Bob Bromley

Health services are at the top of every Canadian’s list of priorities and Northerners are no different. Our residents receive many excellent services from our dedicated and often over-tasked health care professionals. My constituents still speak highly about the treatment they receive for emergency and catastrophic health issues. It is our preventative and diagnostic programs and access to specialists that are failing. Let’s see some real progress on these very real issues.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to speak briefly to this. The Member did indeed use the term “doublespeak” yesterday. I think it is my impression, or my reading of his use of the term was that this Minister frequently does say things that can be taken in two different ways. When we are trying to have a discussion that clarifies things, that does not do service to the issue. Whether or not the Minister does that on purpose, I am not saying, but nevertheless, she does tend to use things that can be interpreted in two different ways. That does not add clarity to the issue under discussion...

Thank you. The Minister had mentioned the wait times and wait time standards, per se. We don’t have such standards. That seems odd to me and a slippery slope. If we don’t have standards, of course we’re going to continue to allow those to slip and slide without correcting them, and obviously they need correcting. So I’m hoping the Minister will actually put those standards in place so we can prevent that.

I’ve repeatedly asked the Minister to say whether analysis is being completed on the increased cost of administering a co-payment system, and this information has never been supplied. I’ve...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. The Minister reported on statistics yesterday, in response to oral questions, that outlined some really horrible wait times for diagnostic and specialist medical services. She did report that our volume of services has gone up. I’m happy to see that, but that still leaves too many people waiting. She made a reference to our wait times being the same as down south. Again, I want to discourage in this, as well as in the supp health question, trying to be the same as the rest of Canada. We expect better...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today’s worries are focused on the Minister’s proposals on supplementary health, but we should not lose focus on the problems that devalue the quality of our current health services.

One such challenge is access to diagnostic services. Long waiting lists for essential testing and treatment is an issue familiar to every Member. Literally hundreds of patients are waiting as much as two years for audiometric testing, colonoscopies, bone density testing and other essential diagnostic services. Patients who get through the diagnostic line-up then join the line to see...

I would like to call Committee of the Whole to order and we have before us Tabled Document 4-16(5), Executive Summary of the Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project. What is the wish of the committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.

I guess the word should be put out that if you’re not president of an association, don’t bother contacting the Minister on an opportunity for input

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Last year when the Minister was directed to go back to the drawing board on supp health, she promised to go back to the beginning and carry out consultations with no preconceptions such as a means test. Yet at her departmental community meetings, Mr. Dana Heide said he was directed to base the proposals on an income threshold model. Can the Minister explain how this could be a fulfilment of her promise, please?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are so many places to start here. I want to follow up on my colleagues’ questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I’d like to start with the last theme there. Groups and many of my constituents were opposed to the supplementary health benefits proposal. They’ve raised the issue of whether the changes will pass the test of a human rights complaint. The changes being proposed are unwise, in my mind, but implementation and administrative costs and the lost service to the sick would be a further waste if we go ahead without legal advice when indeed it...

Mr. Speaker, we must prove our talk with action on a fundamental shift to affordable, sustainable energy that protects us from world markets, with clear targets to cut carbon emissions. We must shift focus to support local and lasting business opportunities, especially biomass. Our greatest efforts must focus on meeting our citizens’ most basic needs. Cutting living and energy costs, sustaining our health programs and educating our next generation of citizens are our obvious greatest priorities.

As we turn now to the business of implementing policy and legislation that is good and responsive to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.