Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, I just got back from the FTP meeting earlier today. The meeting went well on many fronts. We talked about many of the areas where the federal and provincial and territorial governments are working together, like pharmaceutical prices across this country. Working together we've brought the price of pharmaceuticals down by over $700 million annually and with the new partnership with the federal government, we look like we might be able to bring it down by $1.2 billion annually. So a lot of good work on that front. When it came to the health accord, we did make a significant amount of progress. We talked about shared priorities. I think all the federal government, the provincial government, the territorial government agree that we need to work together to put some more priority on homecare, aging in place, as well as mental health and addictions. Unfortunately, we're not prepared to move forward on that until we can straighten out the issue around the Canada Health Transfer. The federal government has reduced the amount that the Canada Health transfer increases on an annual basis by three per cent. So instead of six per cent increase, it's now a three per cent increase.
For us, in the Northwest Territories, that equates to about $1.5 million, $1.25 million in reduced funding available to fund healthcare here in the Northwest Territories. That doesn't sound like a lot of money, but other jurisdictions it's upwards of half a billion dollars reduced funding. The federal government had indicated they have no intention at this point of raising back to their levels at six per cent, and we have now escalated as Health Ministers this issue back to the council or Federation who has written a letter to the Prime Minister indicating that this is something that needs to be worked out before we can have any conversation about a health accord.
What the federal government is proposing and they have really only talked about some of the homecare funding is $3.9 split over all the provinces and territories over a number of years. We feel right now based on previous calculations, this might work out to $600,000, $800,000 a year for the Northwest Territories, but we're losing $1.3 million. So we're going to ask for, you know, $800,000 but it'll cost us $1.3 million. We need to figure out the CHT and that has been escalated to the Premiers and the Prime Minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.