Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was several years ago now, although it seems like just yesterday that the GNWT decided to implement the Supplementary Health Benefits Policy. The intent of the policy dated September 2007, was to provide consistent health benefit coverage for NWT residents who were not covered. But it also proposed to change the GNWT Extended Health Benefits Program to an income-tested model. Not surprisingly, there was considerable consternation, especially among seniors and residents with medical conditions requiring extensive treatment with expensive prescription drugs. There was...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the Minister of Transportation, why did we not hear anything about this extraordinary cost last fall? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement. I have some questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services with regard to our health system reform. The Minister spoke yesterday about moving doctors around. From Hansard I have a sentence where he stated, “We are actually starting on the process now.” I feel that reworking how we use our doctors and changing our system of hiring doctors, and how we assign doctors to their jobs is something that we really need to do relative to getting reform done and I think the Minister agrees with me. I’d like to know where we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to respond to some of the comments that I didn’t get a chance to talk to earlier and at the outset.

I want to state that I take offense to the Minister of Finance’s remarks that suggest that I am biased. I certainly am not. I am required to hold this government accountable and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t feel that I am opposing or supporting any particular project except that it is in the best interests of the people of the Northwest Territories and I would ask that the Minister reconsider his statement.

It is important that the government be opposed if, it’s my...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard an interesting exchange on the radio last week regarding the strengthening of Canada’s health system. The analyst in the interview compared health systems in other countries to that of Canada and suggested we have much to learn from those other countries. Compared to Australia and Germany, for instance, Canada spends more money per capita on health care and achieves less in the quality of health outcomes. Australia, for instance, spends 40 percent less on health care than we do in Canada. Yet, Australia is much like Canada with similarities to northern Canada, a...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Probably all of the points that I’m about to mention have been expressed already, but I feel that I need to get on the record where I’m coming from with regard to this project. I expressed in my general comments that I have some concerns. I want to say at the outset I am supportive of this project. I think it is a project that is going to be, as has been mentioned, nation building, territory building, it is a good project. I have huge problems with the process and I have huge problems with the lack of concrete information that we have at our disposal in order to...

I guess I would like to know from the Minister, you know, I understand that this is something that we do. We keep the same amount of money for a number of years, but does the department do an analysis of trends from one year to the next or over the last two or three years and, therefore, look at increasing base funding based on trends? Thank you.

Thanks to Mr. Kalgutkar. I guess I just would like an explanation then. Is this our share of the extra costs because of the backup policy, or are we bearing more of a cost than the federal government is in this? Or is this the same 70/30 percent share that we have with all of our other RCMP expenses? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, I’d like to know what we can do or what the Minister has in plans to do to try and expand that use of telehealth in terms of diagnostics. Are there any targets? We probably don’t know how much we’re using it now, but I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not there are any targets that the department has set to expand the use of telehealth for medical purposes.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we are doing all these things, but they seem to be the same things that we’ve been doing for quite some time and in order to affect reform in order to make our health system more efficient, I have to encourage the Minister to change the way that we’re doing things and I didn’t hear that in his answer. I’d like to know from the Minister, my statement talked about that Australia uses telehealth to do diagnoses, to talk to patients, to assist them from a distance. I’d like to know what we use our telehealth system for. Just what exactly, what activities...