Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I really appreciate the Member's comments about the relationship that is necessary between Health and Social Services and the school system. When we entered into this initiative, there was a lot of conversation that, the school boards, some of them actually have some dollars to do something like this, and they haven't always been able to do it, but one of the goods things was those people were employees of the school boards and they were part of the team. We didn't want to lose that team environment. We didn't want to lose that relationship, but we also accepted that it...

Without question, Mr. Chair, some individuals will notice a slight increase in their co-payment. Like I said, following the suggestions from committee, we're trying to reduce the number of individuals who are impacted. We are modifying the thresholds. We are changing and including different thresholds to help us ensure that we don't affect too many of our people. We've also been contemplating some other mechanisms to help support those individuals, but until such time as we get a bit more of that work done, and I anticipate it will be very shortly, we are just trying to verify some things...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This government is committed to fighting and addressing poverty as one of the many partners necessary to fight that battle, but there are limited funds, and there were significant amounts of mandate items that we needed to make some progress on.

Recognizing that there are multiple areas that are actually addressing poverty, housing, education, and many other things that we are doing, we felt, given that we had the $500,000 last year, that we weren't in a position to seek more when we had so many other priority areas to spend a very limited amount of money on. Thank you, Mr...

Phase two increases are 2019-2020 increases. They appear in this budget. Phase one [microphone turned off].

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the Member's comments. Just for clarity, it is about $9 million through Health and Social Services. That does not include money that is being spent by Education, Culture and Employment or any of the other partners on this file. About $7.9 million of that is GNWT, and the other $1.04 or $1.05 million is actually coming from Health Canada, and there is important work in this area.

Some breakdowns, just as an example so the Member can see some of the areas that we are spending the money on, is pre-natal and post-natal, there is about $2.4 million going into...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When I met with committee, this was an area of concern. The input I feel I received from committee was, if we're going to be moving forward, we need to reduce the impact on those low-income families who don't have an insurance provider and who may have to come out of pocket for co-payments. That's the work we're doing right now. It's a small number of individuals, and we're just, like I said, doing the final little bit of work on that to make sure that our numbers are solid. I'd hate to quote a number and then present to committee in the coming weeks and have that number...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, $1 million of that is actually for the Anti-Poverty Fund, which is an application-based program. $150,000 is for day shelters: $75,000 goes to Inuvik; $75,000 goes to Yellowknife.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, I am planning to share them with standing committee. If standing committee wishes to have a meeting, I am always happy to do so. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, please.