Sandy Lee

Mr. Chairman, the way to look at that is that we in the Territories provide medical travel more generously than what NIHB does. So the federal government doesn’t cover for the kind of medical travel that we do. So where we can get reimbursement from the federal government, we get those. Then our aboriginal Dene/Inuit residents are the same as all the other residents and our government provides what we would provide non-aboriginal people. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I have stated, the Joint Working Group, which was made up of six Members, came up with a number of recommendations and we are going to try and work through those and I am coming back with an implementation schedule/work plan on how to do them. It’s our wish to get it done within the life of this Assembly. Thank you.

As I stated, I will get back to the Member with the details.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Absolutely correct. I couldn’t say it any better and next week I am going to come to the table and say how we are going to try to get it down, as much as possible, of what needs to be done.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right that this issue was brought up. I believe I followed up on it with the status of what was happening at the time, but I don’t have the most recent updates. I will commit to getting back to the Member on that.

Mr. Speaker, that may or may not be something that this Legislature or future Legislatures have to consider. What we are doing right now is reviewing the government’s model and all of the chairs are fully engaged in working together as closely as possible, so that we are not working as eight separate authorities but we are working as a group. We meet every three months. We are looking at how to use doctors and resources better, how to find efficiencies in medical travel. How do we make sure that we collect all the money that is owed to us from anybody? How do we bill for services that we are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware, the health care system as a whole as the amount of deficit that amounts to about 10 percent of our entire health and social services budgets. That’s quite typical. Jurisdictions across the country are experiencing similar kinds of deficits. Had we not been able to get federal funding in the amount of $15 million over the next two years, that would add another $15 million. We were able to obtain that funding.

Mr. Speaker, as the Member stated, we need to find a way to right-size our budget. That’s the work we are doing. The deputy minister and all...

First of all I should clarify that I don’t believe there is a system in place or idea in place that Yellowknife Health or Stanton will purchase for everybody. Right now we have a bit of patchwork going on and this is why we have been discussing that at the Joint Leadership Council. We need to work as a group. We need to agree that we need to purchase together. And wherever possible we would use local resources.

There are other things like pharmaceutical drugs that are used in the hospitals, for example. I think the outlet in Hay River deals with supplies. Purchasing drugs, health centres and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That would be one idea that we would need to look into and I’m willing to do that.

The general idea behind finding savings from bulk purchasing is so that a smaller jurisdiction like the NWT could partner with as many provinces as possible. The one that we’re aiming for is the western provinces. This is happening nationally, but provinces like Ontario are big enough that they can find their own efficiencies by doing their own things. The NWT is signed on with the western provinces to see the big ticket items, probably ones not even a small business in the North could buy...

The group purchasing of drugs and equipment is an initiative that’s going across the Territories. I’ve had discussions on that with the standing committee. All of the jurisdictions are looking to see how we could reduce costs of essential pharmaceuticals and equipment. This government is engaged in that. Premier Roland was part of that discussion among the First Ministers. We are also part of that agreement of the western provincial Health Ministers. We are part of that agreement. Thank you.