Robert Hawkins

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a motion done by the Municipal Services Committee of the City of Yellowknife. It’s a resolution regarding the use of communication devices while driving. The resolution is to be forwarded to the NWT Association of Communities. It speaks to the concern of this issue.

I’m not sure what the Minister’s doing over there because if she can’t project what 2,299 people will cost, how do they project what a budget costs for the Department of Health? Why do we even bother with a budget for the Department of Health? Why do we even bother trying to earmark costs for supplementary health benefits? If we have no idea what’s happening over there, why do we even bother having anyone manage it? It’s kind of confusing.

Those are the type of things we have experts who can predict costs for, who are able to follow through and find some reasonable assumptions. We make them all...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sunday past I watched an historic vote in the House of Representatives in the United States where Obama’s presidency was finally able to muster up enough support to pass health benefits to those who did not have health benefits. They did not worry about the cost as the driving factor. They worried about the principles of rights to make sure people were covered.

The problem we’re dealing with here now is that the Department of Health and Social Services has not identified the actual cost to delivering those types of rights to the people we have defined as the working poor...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the beginning of this process when this side of the House and the champions in our communities came forward to say that this was completely wrong, this approach, there was a promise of a clean slate, the removal of an income means test as the philosophy, and yet that did not come forward. The Minister continues to say that the saving grace of this Supplementary Health Benefits Plan is to take from Peter to pay Paul.

What is stopping the Minister from doing a thorough analysis when we constantly hear about how much data and work they’ve done today? The one thing that...

I’m glad we have a low-maintenance Minister over there on our health system. I think the Minister answered the question herself. She has basically said that we’ve identified 2,299 people. How do you know that the messing around of the system will cover those 2,299 people? Tinkering with the system has not guaranteed anything. That’s the whole point of where I’m going with this. With all of these studies, analyses and changes, somebody should be able to give us context of what a projected cost of this would be. There’s been zero analysis on that to date.

The point I’m making is we have a butcher...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m rising today to lend my voice to the many expressions of concern made here today by our Members about the Minister of Health’s proposal for changing supplementary health benefits. Thus far the Minister seems to have her decision already made up to rush the consultations through to stakeholders regarding how they feel. The process seems to change on the run. I wish the Minister could establish a realistic schedule and process that spells out to everyone in a way that we can understand, rather than what the Minister has already told us they’re going to do.

The process...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleagues, through Members’ statements and questions, I will continue the issue of the Taltson expansion and the Deze partnership.

We have to be very clear, the GNWT represents the social interests of all residents of the Territories. To be crystal clear, the Deze interest is a group of partners that are represented strictly on economic interests, not public and social interests.

The challenge I see here is who represents the public interest in this partnership. That’s the question to the Premier right now, is how will the public be plugged into this partnership...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleagues today, I would like to chime into the Deze Taltson expansion issue. Mr. Speaker, I feel very strongly that any hydro expansion needs to be based on environmental and economic opportunities. I believe strongly, as well, that this shouldn’t continue to be a direct initiative pursued by our Legislature.

Mr. Speaker, the risk at this time is solely on the shoulders of the GNWT. As I understand it, the cash to date has only come from the GNWT pockets. This Legislature has found ways to waive the PUB review process and with our one-third partnership, I often...