Mr. Speaker, well over a year ago we were elected to this Assembly to take drastic action to improve the state of our territory's health care. Shortly thereafter, Members convened and put together a list of urgent priorities in which access to health care took top billing. Now, a year later, meaningful progress on improving our health care services remains to be seen. Our constituents have made it clear they do not want to hear about the process and procedures that go on in this Assembly or in the authority any longer; they want action on health care. I don't blame them; I want action too.
When we learned that the Minister of Health and Social Services was dissolving the health leadership council to appoint a public administrator, it looked like serious action was finally being taken. Naturally, my constituents then want to know what new tools this public administrator brought to the table and to what effect those tools were going to be used to change their lives for the better. They see this Minister with a new toolbox. They want to see her pull out the policies right away to get their vital services back into shape. Yet now, we are asked -- left asking the same questions months after -- or two months after these changes were made, Mr. Speaker.
While we know the Minister has even more power to act divisively under the public administrator, we don't yet know what that administrator will do differently than the preceding health leadership council. We haven't seen the plan this public administrator's working on to fix the state of our health care system, and we don't know when the Minister intends to have this plan put into action. The Minister praised the work of the previous leadership council yet replaced them in favour of a public administrator. So what tools do the council not have at their disposal that the Minister is now able to wield through the administrator?
Mr. Speaker, drastic changes in leadership have taken place. Now we need to see a serious plan. My constituents can't wait any longer for family doctors and can't keep showing up at emergency rooms for basic care. Frontline workers meanwhile are sharing serious concerns of potential budget cuts that seem to confirm our fear that sustainability may be a code for austerity. I full confidence in the public administrator's resume but we need to see how the Minister intends to utilize his skills through a detailed strategy that is focused on improving access to quality health care that is the right of all Northerners. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Members' statements. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
