Statements in Debates
Thank you. An area I have no expertise. I have nowhere to lodge that answer, so I’ll have to just trust the director here, which is fine. If I can jump ahead just a little bit because they may be related here on the next page, I see that we’ve increased $360,000 for population health contributions in the area of tobacco, and healthy choices by about $360,000. Is that part of this shuffling?
Thank you, Madam Chair. That’s all I have for this page.
Thanks to the Minister. That sounds like a plan. Is the Sahtu being done during this current fiscal year that we’re in? And if that’s the case, and we’ve heard the plan to go where there are lots of new babies, where in the budget do we have the proposal for expanded healthy families programs for this fiscal year coming?
I think I will leave it at that. I am interested in results, but committee is there to deal with that. I’ll look forward to that.
Mr. Chair, my next question has to do with the pharmaceutical costs. I know seniors are going up something like 8 or 9 percent a year in the Northwest Territories and we are known to use a lot of drugs, apparently. The costs are going up. I know the Minister has been working hard to try and find out what we can do in the area of pharmaceutical costs.
Is there anything yet achieved or where are we at in our work towards trying to achieve some cost efficiencies with bulk purchasing or whatever? I know there have been a couple of things happen with just a couple of drugs at a federal or national...
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to follow up on a couple of my colleagues’ questions. Just on this most recent one, I know the Minister is aware of my thoughts on this. I was disappointed that the contract didn’t go out for RFP when it came due and that there was a decision made to extend that. I don’t know if there was an additional cost to that or not.
I think one of the issues that we’re raising is often we have small airlines that are based in our smaller communities, but without support they’re not able to maintain their services like they would otherwise be able to. Of course, since...
Madam Chair, I didn’t mean any offence, but I don’t know the name of it. It was the intent of my question. I know that during the 16th Assembly, it was well recognized, and I wonder if this might be part of what my colleagues are referring to, that this federal transfer – I believe it was related to NIHB or indigenous residents – was only increased by an inflation of 2 percent per year. We were suffering a penalty of the difference between that and the actual inflation rate which was about 6, 7 or 8 percent.
Again, I don’t know whether it had to do with supplementary health or not, but I bring...
I just want to be clear. I know the Minister made a clear commitment not to drop these programs, if it’s not renewed that we would fund them. Obviously, if we get to that point, we’ll be asking some hard questions because the money has to come from somewhere. I just appreciate being on top of that and knowing what the timing is.
The emergency medical records, we’re hoping they will lead to some savings. I’m just wondering if that is still considered a potential as well as a more effective health care delivery. Is there a potential we will realize some savings from it as well?
Thanks to the Minister for those comments. I take his point there. My concern remains for Stanton. As the Minister knows, we had a tour of Stanton not so long ago, a matter of days or a couple weeks. I think there are some real obvious difficulties there. I guess I’m asking, how are we handling that situation and how is it not reflected in this when it’s clear that there’s a very inefficient delivery of health services at Stanton. Our needs are increasing. I think it was something like 20,000 when it was designed for 10,000 visits and it’s actually handling 20,000 visits now. If I could get...
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to follow up on a couple of things on the Territorial Health System Sustainability Initiative. The Minister mentioned that was coming to an end. He’s responsible for negotiating, hopefully, a new one. What fiscal year does it end, will it no longer be active?