Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have that information with me, but I do know that we have looked at other jurisdictions. We recognize that there are various ways that other jurisdictions have gone about renewing their health care or providing health care cards such as decision to go with a picture on the health care card and so on. We have looked at other jurisdictions. Specifically which jurisdictions we looked at and tried to follow, I don’t know which it was. I think we are continuing on with a system that we have developed ourselves. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it is a standard process. It is a manual process. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct; the action plan is put together by government, but a lot of the actions are carried out by NGOs that we fund. I have a document here. Yesterday I spoke about the 50 or so NGOs that the Department of Health and Social Services support directly under the disabilities that I think may have perhaps six different organizations that we support within the funding of those NGOs. Our funding some of the action plans were put out. I think there are only a couple of them that are considered to be something that they were not going to carry out. I can go back to the...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The 2007 NWT Action Plan for Persons with Disabilities had almost 90 recommendations. Of those recommendations, 41 of those recommendations were completed and 38 of those recommendations are ongoing. Nine of those recommendations were considered incomplete for one reason or another.

I’ve received e-mails from the various MLAs. I would say under 20 e-mails indicating to us that there’s an issue with health care cards not coming on time, but we’ve set allowances for those individuals if they had applied for a health care card and by the time their birthday came around had not received health care, then we would cover them.

I guess, again, we need to make sure that people have coverage, health coverage, and that’s what we’re doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is continuing to work to resolve the few issues that are out there with the people having misplaced in either the application process or the card that was coming from the South to them. We don’t see this as a major issue. We process 100 applications per day and we’re doing those applications. We have a very high rate of compliance in returning health care cards. Most people have no issues with this, so I don’t think it’s a scandalous situation. Thank you.

Not officially and we understand that if an individual did receive bariatric surgery and then he was to come off some expensive diabetic medicines, then the recovery would be fairly rapid. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services supports organ and tissue donation. The best way for people to ensure their wish to be an organ donor is to let family members and loved ones know and ask for their support, should they be in a position to donate when they are unable to speak for themselves.

The NWT is in partnership with Alberta Health Services. They provide transplant services for our residents. They are currently looking for better ways, better options to identifying potential donors, including the possibility of a registry that will include our residents in any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time the bariatric surgery is not part of the formulary; however, it can be, depending on what type of programs the doctor will recommend to an individual that may require bariatric surgery, depending on the body mass index. So, based on that, there would be several programs an individual could go through and nutrition programs, a routine that they would have to go through in order to become eligible for bariatric surgery. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, an individual may apply for their health care card in time within four months of their birthdate. The time frame is that if you apply within four months of your birthdate, then the process would run to where you will have your health care card prior to your birthdate. That is the time frame that we are using. Essentially we would, I guess, try to get everything done within those four months, not even longer or not much shorter because we need the time to do the process. At the same time, we have to protect the integrity of the card. Thank you.