Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to talk about the proposed changes to supplementary health benefits. Canada is a shining inspiration to the world. It continues to make great strides to represent itself as a beacon of hope, opportunity and fairness. I don’t believe the proposed changes to the supplementary health policy mirrors those principles in any way at all.

By taking away supplementary health benefits, this will go down as a great case study many years from now when people watch and wonder what happened. Why did the GNWT start acting like Ottawa? If the Minister and this Cabinet...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to table a sample postcard I made up on the occasion to help the citizens fight for supplementary health benefits because they matter. This is a postcard addressed to our Premier, Floyd Roland, and Sandy Lee and it simply states Make Health Care Benefits Universal, No to Co-Payments and Find Another Way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Prior to 2004, the health policy was designated under the disease state coverage. It worked. It may not have been perfect, but it worked, Mr. Speaker. So if you had diabetes you could get care specific to diabetes. That didn’t mean that if you had the sniffles you could get a prescription automatically for antibiotics or who knows what just because you had the sniffles, Mr. Speaker, but that’s the way it’s set up now. It was like a slippery slope, those changes back in 2004. Disease state worked and I’m going to tell you right now that the network and process still...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the NWT Health Minister regarding supplementary health benefits, and of course, it’s not to the Ontario Health Minister when we talk about Ontario benefits, and certainly not to the Alberta Minister of Health when we hear about how Alberta does stuff.

Mr. Speaker, speaking to the Minister for Health and Social Services in the Northwest Territories, my first question on the supplementary health benefits issue is this: under Section 5, and I won’t go into the details of how far down in the policy, under the Cabinet policy regarding supp health...

I don’t see one opportunity that the government has taken to revisit this, other than cutting benefits to the sick and elderly simply down racial and cultural lines. No, because there of course has been no direction from the 15th Assembly to do that. That’s why.

I question if this policy was reversed if it would stand the test of fairness. I’d say no. This policy is about division, not about unity. It preys on people’s differences by splitting our Territory down cultural lines and I believe it’s truly not fair and extremely hurtful to a lot of people out there.

In closing, the Minister has not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I started this question period off from my set of questions asking did she take it back to Cabinet with the issues that I raised and somewhat similar as what other Members have raised here. She has implied or made it clear yes. I’d like to ask her, will she table every stitch of information that she’s brought to the Cabinet table to show that she’s provided an alternative approach than the one being presented, the one that this government has buckled into, the one that we have to thank the 15th Assembly for, that this Cabinet keeps defending and saying it’s the way to...

I have to say I really just don’t believe the Minister, Mr. Speaker, and I know that it comes as a shock, but, quite honestly, I just don’t believe it. I mean, I’m not allowed to say I’ve felt misled on this particular issue, but I’ll tell you, I really believed, and so did a lot of people believe, that the issue of co-payments would be considered, not where your threshold would start or stop, but I’ll tell you a lot of people in this Territory believe that the co-payment was going to be discussed under the threshold issue, not just where it’s going to start or whether we should have one or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On this occasion I’d like to continue to recognize Mr. Ed Jeske, a constituent and well-known Yellowknifer, certainly; Mr. David Wind, city councillor as well as a constituent and also somebody who has been trumpeting these supplementary health benefit changes quite loudly; and Ms. Lydia Bardak, councillor, who was mentioned earlier, another constituent of Yellowknife Centre; and lastly, I’d like to make special note, as well, to Sarah Wright-Cardinal, who is the president of Aurora College. I want to recognize her from the point of view of I hear she’s doing a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the beginning of this process when this side of the House and the champions in our communities came forward to say that this was completely wrong, this approach, there was a promise of a clean slate, the removal of an income means test as the philosophy, and yet that did not come forward. The Minister continues to say that the saving grace of this Supplementary Health Benefits Plan is to take from Peter to pay Paul.

What is stopping the Minister from doing a thorough analysis when we constantly hear about how much data and work they’ve done today? The one thing that...

I’m glad we have a low-maintenance Minister over there on our health system. I think the Minister answered the question herself. She has basically said that we’ve identified 2,299 people. How do you know that the messing around of the system will cover those 2,299 people? Tinkering with the system has not guaranteed anything. That’s the whole point of where I’m going with this. With all of these studies, analyses and changes, somebody should be able to give us context of what a projected cost of this would be. There’s been zero analysis on that to date.

The point I’m making is we have a butcher...