Glen Abernethy

Mr. Speaker, I know that there's some social infrastructure money that is available by application by the provinces and territories. I believe the Housing Corporation has been able to get some of those dollars. Those dollars are going to be used for basing the criteria. It's my understanding that those dollars are only available for independent living units in communities throughout the Northwest Territories, so it probably won't directly help with the long-term care. In the territories, where we want to do more to help people age in place and stay out of long-term care, the 258 is based on a...

With the reduction in the Canada Health Transfer from 6 per cent to 3 per cent, which was actually implemented by the Conservative government prior to the election but adhered to and supported by the Liberal government when they came in, we were going to take a significant reduction in growth in CHT moving forward. That reduction has been maintained; it's still going to be 3 per cent, but on top of that we are going to get $6.1 million and $7.4 million for aging in place, long-term care, homecare, as well as mental health.

Those dollars are limited funding so they are time-sensitive. They come...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are resources in this area already. What we need to do is make sure that we're utilizing those resources to maximum benefit. Certainly as we move forward and we look at these recommendations and we try to address the backlog, we'll get a better sense of what the continual demand will be and we'll certainly be in a position to have some discussions based on information, probably during the next business planning cycle. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Oh right. Sorry, mandate review, Mr. Chair. We're committed to doing a complete supp health review, figuring out those types of things that the Member has described in 2018-19, and we will certainly do that at that time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair that is as a result of forced growth on different supplies that are needed to provide services in this area. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We just keep trying to encourage them to make reasonable choices and to apply common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is so rare, it might as well be a super power, but we keep trying to encourage them to look at some of the realities as medicines change, as products change. As far as notifications, like this case apparently made the change in December and the notifications came out in January. We didn't see it until January, so unfortunately I sent out more letters to constituents saying this is not something we can cover at this time and apparently they could, not us...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I don’t have that number at my fingertips, but I will commit to getting that to committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a good point and it's certainly something we should be exploring. We don't require that they keep it, but we require them to utilize it first if they have it. So if they have insurance, they utilize it first before they access extended health benefits.

I remember a number of years ago there was some work around this that didn't make it too far, but I take the Member's point that we need to do something to encourage people to keep their insurances for as long as possible, if not forever, to help us offset some of these incredibly high costs of this benefit that is...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have already made the commitment. I am happy to live up to that commitment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.