Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do share the view that it's clear that our problems started with the 17th Assembly, Madam Speaker, but I will address my comments today to the Minister of Finance for the 19th Assembly.

Firstly, I believe this budget is lacking in two areas. One is more money for NGOs. I know this budget contains some increases for our nongovernment organizations, which was a result of the last budgets negotiations, and I thank the Minister of Finance and all the departments for their work on that, but I am concerned that this is simply set out to be a onetime funding. I spoke with...

Yeah, thank you. And can someone just help me understand. My understanding is that Housing First currently also operates out of Northview through leasing. But I'm just wondering if those are we hold those leases or the nonprofit does, or whether that is anything to do with the housing corp.? Thank you.

What? That was a question there.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Then I think the answer there is to add ALS to the list. I don't understand why this is being posed as a binary that we on one hand want to have a meanstested program for low income people who are you know, inherently don't have these conditions because they would be covered so are likely healthy people, and on the other hand people who are existing with a specified disease condition and putting their current treatment at risk. Is it not possible for the Minister to put forward a new policy that keeps the current approach and as a meanstested approach? Thank you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some significant concerns with the current proposal to change extended healthcare benefits. So my first question to the Minister of health is we've gone out, we've engaged; can the Minister just update this House what the next steps are on this plan? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to speak a bit about debt for the housing corporation. I've expressed this before that, you know, the power corp has a similar revenue to the housing corp, and it is hundreds of millions of dollars of debt and the housing corp, with about the same revenue as and sorry, I don't have the figure. But you guys got about $10 million or so, and you don't have a debt problem, that's for sure. And I'm just to me, it seems that we're spending, you know, $30 million on housing this is one of the biggest investments we've made in this Assembly that to pay...

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that, that seems like good money. Can I just get a bit of a sense of whether there are any plans to centralize the way we do maintenance? When I speak to the LHOs, you know, sometimes there's push back about what they're responsible for, what we're responsible for, what exactly gets in the schedule. It seems to me that the housing corp should probably have a piece of software that has every single unit in it and every single thing that's been done and all of that's inputted. You know, I know that we are really decentralized in this area. But is there any plans to...

Thank you. Can I get an updated figure of the total amount of money we owe CMHC? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we don't use income testing for anything in public healthcare. And if you show up to the doctor, it doesn't matter how much money you make; you get services provided if you are sick. And that is exactly what we were trying to do with people who had these specified disease conditions. And my concern, Mr. Speaker, is we're now asking people to go out and try and find third-party insurance when they have diseases which makes it very difficult to get third-party insurance. We're asking people to put their coverage at risk, and it is causing them a lot of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it was quite clear in that public engagement that lots of people were very concerned about the proposal to remove the specified conditions. Can the Minister confirm whether the plan is to draft that new policy that will, in fact, remove those specified conditions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.