Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is Mr. Mark Aitken, director of legislation. To my right is Ms. Lisa Cardinal, director of policy and planning. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to introduce Bill 1, An Act to Amend the Veterinary Profession Act. The proposed amendments to the act will ensure the legislation complies with national licensing standards. This will enable the Government of the Northwest Territories to better meet its obligations under the Labour Mobility chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade.

The proposed amendments will require that all veterinarians who apply to be licensed to practice in the Northwest Territories hold a Certificate of Qualification upon successful completion of examinations set by the National Examining...

The policy is there now. Any expansion of the policy would require additional money and that would have to be the decision of the Legislature as a whole and the government as a whole.

Mr. Speaker, we spend lots of time talking about the sustainability and affordability of our health care and health care related costs. Obviously if we want to expand that and try to find new money, it would have to be done as a partnership between this side of the House and that side. Certainly, I’m willing to explore that, but at the end of the day, it would have to be a decision of the entire Assembly. Thank...

I believe the challenges and the problems that families have to go through has to do with the fact that we do not have a separate pot of money or program to accommodate families who want to be near those who are in care. All of the health authorities try to do their own way to accommodate them. Sometimes they get help from local bands or they look at every bit of money they have to do this, because we do not have a program and funding for that. So if the Member and the committee are interested in pursuing this, I’d be willing to… The Member knows that any changes to policy or establishing of a...

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize Mr. Timothy Riviere and his mother, Heather Riviere.

Thank you. The proposal that we have, that’s under discussion and we will continue to have that discussion to hear out what the Members have to say. This policy has a suggestion for a cap, and also we are working on a catastrophic drug coverage and other programs, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

One of the reasons why we want to make this change is to bring in those people who are excluded. Yes, the option is there to bring them in without making any changes to anything else. Then we have to put in extra money. We believe it will cost two to three million dollars to bring them back in. But the thing is, as the Member for Hay River South mentioned already, the health care budget has been going up at about 8 to 10 percent every year even if we change nothing. The cost of delivering, the cost of human resources, the cost of health care is going up by 8 percent. Our budget has doubled but...

Because, Mr. Speaker, this is the non-insured program and the non-insured program is not where everybody gets service, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s insured service. Mr. Speaker, we are looking at including people who are excluded and asking those on top of the income threshold to make a contribution.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is concerned about high cost of drug expenditures and we know that there are some outliers and there are some people on the border that will be hard hit. So we are working on and those things are addressed by a cap. So that’s something that we need to address...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did hear about the situation that the Member is describing and we are investigating that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; there is a provision there that would allow me to go back to the Cabinet for revision. We heard and analyzed and reviewed the feedback that we got from the public, and based on the analysis we had, we did not conclude that we had to go back to Cabinet for revision, but we did go to the Cabinet with options on what we have heard. Thank you.