Glen Abernethy

The changes to the Canada Health Act affect all the provinces and territories in exactly the same way. The magnitude might be different because of the size of the police force and the RCMP in each of the jurisdictions. The Ministers of Justice across the territories raised these concerns at one of their FTPs and it was pretty clear that the federal government was going to be moving ahead with this regardless, and those costs are now, as Mr. Dolynny indicated, downloaded on to the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I talked about the Minister’s Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness and the 12 individuals who helped us with that. Today I’d like to recognize Paul Andrew, who is the chair of the forum, and thank him for all of his hard work and that of his colleagues. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Since April 1, 2013, we have been providing those services and paying for those services. Prior to that we were providing those services and invoices were sent to the RCMP to recoup our costs. That no longer happens.

Families were covered by RCMP before and they’re covered by us now.

It would obviously depend on the degree that the RCMP expands or increases their services in the Northwest Territories if they choose to do so. We provide these services to all residents of the Northwest Territories and as the population of the Northwest Territories changes we’ll have to amend our budgets accordingly to address increases and/or decreases in the population.

With the changes, there were around 256 positions employed by the RCMP that were affected and, on average, that works out for us and the coverage we have to provide and pay for now to about $228,000 a year.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today are Debbie DeLancey, my deputy minister; as well as Natasha Brotherston, the manager of policy and legislation, Department of Health and Social Services, and Mr. Thomas Druyan, the legislative drafter.

I am pleased to be here today to address Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Medical Care Act.

The Medical Care Act establishes that “medically necessary” services provided by a doctor are insured services.

The act also defines who is eligible for insured services and expressly excludes some residents from coverage under the act. For example, members of the Canadian Armed Forces are not eligible for payments of insured services under the Medical Care Act. This is because members receive similar benefits under relevant federal legislation.

Until recently, the Medical Care Act was consistent with the...

I’m not sure of the exact date or the exact status of the evaluation, whether we had started or whether we’re just waiting for the program to conclude its full year, but I will get that detail for the Member and committee.

As I indicated previously, the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers of Justice did raise this with the federal Minister. This was an area of concern. They were seeking continued financial support as opposed to having these costs completely downloaded on to the individual jurisdictions like the Northwest Territories. The answer was no.

Mr. Yakeleya’s third description is pretty much it. It’s done. We’re not getting additional funds from the federal government to cover these costs, and for us on average it’s been about $228,000 a year that we’ve been able to invoice back that we will no...