Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Members of this House here have taken an oath of office to respect and honour the treaties. And earlier in my comments, I was looking for an answer in regards to a contingency account to help treaty members that travel -- that needs help to travel south or for as medical escort accommodations, flights, etcetera. I never heard back. I mean, the Minister didn't come out and say that she will look at developing a contingency account to help our treaty members. My question to the Minister is she willing to set up a contingency account to help treaty members and Metis members, yes or no. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when we create different processes throughout our consensus government, those that are going to be locating dollars, those have to go through our financial process. So at this time, we are working through that to be able to come forward with some type of other benefit for those who are travelling for medical escorts and things like that. But at this time, we do not have that in place. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. I just want to keep bringing that up because we got to respect and honour the treaties that we have.
My next question would be is that back in the 19th Assembly, we had a Minister that wrote a policy on a Friday and implemented it on Monday. And my question to you is are you able to do the same thing here, to write a policy, to implement it on Monday, to create a contingency account so that our treaty members and Metis members are protected? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as within the NIHB, we are a third -- like, we administer their funding. I'm not aware of a policy that was written on a Friday that allocated dollars to something and that was passed on a Monday, so I would have to take that back and see how that -- fast that process could happen and utilize our processes to put -- you know, to look at it. But however, we are working towards a new process for medical travel. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you. Just to help you out, the Minister that did that back in the 19th Assembly was the MACA Minister. Anyway, moving forward, I guess the GNWT right now has -- or managing NIHB program right now. My other question would be is in British Columbia, the First Nation health authority administers NIHB on behalf of the federal government. If we can't manage it here and we can't build collaboration with Indigenous governments, is the Minister considering the creation of a similar Indigenous-led health authority here particularly as part of the government's commitment to implementation of UNDRIP? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the First Nation BC health authority structure is a lot different than in the territories. What they do is they collaborate all of their reserve health centres, so all of the health centres that fall on their reserves were before operated by Indigenous Service Canada. We, however, in the Northwest Territories do not have any First Nation funded directly reserve health centres and therefore we -- so they took that -- they drew that down within their own correlation with their health services. We have many different Indigenous governments. We are working in different areas with different Indigenous governments as what they want to draw down. We've worked with some of the self-governing. We're working towards some areas where self-governing communities want to draw down certain powers through health, and we're always willing to work with them. Now with NIHB, we've had many conversations at the Council of Leaders. Indigenous governments want to draw this service down; however, they do not want to draw it down until Indigenous Service Canada funds it accordingly and through a reimbursement so that they're guaranteed that they're going to get their money back because if an Indigenous government drew this down right now, we're sitting at $40 million that we have to pay for through medical travel that is not funded by the federal government. So we have covering a lot of this cost. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
