Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was listening to the questions raised by our Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Jane Groenewegen. I like her approach on suggesting bulk purchasing and trying to leverage the expertise and skills that private industry have. My question would be to the Minister of Health and Social Services just to make sure -- of course, recognizing individual MLAs have every right to advocate for their businesses in their riding -- if the Department of Health and Social Services is going to continue this line of consideration which I would encourage them to do, it would make it an open and competitive process that any territorial business could bid on this if this was the approved or considered approach going forward on the bulk purchases of pharmaceutical products. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we would look at every way where that would allow us to find efficiencies and cost savings by competitive process. We would look at all of that, Mr. Speaker. The cost of drugs, equipment and supplies is one of the big cost drivers. We are analyzing them very closely. Members on the other side have suggested that we need to look at this. Jurisdictions across the country are looking at those. Mr. Speaker, yes, I take his advice and will keep that in mind. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, if I could add one more issue to this particular problem in going forward, I would ask the Minister reach out to the Pharmacy Association of the Northwest Territories to engage maybe all their association and they could maybe leverage some of the expertise the association would have with their members and perhaps a collective approach could be given to help draw out the direction of this type of health care potential savings. I would hate to think that they would be excluded on any type of expertise that they would probably willingly offer to ensure that the government’s bottom lines are being met in an efficient way. They are truly a critical component in this solution and overlooking them would be quite insulting. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, yes, we would do that wherever possible and wherever appropriate. Thank you.
