Lesa Semmler

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is actually a good news story because we usually have to put forward supps or add to the deficit for many of our medication costs previously with the funding, and we were able to increase the funding with the costs for -- drugs for rare disease agreement through the federal government that will increase the amount of money coming to pay for a lot of those costs that extended health benefits pays for those medications. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to speak to specifics on any -- you know, on what any MLA has brought to my office. But raising the concern is the medical travel policy is for scheduled appointments and many of the issues that come through my office are for escorts for the patient. So when the patient is medivaced from community A to community B, there is no escort policy because the escort is the medical escort. And so when the patient arrives, then it's based on the practitioner and then we can get based on if there's decision-making, you know, if the patient is intubated...

So what the change with the -- the change in the funding, once we have the new agreement and the money that we are -- you know, I think that's the piece, where as I mentioned before, home care will continue to be run as it always has. We will have the nursing services. There will be self-referral. There will be home support workers when needed through the same process, through home care assessments. It's the personal pieces that Indigenous governments felt that they wanted to take on and they can do that themselves in the communities. They are more flexible to be able to do other things. They...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I have it broken down into the different sections, and so what I can commit to is taking this back and sharing with the Member -- we can organize it into the regions, the health authority regions, and provide that to Members.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the Northwest Territories, all travel for medical is provided through many different insurances, and the way that we fund for First Nation and Inuit that don't have any other employer insurances is through the non-insured health benefits. Non-insured health benefits is the payer of last resort, which we administer through their policy. However, when we -- you know, I've heard on the floor now for a couple of days, you know, with specifics to providing healthcare services to Indigenous people, First Nation, and Inuit, we provide health services to the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the ADM has stated, the way that the budget is processed, so we don't have the agreement -- we didn't have the Working Together Agreement with Health Canada, and we didn't have the First Nation home and community care signed off by the time that this budget was available. The funding for those positions is until March 31st that were up -- like, that were in the current budget; however, by the time this budget was printed and put together we don't -- like, we have commitment to the working together ongoing funding, the same funding. So those positions, come April 1st...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at this time we are not contemplating that. The reason what we're doing right now is we are -- we are doing a system review of a lot of our health services and our insured services, our non-insured services that we are providing through the health sustainability unit, and so we need to complete that task before we decide to -- you know, to implement new services. Right now, the health and social services every year has a deficit and so trying to review and implement something new at this time is not something that we are looking at. However, we do provide...

Or Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll turn that over to ADM Mathison as keeping track of those numbers with the in and out, I'll confuse them for everybody. So I'll just turn it over to her.

Mr. Speaker, across the Northwest Territories, residents want better access to primary and community care that feels safe, respectful, and connected to culture and community. Indigenous residents have been clear about the harm, discrimination, and inequities that they continue to experience in the health and social services system. These experiences affect trust, access, and health outcomes in ways that cannot be ignored. This is why our government is working in partnership with Indigenous governments to transform how health care is designed and delivered in the Northwest Territories.

One of...