Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few more questions, as well, for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I’d like to follow up on the questions that I’d asked previously. One of the town hall meetings was held here in Yellowknife and during that town hall meeting -- actually, no, that’s not true, it was at a meeting that was held at the Baker Centre -- one of the attendees at that meeting stated in reference to the proposed program that’s put forward that the government can do better than this. Somebody else then suggested that this is probably the best that this government can do, that they are maxed out on creativity and capacity. I, unfortunately, somewhat have to agree with that statement.
The Minister several times has said we are doing what we have to do. She’s also said we are looking at it, we’re looking at who should pay for that and how we should pay for that. It suggests to me if you say we are looking at it, that there is a possibility for change. And we ask the questions whether or not change could be made and the Minister has consistently said no. So I guess I would like to then ask the Minister if there is no possibility of changing this policy, why does the Minister and Cabinet feel that we have to do these changes in the way that they are proposed? Thank you.
Thank you. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Given the contentious and difficult issue we are dealing with, I don’t think we could have everybody agree to the proposals being put forward and it can’t be about coming up with a program that everybody is happy with, especially if you are realigning programs. At the end of the day, government has to make some choices and we have to make decisions together about how do we make sure that we have this program that includes the people that are currently excluded, minimizes the impact as much as possible and to see how we make this program not eat up other programs unreasonably, because as Member Yakeleya and others have suggested, we have an obligation to provide core services to our people, Mr. Speaker. We will and I am committed to continue to work with Members to see how we improve the proposal that we have before us.
I think I heard the Minister commit that she’s going to work with Members and that’s the first positive thing I may have heard. I would hope that the next thing that she’s going to do in committing to work with Members is to take some of the suggestions from Members and change the policy and change the proposed plan. The Minister has stated as well across the country that we have the best plan of any across the country and these changes are going to make us equal to other plans across the country. I guess I have to ask the Minister, why are we aiming low? Why are we not aiming to keep the plan that we have and not reduce it to something else? Thank you.
Because, Mr. Speaker, we are far from aiming at anything low. I am going to table this Slave River Journal article written by a small newspaper agency in Fort Smith. They took their time to do a cross-country survey on what is available. Even the Yukon has a program for seniors that are over 65. Every program is income tested. Every program has deductibles. Why do we have to compare with the rest of Canada?
The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, health care is important. We need to be able to fund it. We need to focus our energy on core health. When we are talking about delivering programs in small communities and across the Territories, things are more expensive and challenging here than anywhere else. We need to look at a broad spectrum of programs that we need to provide for health care for all our communities, for all our people. Thank you.
I guess I don’t really have a response to that and I’ll just leave it at that. I think we could argue the philosophy in that article, on the comparisons in the article, for quite some time.
I need to ask the Minister, again, I think I’ve asked this before but there are any number of different ways that this coverage of people who are not currently covered could get funded. I want to know from the Minister why that hard work and that analysis was not done. There was hard work required to find the different way to do it that didn’t marginalize certain people and I don’t believe that’s been done. So I ask the Minister why they couldn’t do the intensive analysis, the intensive search for savings within the government and find a way that would allow us to cover the people at the lower end and not disenfranchise or marginalize some of the people who will have excessive costs. Thank you.
Because, Mr. Speaker, this is the non-insured program and the non-insured program is not where everybody gets service, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s insured service. Mr. Speaker, we are looking at including people who are excluded and asking those on top of the income threshold to make a contribution.
Mr. Speaker, the Member is concerned about high cost of drug expenditures and we know that there are some outliers and there are some people on the border that will be hard hit. So we are working on and those things are addressed by a cap. So that’s something that we need to address with the Members on the other side and which I’m willing to discuss. Thank you.
Your final question, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to mention that I believe later on today we’re going to receive a number of petitions protesting the changes to the Supplementary Health Benefit Program. My understanding is that the names on these petitions total about 3,000 people. That’s some 7 or 8 percent of our population and that’s a significant number.
So I’d like to ask the Minister: in hearing that there are 3,000 people who have concerns about this program, what does that say to the Minister? And I would ask her to comment on this information and will that have any impact on her determination to proceed forward with these changes? Thank you.
I’m sure if I read all of those 3,000, which I will, I probably know almost all of them. This is not impersonal to me. This is not just an issue that we’re talking about. This is very near and dear to me, as well. I talked to the people. I know who was at those meetings. I know people who are writing me. I’ve known them for all of my life here. I understand that this is a very, very pressing issue and dear issue, Mr. Speaker.
So we will continue to work on this package. We have done everything we can to… We have done a lot of work. The Department of Health and Social Services spent a majority of their time for the last three years working to make sure that we come up with as generous a program as possible. This is a consensus government and I am looking forward to working with Members on the latest proposal we have to see how we could improve that. Thank you.
The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
