Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister has already pointed out that this budget used to be split up among departments and they all funded this themselves. We had a significant increase, though, in medical travel costs in 2004-2005. It went from about $2.8 million the year before to about $3.9 million in one year. That was about a 30 percent increase, which was a fairly dramatic increase over one year. Departments were never, because that only happened in 2004-2005, we never adjusted their budget for that change before we did the HR amalgamation. So they only had funding to transfer into the FMBS in the amount of about $2.8 million, which is the budget that we set up for this year. But in fact, the peak, if you will, in medical travel, or the large increase in medical travel occurred in 2004-2005 and we're, at this point in time, researching the records for 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 to determine exactly what was the cause of that increase. We can attribute it, as the Minister has pointed out, to airfare increases and accommodation increases and just the number of referrals. But we want to have a more in depth understanding of what drove that significant budget increase in 2004-2005 so that for future forecasting, we can assess that and be not only more accurate in our forecasting, but allow us to assess whether or not there's some changes or some things we should be looking at with respect to the program that would mitigate costs. So that work is going on at this point in time; however, I expect it will be a few months yet before we're able to conclude anything and report it to the House.
Mr. Voytilla on Item 16: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
In the Legislative Assembly on March 1st, 2006. See this statement in context.
Item 16: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Item 16: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
February 28th, 2006
Page 1475
Voytilla
See context to find out what was said next.