Sandy Lee
Statements in Debates
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issues that the Member is mentioning here are a part of the review, so we expect to have the review done by the end of this fiscal year and to be able to bring forward to the standing committee for discussion with recommendations following that in April or May. Thank you.
We are far from rolling with the punches. This is something that occupies us 24 hours a day. I’m going to get the deputy minister to give a full detail of the actions we are taking. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s comment. I don’t think anything he says precludes the debate that I said that was required.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I’m going to have to do a better breakdown and get back to you, but the hospital block funding includes doctors working in those health centres and other services we provide. I’m going to get Mr. Elkin to explain.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The flexibility that the Member is suggesting would be a policy change and I think what we need is we want to be clear about our policies. If we want to change the policy, we should change them. Adding a flexibility makes it too difficult for staff in the system to administer.
What the Member is speaking to is a compassionate medical escort and a compassionate escort is not provided for under our policy. We are reviewing our Medical Travel Policy right now including an escort issue, because we are inundated every day with families who would like us to assist more. We as...
Wow. Let me just be brief. I guess just one reason, as I stated earlier, is that given the discussions we’ve had over the last two or three years, we were told clearly that the Supplementary Health Benefits Policy that was approved, but not in effect yet, should be rescinded. We did that. A core part of that policy was an income threshold which, in turn, determined a group of people that we considered to be working poor. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that our public does not want us to determine health benefits by income. So that’s where we are.
As I stated earlier, we are following and...
We are working toward right sizing the budget for the eight authorities and we will be making recommendations on how we do that going forward. I do take the Member’s point and appreciate it. Thank you.
Yes, please. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have a dispute with the federal government on billing issues with medical travel. In fact, what Mr. Elkin referred to THAF, we received extra funding to deal with medical travel issues. As the Members know, we have an extension of two years and part of our obligation is to exit out of the program and determine how we are going to support this program from within. So that’s one of the reasons why we’re reviewing the medical travel, but as Mr. Elkin mentioned, we were able to extend THAF and now it’s called THSSI and we were able to secure some extra money for...
Thank you. On the first point, we are compiling documents to respond to the various commitments that we’ve made over yesterday and today and we will get it to the Members as soon as possible. I mean within hours and days here as the staff put it together.
I know that the Member has mentioned many a time about me coming to the standing committee with a document that showed that we were going to reduce the deficit at Stanton to zero. Honestly I cannot see how that kind of document could have been possible. I am aware that we had many, many discussions, because, as the Member has referred to a...