Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to try and get some clarification from the Minister of Health and Social Services with regards to some answers he gave to MLA Blake two days ago in regards to the Medical Travel Policy and escorts. In his answer to Mr. Blake, the Minister stated that there was going to be an RFP put out to deal with an escort policy. I believe that’s what I heard. Hansard doesn’t really clarify it for me. From Hansard, the Minister stated, “I’m hoping to have that Cabinet policy to Cabinet and then to Standing Committee on Social Programs in July.” That’s a little confusing to me, plus the reference to the RFP. So I would like to ask the Minister if he could please elaborate a bit and clarify it for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I apologize for the confusion. Several months ago, I briefed committee and provided them with some information on the review of the Medical Travel Policy. We had hoped to actually have what would be the base policy, the Cabinet policy ready for some discussion in March. Unfortunately, I had an opportunity to be briefed on that and I didn’t feel it was consistent with the types of questions and concerns the Members had been raising, so I asked the department to do a little bit of work. As a result, we are delayed on that. I hope to have that base Cabinet policy around medical travel done in July so that I can share it with Cabinet and Regular Members.
As part of the medical travel review, we were going to work on the base Cabinet policy but then we were also to do some work on some specific aspects of it, things such as escorts, non-medical escorts as well as fees as well as an appeal process. That was going to occur based on the timeline that I provided after we had done the base policy.
Frankly, given the delay that is now in place, I don’t want to wait to do the work on the escort portion because clearly we are hearing from people that that needs to be done. I have directed the department to prepare and go out with an RFP to seek somebody who can actually help us through that process to facilitate meeting with stakeholders, bring individuals who have some input that they want to provide onto this, build upon all the statistical work that we pulled together and all the research that we’ve done to do that public consultation process to make recommendations on how to move forward with this escort portion.
We’ve heard a lot of opinion; we’ve heard a lot of ideas; we’ve heard a lot of solutions. Some of the solutions contradict each other. I’ve had one community say we want to do this and other communities say please don’t do that. There is a lot of information there. We are seeking a consultant to help us go through that process and give us some concrete recommendations on the escort portion. That is what the RFP is for.
I apologize for any confusion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Minister for the explanation. Generally, policy is developed internally. Why is it that we need to go to an RFP and hire a contractor to develop this part of the policy? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we have a certain number of staff in the department who are doing a large amount of work, and more and more priorities are coming at them on a regular basis. We have seen clearly that we are capped with resources, and I want this work to be done and I want it to be done as quickly as possible, but we often go out and seek additional resources to help with the reviews and analysis and there are people who can help us do this in a timely manner, so this isn’t unusual, but given the timelines, we want to make sure that we get this done. I feel it’s important to expedite the section around escorts. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I totally agree. This policy has been revised for a very long period of time, so I’m glad that we are moving forward on the whole policy but specifically on this one section.
I’m still a bit confused when the Minister references a Cabinet policy. I’m not sure if that is a policy that stays just within Cabinet. When policies are developed, they are generally made public. So when he talks about a Cabinet policy, is this a policy that will be public afterwards and he is simply calling it a Cabinet policy because it’s not approved? I’m a little confused there. Thanks.
What I’m referring to is the overarching policy with respect to medical travel and how it operates and functions. It will be available to the authorities, it will be available to all individuals. We will make sure that people understand the Medical Travel Policy. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mrs. Groenewegen.
