Kate Reid

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Minister. And I do appreciate, you know, that she wants to do right by the people and maintain monitoring on that. But I'm going to ask a really brief question, but it might be a hard question to answer.

Does the department anticipate now, with the bill in the Canadian Parliament going through on pharmacare, have we started to look at any anticipatory measures around how that might impact this program and some of our pharmacy medication based programs? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'm going to keep these pretty general, just trying to understand a little bit better the Minister's thinking behind the changes to EHB. So in the business plan, one of the items is around stewarding physical health and contributing to fiscal sustainability, and HSS has an item that says income assessment process and fee structures established and incorporated into more HSS program and service delivery areas.

And my question is with regards to EHB specifically but health programs in general, how does this improve access to health care for all our residents per the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So as I said in my statement, structuring our social programs so they're designed to meet people where they're at rather than the other way around is the way to improve quality of life across all of our communities. So would the Minister consider piloting a project within income assistance that would reconfigure and tailor our existing system to the needs of the people in one particular region that maybe isn't dollarbased but is more based around their opportunities for employment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's a quote I saw online recently that I can unfortunately not attribute but it doesn't diminish its truth. Quote, "The role of a politician is not to get into power. The role of a politician is to act as a steward and caretaker for our society, to manage society for the betterment of all of us."

That quote sums up why I am here today. I want to help provide the direction that leads to the betterment of all of us in the NWT. But the job of governing "better" seemingly gets harder by the day, week, year, and decade. Some of it simply is that all the problems feel like...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very simple question. Can the Minister please tell me how many staff work in the planning, research, and evaluation part of corporate management? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Minister for that. And thank you to her department for sending us some more information about EHB today. I really appreciate it. In the and it was a publicly accessible letter. Thank you for that.

So in that letter, it's noted that currently about 1,400 people are in the EHB program under the specified disease conditions list. The department estimates that that will grow when the specified disease condition list is dropped and the new policy rolls out in September, and the cost differential that health is estimating will be about $1.2 million. So it's...

Thank you for that clarity, that's helpful. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm good.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can I just clarify that you said page 198?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So can the Minister please clarify if that is the case, if there are more people, why in 2023-2024 revised and in 2024-2025 it's static and, indeed, lower than the 2022-2023 actuals, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry, one quick second. I have it on a screen. There's a lot of things going on on my desk right now.

So with regards to the line item the rental office, so, Mr. Chair, can the Minister please explain as to why the concerns raised in the chief rental officer's annual reports merit a review of the Residential Tenancies Act as discussed in the business plan? Thank you.