Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on the questions asked by my colleague Mr. Bromley on how we can take a more common sense approach to things which seem to have an obvious and simple answer, but because policy is strict and there isn’t a lot of latitude for discretion to be applied it makes it difficult to plead these cases.
The cases that Mr. Bromley refers to where we have students in southern Canada who need medical attention and because medical travel must originate in the Northwest Territories to be covered, the fact that these students couldn’t then access any kind of travel assistance even if it would be far less than what it would cost to come home and fly from here, but they can’t access any kind of support. It doesn’t make sense. Mr. Bromley clearly referred to it as a common sense approach.
We know, as a government, that we can’t have policies that have too much discretionary latitude attached to them because then we don’t have any way of controlling it and we don’t have any way of controlling costs and the whole thing can just go awry. But there must be a way.
I didn’t really hear anything very specific being responded from the Minister as to how we could deal with these sorts of things. I have a suggestion and I’d like to ask the Minister what she thinks of this. We need some kind of a person, a point of contact in the government, where people or MLAs, on behalf of constituents, could make a case for where the government needs to alter a policy in order for it to apply to a certain set of circumstances; somebody that the government trusts is not going to put the government at some kind of risk and somebody that will also be understanding and apply some common sense and discretion to the situation. I suggest some type of an ombudsman. I’ll ask the Minister, first, what would she respond to having somebody in the Department of Health with that kind of ability.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. An ombudsman or some kind of an arbiter or in many cases, no matter what Health and Social Services issues, they end up on the Minister’s desk. The important thing in a society based on rule of law and rule of rules, we need clear rules. Even an ombudsman would need a rule to arbitrate or rule on these things.
On the specific issue in question that we have here -- just so that Members know that the Department of Health and Social Services is not completely without common sense -- the Members could imagine cases where, I mean, see some merit as to why we need to require the medical travel originating in the NWT. Because we use out-of-town uses, we audit cases where things come out of the Territories, because sometimes people move away and they use our medical benefits and such. That’s why. But in the cases of students, there’s no question that our students who are living and going to school outside of the NWT should be able to get their medical procedures from where they live. That is a definite anomaly and I am looking to change that.
That is encouraging and I’ll be very interested in seeing how the Minister plans to address that. I’ll be looking forward to some proposal being brought forward.
The Minister referred to these kinds of situations landing on her desk. I would question whether or not, considering the number of portfolios, the amount of workload that the Minister and her executive assistant carry, the fact that the Department of Health and Social Services is the largest department in our government, if this is the highest and best use of the Minister’s time for her to take on that role herself. Is it not possible to delegate this to a reasonable thinking, critical, analyzing person and have this person accessible to everyone? Not everyone has the same access because not everyone can advocate for themselves and not everyone has an MLA that they feel they can go to that can advocate for them. So does the idea, and for a lack of a better word, an advocate or ombudsman, does the Minister believe that has merit or would she just like us to continue sending these off to her executive assistant?
I definitely feel that notion, that idea does deserve merit for us to further explore. I think, under the given resources, I don’t think we can create an entire office, but I think there is definitely room for us to consider it. I would like to further work with the Members to consider some kind of appeal for certain benefits under health care. It’s usually about insurance services, what’s insured, what’s not, medical travel, maybe supp health benefits.
Under supp health benefits we are definitely looking at some kind of appeal mechanism. Student Financial Assistance has that. I don’t know what other social programs have them, but I think it’s something worth pursuing and I will commit right now to look at that.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Sorry, and I apologize, Mr. Speaker. I am very encouraged to hear this. This is something that I believe has been missing in the government for a long time. SFA is another area where you could combine different appeals for different departments under one person and they could expeditiously deal with these matters. I don’t envy that person’s job, mind you, because it might necessarily involve saying no to some people. But does the Minister concur that in the scope of these policies that there are extenuating circumstances from time to time which do require a common sense solution which often would save the government money?
It may or it may not, but the important thing is that I think our people need to feel that they have a place they could go to that should be outside of the political process, that can’t be depending on the level or the strength of advocacy capacity of certain Members or the heartbreaking side of the stories. I think we could all benefit from having some sort of objective standard by which our people know exactly what they qualify for, what the rules are, why do they not qualify, or do they qualify, and if there is any room for improvement it has to come back here for us to make the decision. But I definitely feel that the time has come and we need to consider that.
It will be complex, I think, more complex than we think, but I think for the benefit of the next Assembly -- and these issues will not go away -- we do need an objective process. I would commit to working with Mrs. Groenewegen and other Members to see how we could move this forward.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
