Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to follow up on my colleague Wendy Bisaro’s Member’s statement from last Friday on the changes to the Supplemental Health Benefits Program. For the record, I completely agree with Ms. Bisaro. I, too, find the document released by the Department of Health and Social Services leading. It’s clear that the Minister has a preferred course of action on the changes to the program and has released information that will ensure that the department gets what the department wants.
I encourage the Minister to remember the motion that was passed in this House. The motion specifically moved that “The department conduct comprehensive consultations with Northerners about ways to improve the Supplementary Health Benefits Program and services offered by the department, including whether or not means testing should determine eligibility; and further, ensure that thorough research into the programs complete cost and full implications is undertaken and presented to Northerners including: the cost to the NWT of families moving south, and increased costs on the health care system resulting from more people accessing services within hospitals.” This seems pretty clear to me and yet it’s crystal clear that this was completely ignored by the Minister.
During the discussions concerning the motion, Members were very clear that the consultation with stakeholders was critical and that they must be engaged from the beginning of the process so that they could help identify alternative delivery methods, identify alternative areas requiring research and analysis, and identify potential areas of concern and opportunity. Yes, the department did meet with some stakeholders, but based on my discussions with some of them, they weren’t asked to engage to this degree. Rather, they were invited to an information session where the department outlined what they were going to research and what the process would be after that. This is completely inconsistent with the process the Minister committed to time and time again.
For example, on February 9, 2009, the Minister said, according to the unedited Hansard, that “We are taking it back and putting it under full review.” On the same day the Minister went further and stated that “we are going to review it from the top to bottom and we pledge that we have a good financial analysis to bring them back. I’m committed to working with the stakeholders and the Standing Committee on Social Programs on the process and the substance of this review.”
This seems inconsistent with what’s happening here today. As such, I’ll be asking the Minister some questions on this topic later today in hopes of gaining some understanding on how her department has strayed so far from the intent of the motion passed last year.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
