Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A few weeks ago the Department of Health and Social Services launched a survey talking about some proposed changes to the extended health benefits. I gave it a quick glance, and I was pretty happy.

Mr. Speaker, multiple times in this House I spoke about the essential gap of the working poor in this territory who do not have any extended health benefits. It appeared the department had a plan to means test extended health benefits and provide them to those people. My only feedback at that time was that the income threshold was a little low, and we should perhaps increase...

Sorry, perhaps I need to get a clarification there. Is the Minister willing to publicly provide how much each community is getting under the funding we are seeing here? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that we provide this money and then we're working with a number of communities to provide asset management plans, and they're all kind of in a different stage of doing that, or hopefully I think a few will have complete planning done. I'm just wondering if that's a requirement of the funding or whether we are, yeah, requiring all communities to have asset management plans done. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see there's $29 million here, and it's going to 33 communities. We list all the communities on page 70 but we don't say how much they're getting. Is the Minister willing to provide public breakdown about how much each of these communities is getting? Thank you.

Thank you for that commitment. Can the Minister confirm that he will publicly provide that information. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Do we have a total cost for that project? Just concerned about how much money we're putting into what I assume is a Northview building. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess, in general, I support the new approach taken in these capital estimates to, you know, reduce the amount to what we were actually going to spend, and I note this has freed up quite a bit of room in our debt ceiling because we are not committed to borrowing the money for projects that, you know, seem to be completely behind schedule for a variety of reasons. But I just want to talk about the lack of information that I think is currently around all of our infrastructure and I believe it is information that would best be provided when we deal with the capital...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, yeah, I guess we're going to have find out some data there because I imagine providing prescription costs to people who already have specified diseases is more costly than, you know, just because you are a low income earner doesn't mean you get any prescriptions at all. We might bring thousands of people in who barely use the benefits. So I get there's some work to costing this. But to me the department is kind of completely gone out and engaged on, to me, what are separate questions. One, do we want to provide a means tested program; and two, do we want to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I believe the department will work to create, you know, a number of information items on each of the specified health conditions and work with those people to get the answers they're seeking moving forward. But I think as legislators, there's some fundamental questions about, you know, whether this is a good idea in the first place. And I think one of those is costs.

So my first question for the Minister of health is how much are we currently spending on providing extended health benefits to those with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I'll sneak one more in here which is this is the capital funding we give communities. I know we also give them operations funding and water and sewer. Does this mean that we are now going to provide a breakdown by community for each of the three funding groups publicly? Thank you, Madam Chair.