Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One point I would like to make sure is brought to mind is that this motion says, be prepared to attend public hearings. The way I read that, it doesn't automatically mean that there will be public hearings. If the Standing Committee on Finance is satisfied with the action plan, then there may be no public hearings held. I don't think that it's ever been said that we've got a date certain that the public hearings will be held.
This committee, in particular, since this legislature has started has insisted that every department has to have a plan of action, a comprehensive plan for where it is headed in order to justify the expenditure of funds. It was a result of the recommendation of this committee, for instance, that we had the Minister of Education present his plan of action which was called, Towards 2010. It's not the first time that this committee has made recommendations that there be a plan of action, and I think that, if you check the records, you will find that we have made this same recommendation for all of the departments, including Health, previously. It is therefore our opinion, as Members of this committee, that this plan of action should be ready, and if there are problems, then those problems should be addressed or should have been in the process of being addressed or else we should have been talking about what those problems were, perhaps in the public forums, so that everybody understood what the problems were.
I think that the Premier has expressed concern about the scope of what an action plan might contain, but as our chairman has said, a comprehensive plan for where a department is headed really does have to do with how money is spent, and that's what we are concerned about. We want to make sure that money is being spent effectively and efficiently, and without a plan of action, how do we know that that's going to happen?
If there's a problem with health boards, then let's deal with that. Let's talk about that in this forum, if that's where the problem is with getting things done. But, as the SCOF chairman has already said, much of the information is already prepared. It just hasn't been put together in a cohesive, comprehensive package that says, here are the steps we are going to take to achieve these goals and here's how long we will take to get them done.
I will take one just right off the top from Renewed Partnerships, the response to recommendation 16. We have three bullets in this document, which was tabled yesterday, which say that the Department of Health will support health and hospital boards to identify training needs and so on; in-service opportunities will be provided yearly or regularly and then talks about the Department of Social Services. Nowhere in here does it say what the time lines are. It doesn't say that we are going to try and accomplish these things in a certain period. That's the sort of information that the committee is looking for in a comprehensive plan of action. We want the responses that we have to date identified in a ranking of priority and we want to know where the resources are going to be found to put them in place and what the expected timetable is.
I've got to say, and I said it in my Member's statement earlier today, that the approach that we got in Renewed Partnerships, the document that the Premier tabled yesterday, was much superior to the response that we have received for any other recommendations coming from committees.
What we are asking is that we get the whole package put together around themes with an idea as to how we are going to accomplish these goals, and, to our way of thinking, this is something management should be doing at all times. This isn't something that's brand new. It's a management tool for somebody who is running a business, who is running a department, who is running government, to make sure that you do have a well thought-out plan of action for where you are going, where you are headed, and if you've got problems, then let's hear what those problems are and let's see if we can't deal with them.
But don't, after we've been asking for this plan for a long time, come back and say that it isn't possible because hospital boards are getting in the way. How are hospital boards getting in the way? If they are, then I want to hear that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
