Sandy Lee

If the Member read the public discussion -- perhaps he has, maybe wants to read it again -- there’s no mention there. I think anybody who’s had that presentation -- and we’ve had that presentation with the seniors, with Joint Leadership Council members -- it’s a good package of information to start a dialogue on.

I want to say it again, that we’re not proposing changes that take away benefits. What we are saying is we need to look at accessibility, who accesses that. And anybody who could afford to pay a co-payment or something, perhaps we should consider that. That is part of our discussion.

S...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member knows that we don’t have fee systems in our health care system. I don’t believe there is a co-payment for medical travel for those whose income is higher than a certain level. I could only think of that. In long-term care facilities, people pay minimal for staying there. But by and large, we have the most generous and open health care coverage compared to anywhere else in the country and probably around the world. Thank you.

I don’t believe there was a question. I just want to clarify that the public working group did have a… The department officials met with the public working group, the NGO groups. They wanted to have good information to base their discussion on. They’ve had a look at the information that we’ve provided and they are working with us. We will continue to work with them, work with the Members, work with the public, because I agree with the Member that this is the best program there is in supplementary health anywhere in Canada. We will continue to maintain that and we want to make sure that those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’m aware that the staff have done a lot of work to prepare for this public discussion with the public. We have looked internally to partners in the Department of Finance and Stats Bureau to get information. They met with the public advisory group a few times and we have put out the public discussion paper at our earliest possible opportunity so that the public will have an opportunity to put their full input into this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, I will move that Bill 1, An Act to Amend the Veterinary Profession Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When a family who is going through distress or, for some reason, are not able to provide safety and protection to a child, the social workers will work to see where else they can find support within the community. They would look to the extended families like grandparents or aunts or any other family members that could give that support. Obviously, we have more stats for those children who have to be taken out of the family setting and we would first look to extended families to take care of those children. We would look for families within the community and when they are assigned with those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a lot of difference between Rio Tinto or BHP and the public health system. Our system is demand driven. People put the highest priority on their health and social services. On a daily basis, whether it’s Friday night, Saturday morning, midnight, I get calls from Members and the general public asking us to do something more for health and social services or extra services they would like. You cannot compare a health care system to a private corporation who needs to check the bottom line all the time. We have finance people in our authorities and our department...

On the substance of it I do feel that’s what the NWT Seniors’ Society and other elders that we work with I believe fulfill that function. If the Member has a more specific proposal or idea that he wants to discuss further, I’d be happy to sit down with him and listen to him and perhaps other Members. But there is no question that in our day-to-day work that we do rely on elders, not only grandmothers but grandfathers and leaders of our communities, to help us do our work.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The entire health and social services system is geared towards making sure that we use our health and social services dollars to the people in need. On any given day I have every Member of this House come and talk to me about the things we need to do for our people: medical travel, different services, different care, different institutions they should go to, different treatment. The fact is that health and social services is a high-demand field. We put a great deal of priority on spending our dollars in the health and social services field, but we’re also aware that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was here when the former Minister of Health and Social Services, Mrs. Groenewegen, came up with the idea, which I thought was a great idea until it got outside of the building. Then we ran into problems because there are lots of people out there who feel that they’re grandmothers should belong to this group. Of course, we can’t have all the grandmothers meeting in a group all the time of that size.

My approach has been to work with the NWT Seniors’ Society, which is a group made up of elders from across the Territories, big and small. There are about six, seven or...