Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think there are a lot of good items and a lot of money well-spent or planned to be well-spent in this budget. I just want to touch on, in no particular priority, some of the items that I will be exploring as we go through the budget with Health and Social Services.

Long-term care, I think, is something that the department is heading in the right direction. I am very pleased with the fact that we are able to provide long-term care regionally, the fact that people from Fort Smith can go into long-term care in their own community, Hay River. Hay River encompasses my community of Fort Resolution. Yellowknife long-term care encompasses the other three communities in my riding of Detah, Ndilo, and Lutselk’e.

I was very pleased to see that Behchoko is increased, doubled in size, for long-term care, and then recently the discussion about providing some continued extended care in Stanton Hospital, I thought that was good. I think complementing long-term care is homecare services. I think that we do need long-term care, and, ultimately, the department and the Minister know that we will need increased long-term care. Homecare services, our position as Regular Members is homecare service is going to slow the need for long-term care, so we certainly want to see increased work in the homecare services area.

NIHB is also something that I am interested in hearing about. It is the Treaty Indian people like myself, eligible for NIHB. We have that group of individuals, some Treaty people are covered with Non-Insured Health Benefits; Metis have coverage extended. There are seniors that have coverage. Individuals that are indigent have coverage and then there is that group that have to buy their own private insurance. Maybe looking at that as a possibility for trying to cover everyone in the NWT one way or another is something that we should look to.

I am also interested in hospital stays. There has always been something that I thought we should look at targeting, and that is who is using the hospitals and at what cost and why. Why are they using the hospital? If someone is just old, I understand that, but are there other groups that are using the hospitals more than they should be? Maybe looking at that.

I have always felt that prevention was a really big item for this department. If they are looking and starting to concentrate on which groups are smoking, which groups are drinking more, and which groups don't have access to healthy foods, and which groups are not exercising, for that matter. I think that type of knowledge by the department, and they probably do have -- of course they have all that information, but to employ it in a big way, I think, is very important. Language services, Aboriginal food at the hospital I think is something that we should continue and maybe increase in some fashion.

Of course, a very exciting part of the department is the health transformation, especially the territorial doctors. If we could get all our doctors living in the NWT, it is good for many things. It is good for the economy. You start to employ all the doctors right in the Northwest Territories, whether they are living in Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik, Norman Wells, Fort Simpson, Behchoko, it is still one way or another. If they can't live in Behchoko, then they could live in Yellowknife. It is better than them living in Nova Scotia. I think that is something that the department is making headway into, that area as part of the health transformation. I am pleased with that.

We have to increase the amount of work that we are doing in mental health and addictions. Mental health and addictions is a huge cost driver for this department. I have talked to a lot of the community nurses, and it is the same thing in the small communities. I think it is very similar in the city and similar in the regional centres that mental health and addictions is probably the biggest cost driver that we have in the whole health system in the NWT. I think some of the work that is being done in early childhood development, prenatal, healthy families, healing on the land are all initiatives that this department should be behind 100 per cent. If there is money needed in those areas, those are huge returns on investment, especially early childhood development, prenatal. The returns on those investments are huge.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course, are seniors, supporting the seniors. Seniors who are living healthy are also important. I know this department supports seniors, supports persons with disabilities, and of course I encourage that.

I think we need to look at Child and Family Services and how we manage that whole portfolio. I think that it is important. I know that there has been quite a shift in this department from working with children in care in their own homes. I think that is important. We still have children who are being apprehended. We still have the high need for foster care in the communities and in the regional centres and in Yellowknife. I think that is something that maybe we should really, really look into why. Why do we have that? We hear national numbers saying that Child and Family Services have more children in foster care right now across the country than they have had at the height of residential schools. More children than in residential schools. That is a huge number.

When we hear lots of stories about kids going into hotels and things like that and the tragedies of some of that down south, we haven't done that here, I don't believe. I think that we have a system here that works well. Of course, my belief is that we have social workers from the NWT. I think that will improve the system.

Medical travel, again, is something that keeps going up all the time. This department has invested into some sort of tele-health. I know I have seen it at the emergency, where it works very well with the system, with nurses in the small communities having a direct dialogue with the doctors at Stanton or the emergency. I know the name of that has changed, and I forget what the name of that is now, but I know it is a very good initiative.

The last thing I want to touch on is chronic diseases. It is something, I think, during the deliberation of this budget for health and social services I will be talking a bit about how we are dealing with chronic diseases as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.