Sandy Lee

Introducing an income threshold for determining eligibility about medical escort would be a policy change. If that’s what the Members would like to consider, that’s something that needs to be discussed and changed in the policy and we know how difficult it is to determine eligibility of house benefits by income. I personally believe we should help those who need the help the most, and often it’s those who are under low income.

Mr. Chairman, as I stated, we are reviewing the Medical Travel Policy and there will be some recommendations coming out of that. Under current policy there is room for...

I need the Member to tell me how we determine the working poor if we don’t talk about income. Who are they? It’s everybody who’s not covered, right? So if we’re going to cover working poor without determining income, that means we are covering everybody. Everybody. I agree that might be something that everybody wants to do, some people might want to do. But we’re no longer then talking about working poor. We’re talking about having universal supplementary health benefits for everybody who lives in the Northwest Territories. That is a good public policy debate to have. We don’t have working...

We’re back to page 8-21 and $41.920 million for physicians in the Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is Paddy Meade, deputy minister of Health and Social Services. To my right is Mr. Derek Elkin, director of finance. To my far right is Mr. Dana Heide, assistant deputy minister of operations.

My door is open, we can talk about it anytime. We do and we have and we will continue to talk about this. Thank you.

I don’t see why we cannot contemplate that, and if that’s what the Member would like to see, then it’s something that we, as the government and the Legislature, especially in transition could consider. I would caution, though, that I don’t believe there is any evidence that says that if you had one authority, that would be the silver bullet fixer to managing finances. Alberta is a recent example of that. They blew up the boards, they tried to find efficiencies, and I don’t think there is any evidence to show that they are in any way saving their money.

We have a governance review that we are...

Mr. Speaker, absolutely. I am always happy to go before the committee and have discussions with them. Thank you.

Mr. Elkin, please.

Yes, that’s exactly right. On page 8-21.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware and as the Premier replied earlier this morning, since that statement that the Member read out, there had been a workshop and there was very comprehensive representation from all sectors of our society and all departments across the government. It involves Justice, Education, income security, Health and Social Services and Housing. Anti-Poverty Strategy, the scope of the work has expanded considerably and it goes across the government. Because of that, the Executive, and with the entire Cabinet, has taken on the work of responding to that.

Mr...