Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Premier, and I appreciate all that and I understand what you’re saying, it’s just last night after the announcement came out I had some constituents and other residents of the Northwest Territories talk to me and I spent a lot of time defending what we’re doing and that we’re working together and are coming together to work as a working group to find some reasonable solutions.

One of the things that came up a couple times is some people don’t trust, necessarily. What we’re talking about is restoring public confidence. Unfortunately, some people have labelled this as Minister Lee...

Thank you. I’d like to thank the Premier for that response. I really do appreciate that they’re going to listen to the recommendations of the working group.

The second question is if the working group makes a recommendation that is contrary to the direction that the Department of Health is taking right now, can the Premier please ensure to us today that the committee’s direction will be adhered to, or will the Minister actually have a veto over what the working group is suggesting or recommending?

Mr. Speaker, I strongly encourage the working group to take the time needed to do the work required and develop a reasonable and appropriate Supplemental Health Benefits Program. Mr. Speaker, it’s more important that we get it done right as opposed to get it done right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier in follow up to the questions from my colleague Mr. Bromley. I think one of the biggest problems that we have with finding ways to support the voluntary sector is the fact that I don’t think that we have a clear definition of what the voluntary sector is. You hear some people talk about pure volunteerism and I hear people talk about NGOs. Quite frankly, the voluntary sector is a combination of the two. I think that would help us an awful lot. So I was wondering if I could get the Premier to commit to working with some of these volunteer...

Once again, thank you to the Premier for that. I’m also happy to hear that he’s going to give Priorities and Planning an opportunity to look at that and make recommendations as well. I think it’s important to the operations of the working group that the operations are transparent. Given that the Minister of Health and Social Services is responsible for the final design and ultimately the implementation of the Supplemental Health Program, it’s important that she be open to recommendations from this committee. Based on that, I’m a little worried that if the Minister of Health and Social Services...

Thank you. So I don’t think we heard the Minister say yes, I think we heard the Minister say that he is going to explore the possibilities. I just want to suggest to the Minister that right now if he was to do some pricing to go get a double walled tank or a tank with one of the alarms in it installed, it’s going to cost you over $4,000 to install, whereas if you want to put in one of the bad tanks and replace one of the bad tanks with a bad tank it’s going to cost you about $1,000. So I’d like to encourage the Minister to have his department go out and do some additional research into the...

I’d like to thank the Premier for that. I’m happy to hear the committees still exist and I’m happy to hear that they meet. Where my frustration lies is that the silos obviously continue to exist. I gave an example earlier, but I’d be happy to sit down with the Premier and give him a number of examples that I’ve received over the last couple of months. What is the Premier doing with respect with these committees to help break down some of these silos? I mean, what we want is an efficient government and I acknowledge that the committees have done an awful lot of good work, but these silos...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Premier and are in follow up to my Member’s statement from earlier today.

The Premier established five strategic initiative committees early in the life of this government: Building Our Future, Managing This Land, Reducing the Cost of Living, Maximizing Opportunities, and Refocusing Government. Some of the reasons that these committees were created was to help the departments work together to create awareness of initiatives happening across government and in individual departments, to provide an opportunity to share information...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Carried