Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The information that I have indicates 38,000 in 2013 from the cards that will be expiring, and the balance of the territory, their health care cards will expire in 2014.
There have been a lot of complaints about health care card applications being lost in the renewal process. It’s come to a number of MLAs’ attention that the integrity of this information sent to Inuvik was lost and the Department of Health has no idea how many applications were lost and has no plan. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten the House, is there going to be some type of investigation as to what happened to all this lost information that was either mailed or faxed in, and I would like to know and the citizens would like to know. Thank you.
Yes, we are looking into any complaints that come in where there’s an indication that perhaps an application was lost in the process. We are looking into those cases. Thank you.
Does the Department of Health and Social Services have any idea how many applications were lost in this renewal process, and does the Department of Health understand what type of integrity of information may be at risk if this information was misplaced and got into the hands of people who do various activities or whatnot? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we likely have a list of the individuals who are indicating that their application has been lost, but I don’t have the number. The information, integrity of the information there, would be the information that would be needed to renew the system. We’re using the same mailing system that Transportation is using for drivers’ licences, so we don’t understand why this specific item gets lost in the mail more frequently. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d love to take on the drivers’ licence relationship issue, but to stay clearly on topic, what type of public process will be engaged to ensure all the public knows what the Department of Health has done? I’m acquiring maybe strong language, but there needs to be some type of credibility brought to this case. Private information has been sent and lost, and there seems to be no credibility as to what or where it may have gone to.
In short, what type of public process and engagement will the Minister develop and inform citizens of the Northwest Territories that we found what was wrong and this is how we’re fixing it? Thank you.
I think we can start off by determining between our renewal office in Inuvik and the department and any of the communities where there may be some complaints about applications being lost, and determine that number and then specifically deal with those individuals who may have lost applications.
I guess to the public we can do our best to try to ensure that when they do the proper thing of putting the information in the mail, that it gets to our office, and once it gets to our office that it’s handled with due care and that it’s packaged and sent for printing, and then from the printers to ensure that mailing is done through the regular system. I don’t know what else we can add to that, but we can definitely try to find out who lost applications and contact them. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
---Interjection
