Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m a little bit conflicted and confused by some of the dialogue that’s taken place in the House here today. I’m sure anybody listening in the public must be wondering, too, and kind of scratching their head. Here we’re heralding this big victory that we got for rescinding the 2007 policy. Mr. Speaker, people should make no mistake: this doesn’t mean that we’ve entered from having the 2007 Supplementary Health Policy, and now because we’re rescinding it we’ve entered into some kind of utopia, you know, some kind of Shangri-La on supplementary health care services. Absolutely not. Mr. Speaker, the real facts of the matter are that the supplementary health system is broken. It’s unfair and it’s inequitable, and we, as legislators, have got to do something to address that. There are people with no coverage who need coverage. There are people who are getting coverage who maybe don’t need coverage.
Before people run out and start ripping up their third-party health insurance cards, we should just put this in context. This is not a huge victory. This is a lot of work ahead of us to make sure that we get something in place that is right, and I’m glad that we have the time to do that, because, Mr. Speaker, I do believe that there was one thing in that new policy which was the red herring out there that caused everybody concern, and let’s call it what it was. It was the income testing. Nobody wanted income testing. Maybe there won’t be income testing, because there hasn’t been enough research gone on to see if income testing is the way to go, but if we think that we’re going to continue to pay seniors on supplementary health benefits this formulary and this level and pay people on NIHB this level, think again. It’s not going to happen. There’s going to be parity. There’s going to be…
Do you have a question, Mrs. Groenewegen?
Anyway, my question for the Minister is: Just because we do not have the 2007 policy, the Minister will concur that it is not going to be status quo going forward. Correct?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Absolutely correct. I couldn’t say it any better and next week I am going to come to the table and say how we are going to try to get it down, as much as possible, of what needs to be done.
The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
