Sandy Lee

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we were told clearly that the Supplementary Health Benefits Policy that was approved, but not in effect yet, should be rescinded.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...

Mr. Speaker, there were two or three questions pertaining to the details of the employees being paid to attend such a program. I need to get back to the Member as to whether they were required to do that before, and get the information that the Member needs. I will undertake to get back to the Member on that.

I do agree with the Member that I did have information that that program is not available this time, the introductory one, because of lack of enrolment. I will get back to the Member on the two or three questions that he asked. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, it was started before I went into office. It was completed, I believe, around that time, three years ago. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I could say not what we are going to do, but what we are actually doing right now and what we have been doing for the last three years we will continue to do with the support of all the Members on the other side, we as an Assembly have made a full commitment to addressing the family violence issue. We have increased funding under the Shelter Stablilzation Fund. We have also expanded our Family Violence Program funding to communities where there are no shelters, so we have enhanced funding for those communities with shelters and we made funding available for communities without...

I committed earlier in the day to get back to the Member on that and I just want to say that, for the record, when our Member said earlier that a community was without a social worker for three years or something like that, I think it’s important to state for the record that where there is a vacancy, the system would have social workers going in and covering those. It’s not necessarily about coverage of the work. I just want to say that I appreciate that for many communities they would like to see the actual body of the social worker there working in the community, getting to know the...