Having a little private laugh about a meeting this morning. Yes, what we need is we need to do several things. One is that we need an increase to the Canada health transfer, and that's something that the Premier is working on at the Council of the Federation table. And you may have seen the ads reinforcing those messages that have appeared recently.
We are also negotiating with the federal government to continue to fund and, in fact, augment the Territorial Health Innovation Fund which is -- it's a fund that acknowledges that costs in the NWT, and this fund is available in Nunavut and Yukon too, but costs in these remote places are more expensive.
The Department of Health and Social Services has submissions in with the Financial Management Board which point out areas in which we are underfunded and in which we need more funding. The thing about it is that health is expensive to deliver. It is getting more expensive. The population is aging. They're sicker than they ever have been. We're a great distance from specialists' care. So there are cost drivers that I don't think we are going to be able to overcome without a big injection of cash from the federal government.
The other thing we have to do, which we've started with the supplementary health benefits, is we need to ask people who can afford to pay to pay for things that we're currently giving away. So that is, for example, not having any rational reason to pay all the drugs for somebody who has cystic fibrosis and none for ALS. That is a system that doesn't make any sense and a system that we're trying to fix so that it is both equitable and that people who can afford to pay do pay. Thank you.