Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use today’s Member’s statement to revisit the health care card issue as it continues to be a bit of a frantic issue out there. Some people are defining it as maybe a mini scandal of some sort, and others say maybe an inquiry of some sort, as well, needs to be considered.
The fact that people have been e-mailing, whether they’ve been faxing or even mailing in their applications, they don’t know where the information is going and it really continues to call into question the integrity of the system as well as the safety of that information being sent out there. Often enough we hear about how people are preyed upon when they have private information. Here we’re talking about elder abuse. We have elders here who have often been targeted as people to get their private information so nefarious people out there do nasty, nasty things.
The point here is we’ve got two issues. One, what’s going to be done about the health care card application process. Is it a scandal? Is it a problem? We don’t know how big the problem is because we can’t even define how many applications have gone in there and where they’ve gone. We don’t know who to contact because we don’t know if we’ve processed them. By the time we finish this application process, it’s going to be a year or two away. We’re going to require immediate action.
But, as always, I try to bring a solution to the table at the same time. I’ve been looking at this issue from a different perspective. First of all, why do we renew health care cards? Well, one of the obvious reasons is we have to ensure Northerner’s are getting a northern health care card. In other words, we’re not having the fly-in/fly-out workers using northern health care. We all know at length on how short or not available, that is, dollars are when it comes to paying for health care initiatives and how challenging that always is, so we want to ensure Northerners are getting health care that Northerners rightly deserve.
One of the solutions I’d like to propose is, because we have a DMV in many areas, whether they’re in small communities, large regions or even in Yellowknife, why don’t we look at considering the situation of providing a photo health care card? I’m not suggesting we stop, pull all the brakes out at this particular moment, but this is the type of initiative we could start planning for today. Kind of like a Service Canada model with the federal government where when you go into one stop, you can do a little bit of one-stop shopping.
If we had a photo ID, that would help protect the integrity of the system because you can demonstrate fully that that is you on the picture, and that is you getting northern health care, and that is you who is a true Northerner and you deserve that. That may not be the perfect solution, but we can work with ways moving forward. Again, I don’t expect it now, but I do say this is something we can work towards.
That said, I will have questions for the Minister of Health about this potential scandalous situation and how we can solve some of the things going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
