Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is a lot of work being done on this area and I would like to ask the deputy minister to update the Members. Thank you.

I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, are we still on 8-17?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On this issue, I, as Minister, committed to the Standing Committee on Social Programs to seek input from the public, obviously. I have just had a substantive update on that. I am going to be seeking to go to Cabinet for Cabinet input. I will also be seeking to go to the Standing Committee on Social Programs as soon as we can organize that. We are ready to do that now and also we need to have consult with the public working group on that. So we are in the process of communicating that to the standing committee, so we can give the committee members an update and seek...

Mr. Chairman, I could tell you that this is something that is of interest to us. It does take two parties to negotiate. We will continue to encourage Nunavut to come to the table on this issue. I will be talking to Minister Curley on this issue as the DMs have been working on it for the last while. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is right; we do get people dropping in our health centres and hospitals. Anyone who doesn’t have an NWT health card, they would be billed to their host provinces and territories and the billings are determined by national agreements that we talked about earlier. There’s a very set number of dollars that we are allowed to bill each other. So the money is recouped. Thank you.

The number of 15 cases, that the Member stated, in a population as small as 583 is huge. So I need to get more information on the names and just get more information on that to start with. The department will work with the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority to look into this further and be able to get back to the Member on what our next steps could be on that. Thank you.

I’ve not been to Alaska, but I have had the occasion to look at the health care services available in the Yukon. I’ve also had the opportunity to go to Navajo. I have to say that I would compare our care to anybody in Canada. This is not about aboriginal care in our communities, I believe.

As we have already stated, this government spends $326 million. I think our aboriginal people are a power-base in the Territories. They sit on all of the authorities. They are the chairs of our authorities. They have a say on what gets done. This House is made up of aboriginal leaders. If you look at the H1N1...

This is one where we have a longstanding agreement with the federal government. I believe it was signed in early 2000, or somewhere around there. There’s a built-in escalator there at 2 percent. That’s the funding formula that’s being used.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t know if I can add anything more than what I have already said. We are involved. We are part of the responding process for the government through Environment and Natural Resources. Thank you.

Yes, I would be happy to do that and get back to the Member as soon as possible.