Yes, I will undertake to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 2, An Act to Amend the Dental Auxiliaries Act, be read for the first time.

Dental services are the responsibility of the federal government under NIHB Program, as it is the federal responsibility to provide dental care to our aboriginal residents all across Canada, including the NWT. Where there are medical emergencies, if it’s medical it could come under GNWT responsibility. We do respond to medical emergencies and we do cover for medical travel. I think part of it is billed to NIHB and part of it is covered by GNWT.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as a formal motion in the House is a recommendation to the government, we will undertake to respond to this motion within the timeline provided. In the meantime, I would like to just advise this House about the fact that we do offer a continuum of services for adults with developmental disabilities, including FASD. Access to these services is not dependent on a diagnosis. The types of services that we provide include day and work programs, adult respite, employment enhancement programs, group homes and supported living programs. Access to these services is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I did undertake to look into this last week. I have to be honest; I haven’t had a chance to have a direct discussion on that issue as of yet, but I will undertake to talk to my deputy minister, who is also the PA of the hospital, as well as the Aboriginal Elders Advisory Committee there and see how we can accommodate providing fish and other traditional food at the hospital. Thank you.

The other side of that is the money is voted in this House. We could, as a House, decide that we would provide supplementary health benefits to anybody; we pay for dental, we pay for drugs, we pay for homecare, we pay for anything, just because we want to. Then the Member will just need to pass the budget on that.

That’s not how we do our business here. Supp health benefits programs are very generous in this jurisdiction. We will continue to keep it that way. We have a group of people who are excluded from it and it is very important for us to have a very informed, evidence-based discussion...

Number 3 tells that answer. So I would encourage the Member and everybody else to look at this questionnaire that we posted on the website. The Member is suggesting, and others are suggesting, that we have a predetermined course of action and that we have a date in place and that we’re shoehorning the public into a decision, which is absolutely not true.

Number 3: Knowing what we know now about the costs and needs of the various existing uninsured health benefits programs, the Department of Health and Social Services is considering rolling the three programs this paper has discussed into a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member stated that he read the document on the website, but I don’t believe he understood what he read.

---Interjection

As the Member knows, these changes were done and announced in 2007, as a result of what I know because I was here for about seven years’ work. Those were announced in 2007. The motion was passed in 2008…no, 2009, last year, to go back and do the work. We have done that. We have done a lot of intense research on who this program is serving right now. We feel we have an excellent set of information to go out to the public to engage public discussion on. I think that we should be applauded, actually, for going out to the public with the information we have and asking the public to give us input.

M...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, the drug cost is a key part of the landscape of health care spending going forward. In the Globe and Mail on Saturday, there was a two page spread about health care issues and drug costs being one of the biggest items. I think we are much more advanced in the North in terms of this issue than most other jurisdictions.

To answer the Member’s question, the department is right now working on a formal strategy. It is highly complex. It has lots of stakeholders, but we have undertaken to do that work. Thank you.