Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the House I talked during my Member’s statement about our Territory needing a transplant policy that is clear, that can help northern families keep the family unit strong and united during those darker periods of life that no one certainly wishes upon them. My question to the Minister of Health and Social Services in the past is, would you look at this and it has been an outright no, feeling that we don’t have the money or whether the existing plan doesn’t really allow it or whatnot. That’s not so important as the question today, which is simply if the Minister of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at one time there was a Compassionate Travel Policy and it was stopped. It could well be suited for particular cases like this. Would the Minister reinvestigate it from that point of view, from a compassionate point of view? I mean, all I’m asking her to do, and I want to be absolutely clear, Mr. Speaker, is I’d like her to do an analysis and we could cost it out and take it from a compassionate point of view when these situations are very dire, as the old Compassionate Travel Policy allowed. Would the Minister reconsider this under that circumstance? Thank...

I’m not sure that’s necessarily right. The reason I say that is because one policy is great when the questions are simple. But in this particular case and other cases that have been presented by this House, our questions aren’t typically black and white. They require a lot of melding and forming to and fro. The Health Minister is correct, we do have a Medical Travel Policy, but people have been refused even with doctors’ notes. That’s why I’m suggesting that could an analysis of this particular situation, which has not been done, be considered at this time and we could examine what the true...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use my Member’s statement today to further talk about the transplant policy I raised before. The reason I want to talk about it is because certainly things aren’t going very well. I think our Territory, I believe in it very strongly and I believe in the passion people have who work here and develop policy, but as I talked about it before, we need respite for mothers or perhaps fathers that are sitting by their child’s side through these horrible processes, but we don’t have a policy that occasionally unites the family through those special visits.

I can tell...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On this occasion I’d like to continue to recognize Mr. Ed Jeske, a constituent and well-known Yellowknifer, certainly; Mr. David Wind, city councillor as well as a constituent and also somebody who has been trumpeting these supplementary health benefit changes quite loudly; and Ms. Lydia Bardak, councillor, who was mentioned earlier, another constituent of Yellowknife Centre; and lastly, I’d like to make special note, as well, to Sarah Wright-Cardinal, who is the president of Aurora College. I want to recognize her from the point of view of I hear she’s doing a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to talk about the proposed changes to supplementary health benefits. Canada is a shining inspiration to the world. It continues to make great strides to represent itself as a beacon of hope, opportunity and fairness. I don’t believe the proposed changes to the supplementary health policy mirrors those principles in any way at all.

By taking away supplementary health benefits, this will go down as a great case study many years from now when people watch and wonder what happened. Why did the GNWT start acting like Ottawa? If the Minister and this Cabinet...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to table a sample postcard I made up on the occasion to help the citizens fight for supplementary health benefits because they matter. This is a postcard addressed to our Premier, Floyd Roland, and Sandy Lee and it simply states Make Health Care Benefits Universal, No to Co-Payments and Find Another Way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Prior to 2004, the health policy was designated under the disease state coverage. It worked. It may not have been perfect, but it worked, Mr. Speaker. So if you had diabetes you could get care specific to diabetes. That didn’t mean that if you had the sniffles you could get a prescription automatically for antibiotics or who knows what just because you had the sniffles, Mr. Speaker, but that’s the way it’s set up now. It was like a slippery slope, those changes back in 2004. Disease state worked and I’m going to tell you right now that the network and process still...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the NWT Health Minister regarding supplementary health benefits, and of course, it’s not to the Ontario Health Minister when we talk about Ontario benefits, and certainly not to the Alberta Minister of Health when we hear about how Alberta does stuff.

Mr. Speaker, speaking to the Minister for Health and Social Services in the Northwest Territories, my first question on the supplementary health benefits issue is this: under Section 5, and I won’t go into the details of how far down in the policy, under the Cabinet policy regarding supp health...

I don’t see one opportunity that the government has taken to revisit this, other than cutting benefits to the sick and elderly simply down racial and cultural lines. No, because there of course has been no direction from the 15th Assembly to do that. That’s why.

I question if this policy was reversed if it would stand the test of fairness. I’d say no. This policy is about division, not about unity. It preys on people’s differences by splitting our Territory down cultural lines and I believe it’s truly not fair and extremely hurtful to a lot of people out there.

In closing, the Minister has not...