Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services and are in follow-up to my Member’s statement from earlier today. As I indicated earlier, it’s been 106 days, almost four months, since the Minister indicated that she would be meeting with the Social Programs committee to provide them with a timeline and outline the framework for the review of the Supplementary Health Program. To date there has been no briefing or no briefing has been conducted. Could the Minister please give me an update on where the Department of Health and Social Services is with respect to reviewing the provision of supplemental health benefit services in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate the need for a little bit of drama, but I don’t know where the Member gets this 107 days. The motion was passed on February 8th. I think everybody understands how busy our session was for six weeks. Our session did not finish until March 13th. Everybody went off to a break for two weeks. Now, for the last seven weeks -- that’s 75 days -- the department and officials have been working to see how we do this better than we had done before. I have talked to the Member and said that we won’t go into really getting into the work until the session was over. So now I have written to the standing committee chair this morning. I said, as I’ve always indicated privately, that we will not move ahead without talking to the committee first. What we are proposing to do is we have set up an interdepartmental committee that will look at income security models and other frameworks that we could use to review some health programs. As well, we want to set up a stakeholders group, including all the NGOs and interested groups, to give us input on that. We will be sending out an invitation letter within the next few days. We hope to have our first real substantive meeting with those groups by the end of June. I am happy and available any time to meet with the standing committee.
I think it’s fair to reference the 107 days. It has been four months since the motion passed and nothing has been brought to committee. I think it’s very important that it does come to committee because, as the Minister said, she wanted to get input from the standing committee. I’m happy to hear that a letter has been sent, but still it sounds like the Minister is moving ahead with some of these things and no information has been shared and no input has been gathered. So before the Minister moves forward with these committees and whatnot that she’s making reference to, will she commit to meeting with the standing committee and getting our input on that process before she actually moves forward and implements the process that she’s indicated she’s going to be implementing?
I’ve said that in e-mails to him at least three times, I will meet with standing committee or the Members to discuss input or to get their input and have further discussions. I have asked committee to meet at any time. So, yes, I would be happy to do that. I’ve always said that I will and I’ve e-mailed him at least three times to say that.
As indicated in my statement, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. People don’t know what’s happening. So my question for the Minister is: How does the Minister intend to relieve some of this continued confusion and uncertainty that continues to exist within the public as residents wait for something to happen?
Everybody here knows that and I have committed. I don’t know if I need to explain more of that. I want to come and meet with the Standing Committee on Social Programs. I understand that we have a very short session, so the committee’s time is always of high value. I think it’s important and we are available to meet at any time to discuss. And we are not, we haven’t moved further, I don’t want that to be out there that we are somehow moving forward because I keep getting e-mails from Members suggesting that.
I want to make it clear that myself, as the Minister, and the government heard loud and clear that there are lots of major elements of that policy change that needed to be reviewed. I wanted to make sure that we took some time to review from the last session what we heard, which is what we’ve been doing for the last seven weeks. Before we do any public meetings I will be happy to sit down with the committee. But it is important also that we hear from NGOs and the general public. We do want to have public meetings as well. Any time next week I think we could get together and talk about it more.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
