Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess, in general, I support the new approach taken in these capital estimates to, you know, reduce the amount to what we were actually going to spend, and I note this has freed up quite a bit of room in our debt ceiling because we are not committed to borrowing the money for projects that, you know, seem to be completely behind schedule for a variety of reasons. But I just want to talk about the lack of information that I think is currently around all of our infrastructure and I believe it is information that would best be provided when we deal with the capital...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, yeah, I guess we're going to have find out some data there because I imagine providing prescription costs to people who already have specified diseases is more costly than, you know, just because you are a low income earner doesn't mean you get any prescriptions at all. We might bring thousands of people in who barely use the benefits. So I get there's some work to costing this. But to me the department is kind of completely gone out and engaged on, to me, what are separate questions. One, do we want to provide a means tested program; and two, do we want to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I believe the department will work to create, you know, a number of information items on each of the specified health conditions and work with those people to get the answers they're seeking moving forward. But I think as legislators, there's some fundamental questions about, you know, whether this is a good idea in the first place. And I think one of those is costs.

So my first question for the Minister of health is how much are we currently spending on providing extended health benefits to those with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I'll sneak one more in here which is this is the capital funding we give communities. I know we also give them operations funding and water and sewer. Does this mean that we are now going to provide a breakdown by community for each of the three funding groups publicly? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I'm glad to hear that, and I think asset management planning's important. I think it's a little ridiculous that we require our community governments to do it and we do not have an asset management plan. If you looked at GNWT, we'd be in about step negative 100 of asset management planning; step one being figuring out how much you actually own. But I'm glad we're requiring our communities to do that. Maybe one day we will do it.

I guess I want to go to another issue I have with the way we do our budgeting and see if MACA will comment.

I can go to well, I'm...

That makes me very happy. Wow, I don't even I had a whole line of other questions.

Okay, I guess my next question is this is money provided for capital under the funding formula. I see it's $29 million here. If we were following if we had the money to commit what's in the formula, how much money would actually be here, aka, what's the deficit shortage? Thank you, Madam Chair.

I got a commitment there to find out who's well, some undisclosed amount of money into someone's building that we don't own. But I'm wondering if we can get the commitment that we will publicly tell us what owns this building for the undisclosed amount of money. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can someone tell me who owns that building, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just looking at the line item for specialized courts and integrated case management services tenant improvements in Yellowknife. We're making some office improvements for integrated service delivery model. Can I just get a bit more explanation of what that is and what building that's in. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, my hope is that we could find a way to work with each of those people on the specified health condition list. I know there are some very expensive drugs, and there are some people with some very unique circumstances. And we may have to keep some of the conditions. Also I know we may have to revisit the list. There's some confusion to me why cancer's on there if it's insured; what it actually is accomplishing by being on there.

But my other question is the federal government recently announced a federal dental care plan. It was means tested. And I believe there...