My question today is to the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, and it is related to my Member’s statement yesterday concerning federal responsibility for Indian and Inuit health care costs.
The federal government has limited growth on their portion of the Indian and Inuit health care at around 2 per cent. Real growth in health care is around 7 per cent or more. As a result, the GNWT is falling further behind. The feds owe our health system more money to support our health care system — around $95 million to date.
So my questions are: what is Health and Social Services doing to collect these outstanding dollars? What is the status of any negotiations that are going on between the department and the federal government? How long can we wait, or expect, or.... How long is it going to take before we develop some sort of funding model to flow a larger portion of funds to us so that we’re not relying on the 2 per cent?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Ms. Lee.
Mr. Speaker, I can advise the Member that this definitely is an issue that is on top of our agenda, not only for myself, as the Minister, but for the Cabinet as a whole. The Premier has brought this issue up in all of his meetings with the Prime Minister and the Minister of DIAND. I am working on meeting with the Minister of Health, the Hon. Clement, as soon as we can arrange a meeting to speak about this in person. I also need to clarify that the issue here is about a gap between the funding that we get from the federal government for our aboriginal peoples, but it’s really not an outstanding bill where it’s about just collecting it. It’s a disagreement, and it’s a dispute. It’s a gap, because the federal government placed a cap. They put a cap on it, and we need to renegotiate that.
So I think it’s really important for the Members to know that we need to renegotiate it. It’s not a matter of sending an invoice and collecting the money and actions that we need to do that. There’s a lot more complexity to this, and we have been spending lots of energy on it.
I do understand that it is a gap. I understand that right now their increased costs are based on around 2 per cent, and we know that the real costs of health care are increasing about 7 per cent or more a year. I understand that.
The gap is real. You need to find a way to renegotiate that cap that they have placed on you. So I’m once again going to ask: what kind of timeline are you working on to develop or increase that cap, or negotiate an increase to the cap, so that we can stop losing money that they clearly owe us?
From our point of view, our timeline is as soon as possible, but obviously, there are lots of parties involved. Not only is it the federal government, but all the other governments that fall under this agreement. It is an agreement that we need to open up and renegotiate. We have asked for that negotiation to happen. We have not heard back yet.
So timeline.... We will work on that as much as possible, because it is a crucial issue. We are looking at all options available to the government, to see what additional pressure and stress we could put on this so we could come to a resolution. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
