Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue I want to ask questions on today is a continuation of my Member’s statement. During my Member’s statement I talked about the importance of a health care card that is secure. I’ve promoted the idea before and I’ve done a fair bit of research recently. I found it quite interesting that British Columbia actually has a photo I.D. health care card, but what’s interesting about theirs in particular is they include their driver’s licence on it as well. It simplifies one’s life.
Ontario has been doing this since 2007 and they have many and critical pieces we don’t have time to go through here today, but just highlight things such as magnetic strip, organ donor.
So, knowing that health care is so important, I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, would he be interested in investigating this type of process as we proceed to our next renewal of health care cards, which is in about two to three years? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for bringing this to our attention today and also for providing me with his research. I think it’s a really good idea. I think we should do the research and I commit to having the department do research and analysis into the different types of cards that are out there like BC, and I think BC is certainly an interesting model where they’ve combined driver’s licence and health care cards. There might be cost-saving opportunities there for us. So I commit today to having the department do that review and we’ll be able to provide that information to the Members with a cost analysis on what potential costs could be...(inaudible)…in 2015. Thank you.
Thank you. That’s an awful tough answer to come back to because that was pretty much everything I wanted. So the only other thing that I would ask is it’s important, as I pointed out, that British Columbia links it to their driver’s licence.
So, just to be very clear, did the Minister, and I saw him nodding his head, but I’ll let him speak to this issue, that they work with the Department of Transportation to find out if this is something they could progress to merge towards a one-card system that makes sense?
The last thing, Mr. Speaker, is I’ve already got pretty much what I wanted, unless he takes it back, which wouldn’t be the first time. Minister Roland did that to me. A lot of small communities, you can get your driver’s licence done with a photo ID process. To me this could help blend it. That’s the point I want to make sure, is that it’s accessible throughout the territory. Thank you.
I think these questions are timely given that we don’t have a renewal again until 2016. So that gives a bit of time to do the analysis that the Member has asked for, including models like BC which may be reasonable. I will certainly work with the Minister of Transportation to see if there are any opportunities for us to expand and have a joint card. I won’t take it back. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
