Sandy Lee

Thank you Mr. Chairman, to my left is Ms. Paddy Meade, deputy minister of Health and Social Services, and to my right is Mr. Derek Elkin, director of finance. Thank you.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the Department of Health and Social Services main estimates for fiscal year 2010-2011.

At the outset, I want to identify that our system and the whole of the Canadian health care system is stressed to capacity due to a number of evolving challenges. These include changing demographics of both patients and care providers, rising health care costs especially in pharmaceuticals and technological advances in health care, recruitment and retention challenges, and the increasing prevalence of chronic disease nation-wide.

The current spending rate of our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Generally speaking, there is constant review and monitoring of services that we need in the Northwest Territories, especially in specialist services. Often they are sent out if the services are not available. If there’s a possibility that benefits could be had by having the specialists come up, then that is also done. So that’s an ongoing, day-to-day business that the Stanton Territorial Hospital and the medical professionals and the administrators engage in.

I’d be happy to make that commitment to provide the Member with what process is followed in reviewing special services.

Over the last two weeks or three weeks, we’ve received at least three letters from the Standing Committee on Social Programs to my department thanking us for the cooperation and collaboration that we are providing to the committee. So the Member knows anytime they would like information about anything we’re doing, we’re there. We are able to provide the info. The Member can have any data we are working with. We just wanted to have a reviewable, workable data done. I mean, that’s the work of the department and the department is doing that.

Also for the Members of the public and the House, I’d...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the last 24 hours I did send a communication to the Standing Committee on Social Programs to update the Members on where we are with the Supplementary Health Benefits Program. As the Members are aware, we heard loud and clear, when it was last introduced, that we need to take this back and look at it further and we have been doing that. We’ve had a working group set up of non-government organizations, including the seniors’ groups, I can’t remember all of the names, but they are stakeholder groups that have been meeting to work out the details. They are in the...

...with the Member. We toured all of the communities in Sahtu. Leadership did speak to us about a working relationship and interaction with the local health centres as well as health board. I’ll do my part to make sure that our board and our health care delivery system is accountable to our people. At the same time, I did encourage the local leadership and Grand Chief Andrew that there is... At any time when the community leadership have concerns or questions about the services or lack of, or good or bad or the ugly, anything, I think health boards and health centres will benefit from that...

The expectation is that we will have a product for the committee and the Cabinet to review within the month of February. That will give us, if all goes well, March, April, May, June to do consultations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That information will be made available to the Members. As we do, in all our dealings with the committee, this is a consensus government, we share information and we make decisions together. The program information the Member is referring to, our data is that we needed for the group to do the work. I think there should not be a misunderstanding about that. It’s about who in the North are eligible for supplementary health benefits, what are their needs, what are the costs, what are the numbers, what are people’s income levels, what are the groups and numbers of people that are in need of...

Once again, I would like to say that in Sahtu region and every other region in the Territories, we do have very dedicated, qualified, skilful health and social services staff working hard to deliver programs and services. Mr. Speaker, I know sometimes things do go wrong. Sometimes people are not happy with the response they received with their medical treatment or medical emergency or counselling and one of the things that we are seeing that we need to improve on and that’s also part of Foundation for Change -- I’m afraid I’m going to have to mention this document a lot because it has lots of...