Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier this week, I think it was yesterday, I made a statement in the House about Drop the Pop, where we did indicate that we were working with the grocery stores across the Territories to help them be our partnerships. We can’t directly tell them what to sell and not. I think the best way is to encourage them to be our partners and understand that there will always be some people who will make choices for pop rather than something healthier, but as much as possible we would work with our partnerships and grocery stores would be one of them. We are expanding our...

I think I will ask the director of finance to explain that. Thank you.

Will do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The increase is the southern placement of children contract for $1.3 million and $2.91 million for residential...$2.091 million for residential southern placement for adults. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is a huge list. It would take us weeks to get that. I am wondering if, because there are many, many NGOs, non-government organizations, whether it is social services, seniors, humanitarian, environmental, sports. So I am wondering if he could be more specific about exactly what he would like us to get. Thank you.

Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, we launched that in a big way, I believe, last fall. So I would be happy to give an update to all the Members as to where we are on that and looking forward as to where we see going for the next year or so.

With respect to the support for seniors, as the Members are aware, the funding for the Senior Games came out of THAF funding and that funding is expiring. The NWT Seniors’ Society has submitted a proposal on how they would like to work with the government on providing support to seniors and creating an opportunity for the seniors to do healthy living. So we’re in the process of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll take the Member’s point, but I think it is really hard to get an accurate comparison to take one part out of the government’s budget, say from 1986 or something, and compare it to ours unless we used the same indicators. So I just want to say, modern medicine and health care have changed so we need to know what is included there. People in Tsiigehtchic, they are connected to roads which is different than some of the other communities in the Territories who are not connected by the road and they still get fly-in nursing service.

Mr. Chairman, I understand his...

No, Mr. Chairman. The Member knows that is not going to be solely my decision. What I meant by that is looking at the demographics territorial-wide and looking at how big our senior populations are, and what ages they are, and knowing all of the other indicators that we, as a government, have to prepare for increasing long-term care beds.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a couple of issues that the Member raised. The first one about how services were better back in the ‘80s, I do not have information to either accept that or dispute that. I believe, by and large, this government is able to keep records from basically ‘99-2000, because it’s just hard to make comparisons when we’re talking about information prior to division. Anecdotally, I used to work as an executive assistant of the Minister of Health and Social Services for the entire NWT and I think there were as many issues back then as there are now.

On the issue of...