Mr. Speaker, it’s been raised a number of times in this House that the 2 per cent cost-escalator cap by Indian and Northern Affairs has placed significant difficulty on our hospital and physician services we provide to status Inuit, Indian and Metis people. Today I wish to state for the record that I’m also very concerned about the failure of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to acknowledge their fiduciary responsibility to provide health care to status aboriginal peoples of the North.
It is also concerning to me that the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is, by placing an annual expenditure growth cap of 2 per cent, effectively downloading its fiduciary responsibility, its treaty responsibility, to the Government of the Northwest Territories. Over the last nine years the total difference between the GNWT on what they’re paying for health care costs for eligible aboriginal people and what the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is willing to pay is approaching $100 million.
Over the last five years the amount owed to the GNWT has ranged from $12.2 million to nearly $16 million per year. This works out to an average funding shortfall of approximately $15 million a year. Using a rough cost of $100,000 per PY, that is enough money annually to fund 150 government positions. This is money that could be used to fund things like that teachers’ agreement the Minister just announced, nurses, a daycare program. As well, it could have helped protect the laid-off folks we all know about today. This $15 million could have mitigated some of these unpalatable budget reductions we’re seeing before this House as we continue to go through them. We are in no position to be subsidizing our federal government, especially in light of our financial situation.
An agreement needs to be moved forward, and an agreement needs to be negotiated. We need to start to do something today, because if the federal government is not willing to pay for their treaty rights — that’s right, their fiduciary rights to northern aboriginal people and to Inuit people — then we should start talking about and negotiating to give the Department of Health back to them, because that is truly their responsibility. These are negotiated treaty rights, and they’re guaranteed.
So in closing, I will have questions for the Deputy Premier, because I think this problem goes to the highest office of this Assembly. Somebody, if we are owed that type of money, should be….
Your time for the Member’s statement has expired, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Ramsay.
