Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So it is about the redistribution of resources. It is taking resources which are now expended on behalf of those seniors who are in a certain income bracket and re-profiling those resources to a group of people who are not receiving them. So it is a redistribution of the resources this government has. But if we were given a number and we were told, Members of the Legislature, if we would commit to expend this much money, we could take care of the folks who aren’t being looked after plus we could leave the Seniors Supplementary Health Benefits the way they are. But how...

Mr. Speaker, because the seniors who are currently receiving the benefit of this program regardless of income who are over 60 years of age in the Northwest Territories have planned that they would have this coverage, have become accustomed to this coverage, has the Department of Health and Social Services given any thought to grandfathering those folks who are already covered by this and phasing in a change to supplementary health benefits so that younger people like myself, for example, could begin at an earlier age to start to plan for the fact that they may need to think about insurance or...

Mr. Speaker, based on the above, it is the position of the Hay River Seniors’ Society that the GNWT should place a high priority on the allocation of sufficient financial resources to support all NWT seniors not covered through other government programs for the provision of the existing supplementary health benefits regardless of their economic position or circumstances. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I also will be supporting the bill as it is brought forward today. I, along with colleagues, do so with mixed emotions, with mixed feelings about this. I hope we’ve learned some very good lessons from this approach that we took to this capital project. I think that once we decided to try to bring this project to reality through a way that could be described as -- I don’t know what the word is -- through the back door, for sure. This was not through the front door. This came to us through the back door and the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, you know, the...

Mr. Speaker, to be clear, what is driving this change to our policy on supplementary health benefits? From what I understand is the projected costs going forward and the sustainability of those costs and also the people who are not currently receiving coverage, there’s a group, there’s a gap, there’s a group that are left out. If it is the cost that is driving this review, I think that the issue of cost, which Ms. Lee has indicated, is not something easy to quantify. It is difficult to have a fulsome debate on this when we don’t know what those costs would be. Because those are the kinds of...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services primarily from the point of view of the concerns of my constituents in Hay River who are senior citizens.

Now, I first of all want to say that we have a remarkable package of services and support under our health and social services system for the seniors in the Northwest Territories. We have chosen, we have paid for that, we have done that. I need to know what analysis has been done about the impacts or the potential impacts of now pulling that back and not having that. We hear about the cost of living in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too, today would like to speak about the supplementary health benefits review. Mr. Speaker, the Hay River Seniors’ Society has met to discuss the supplementary health benefits consultation, and I had the benefit of attending two sessions with the seniors.

Hay River is the second largest community in the Northwest Territories and is the home of many seniors who have retired after careers served there and some have ended their careers after serving in various other northern communities. Hay River has long been considered an ideal place to retire due to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table a letter that has been sent to Minister Sandy Lee. It is from the Hay River Seniors’ Society regarding supplementary health benefits and signed by John Brockway, president. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the feasibility study has been concluded, as I said. The ability of the business to support all of the initial start costs, which I believe would be in the neighbourhood of $3 million, this work has now been done with the support of this government. So going forward, what would the next steps be to see if any of the funding that Mr. McLeod has referred to could be allocated for the establishment of a pellet mill in Hay River? Thank you.