Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time the bariatric surgery is not part of the formulary; however, it can be, depending on what type of programs the doctor will recommend to an individual that may require bariatric surgery, depending on the body mass index. So, based on that, there would be several programs an individual could go through and nutrition programs, a routine that they would have to go through in order to become eligible for bariatric surgery. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, an individual may apply for their health care card in time within four months of their birthdate. The time frame is that if you apply within four months of your birthdate, then the process would run to where you will have your health care card prior to your birthdate. That is the time frame that we are using. Essentially we would, I guess, try to get everything done within those four months, not even longer or not much shorter because we need the time to do the process. At the same time, we have to protect the integrity of the card. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, they do have a guideline, a procedure that they follow so that each application received with the appropriate and correct information is processed in exactly the same way and then is sent out for a card. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize that accessibility, we are talking about physical accessibility into buildings or into infrastructure at the community level. That is a major issue. Only a couple of communities have physical accessibility for persons with disabilities. We know of individuals that cannot return to their home communities because they happen to be in a wheelchair and so on. We recognize that. It is a major project. I think that we would have to continue our work with the NWT Council for Persons with Disabilities. We would have to work with those guys in order to maybe try to create some...

The items that are incomplete are incomplete for various reasons. Like I indicated, some of funding, definitely. Some have just not been signed off by the groups that are working on that particular action item, and some were considered not applicable. Of the 88 recommendations, nine of those fell into that category.

The 38 recommendations that are ongoing are being actioned, but they are in the nature where they weren’t action plans that could have a completion date. Essentially they are action items that would continue on to support the persons with disabilities. Thank you.

A very, very high percentage of the private information that’s going to our office in Inuvik is getting to our office in Inuvik, being processed, cards are coming to the people. There are a few glitches in the system, yes. When you’re processing that many applications, there’s always something that will go wrong and sometimes information is lost. We try to recover that information. Individuals that apply for the card and are saying that the information is lost. We try to recover that information. Individuals who apply for the card and are saying the information was lost, we are dealing with...

We judge our statistics on what we’re getting from people that are indicating to us that they haven’t received their health care card in the appropriate time. Most people aren’t saying anything. As I indicated in the House previously, we received about 86 percent of the people who had birthdates up until a certain point that we were processing. That was 11,600 applications to the middle of May. If the information is lost, then we will do what we can to recover information. So the bottom line is, the individuals are covered for medical reasons and that’s what we’re trying to achieve. Thank you.

The department is interested in cost containment, and if we look at bariatric surgery and we recognize that the surgery is cost beneficial to the GNWT, and of course, changing the life of an individual that is morbidly obese, I will commit to looking into at least doing a cost-benefit analysis of that.

At one point when morbid obesity is being considered to be endangering an individual’s life, then it would be considered medically necessary. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, earlier on I indicated that perhaps we had a manpower issue in Inuvik because we were hearing some complaints about people not receiving their health care cards on time. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The time frame is what the time frame is. The idea is to try to make sure that individuals are getting coverage. That is the objective. Therefore, when we have the window of four months before your birthdate, that is so that individuals are resident of the territory for sure. We figured that four months was a reasonable time that an individual that is living in the...