Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, absolutely. I am always happy to go before the committee and have discussions with them. Thank you.

Mr. Elkin, please.

Yes, that’s exactly right. On page 8-21.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware and as the Premier replied earlier this morning, since that statement that the Member read out, there had been a workshop and there was very comprehensive representation from all sectors of our society and all departments across the government. It involves Justice, Education, income security, Health and Social Services and Housing. Anti-Poverty Strategy, the scope of the work has expanded considerably and it goes across the government. Because of that, the Executive, and with the entire Cabinet, has taken on the work of responding to that.

Mr...

I would think that we will have that out in the next two or three weeks. Thank you.

Because it’s important, I’m going to make one last attempt to just clarify the answer to his previous question. The reason why I say there is no black and white rule about the limitations on how we can spend doctors’ money or other money or the budget for physicians, what I meant by that is over the last two or three years FMB has directed when we are, for example, approving extra budget for, say, out-of-territory residential treatment or something, FMB has directed very clearly that that money is allocated for that item and it cannot be spent for anything else. Obviously, there is a lot of...

I could advise the Member that is one that I was very passionately involved with as a Regular Member. I fought to have this in the legislation the last time around. The Members and this standing committee expressed a lot of interest from the beginning to have these groups set up, and I can advise the Member that we have reinforced and refocused energy in that area and we have written to every community, we have approached every community, encouraging them to set up the children and family services committee as is provided for under current legislation. We are seeing some success in Fort...

I am aware of the public’s interest on this issue and I am wanting to get the information out as well. So we will be going to the public in very short order. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to make sure I answer the question and what I said was FMB wants to have and we do want to have some discipline on health care budgets. At the same time we understand that we need to have flexibility and we have asked the authorities to come up with the business case to change the spending to accommodate local needs. I don’t want to talk about individual authorities, but the authorities get block funding to deliver health care programs and there are situations where they have a budget for physicians, but they may not have a full spectrum of physicians. Actually, they use a...

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I am aware of that issue. It is at a preliminary discussion stage. The federal government has made it clear that they would not be signing something that would have that sort of adverse impact on our government, but I could tell the Member that this is not advanced to a stage where you wouldn’t even get to FPT. If it were to get anywhere near that, it would be at FPT level. This is just something that is floating around on a global level.

But something in Canada, we have a federation. We have a health care federation. Provincial and territorial governments have a lot to say...