could play a role in contributing towards decision-making on this. Thank you.

I have already committed to doing that and I agree with what the Member says, we clearly need to have a plan.

Committee, we’re on page 8-23, activity summary, health services programs, operations expenditure summary, $209.007 million. Mr. Bromley.

Sorry, just one more question. As Stanton gets more and more cooped up and people are stumbling on each other and working out of closet space and so on, are we finding that we’re using other facilities more? Are people being sent south more and so on? How are we staying on top of the impacts and trying to mitigate this situation at Stanton Territorial? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do prefer to keep our residents in the Northwest Territories and we do have a territorial bed management program that helps us, where possible, keep our residents here in the Northwest Territories. We continue to use services in the South – MRIs, other things – and where load is there, we will send our residents south for programming, but we do our best to keep everybody in the North as much as possible. We don’t offer every service that’s offered in the South, so from time to time our residents do have to go down.

Really the point is here that we only hear about the challenges and kerfuffles when we visit the hospital as committee. I think it would be useful to hear from the Minister some objective assessment of this situation so that we can help him make sure that situation is managed. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll take that as a comment. Page 8-23, activity summary, health services programs, operations expenditure summary, $209.007 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Page 8-24, activity summary, health services programs, grants and contributions, $158.361 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you. Page 8-27, activity summary, supplementary health programs, operations expenditure summary, $27.3 million. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just have one question here. During the 16th I know the Minister

was well aware and the deputy minister, as well, well aware that we had a protracted investigation into supplementary health benefits and potentially looking at charging residents a certain amount to access our supplementary health programs.

I’ve certainly heard from some of my constituents, maybe not a lot of them, but I’ve certainly heard from constituents that it’s time that we start not means testing necessarily but charging a small fee for the extra services that we provide as a government.

I’d like to know whether or not the department has any kind of work that they’re doing, or perhaps work that they are considering doing in the future, to look at either charging a service fee for access to services and even pharmaceuticals and/or means testing. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This was certainly a big issue in the 16th Assembly

and it’s something that needs to be done. What I have committed to is we will do work on this, but we need to complete a few of our other priorities and make some human resource room to actually conduct the work. If everything is being done on the side of a desk, nothing gets done, and there is a significant amount of good work that we’re doing in the department to improve services to our residents. This does need to be done, but it’s a lower priority for us at this time. But we will continue to research and gather data so that when we’re ready we can make informed decisions on moving forward.

Thanks to the Minister. I can appreciate that you can’t do everything. I would like to know where it’s at. In terms of a time frame, is it something that you’ll get to before the end of the 17th Assembly or not? Thank you.