Introducing an income threshold for determining eligibility about medical escort would be a policy change. If that’s what the Members would like to consider, that’s something that needs to be discussed and changed in the policy and we know how difficult it is to determine eligibility of house benefits by income. I personally believe we should help those who need the help the most, and often it’s those who are under low income.

Mr. Chairman, as I stated, we are reviewing the Medical Travel Policy and there will be some recommendations coming out of that. Under current policy there is room for flexibility where a case can be made that someone needs more than one escort medically, but it has to be medically evidenced.

My experience has been that most cases that come forward and ask to be looked at by giving more flexibility, we are talking about compassionate cases, and our policy does not allow compassionate medical travel because, as you can see, how do we determine that somebody who has a three-year-old child waiting for a heart transplant or a young man who is older than 18 but who needs his family but they’re not really a child? At what spectrum of medical condition do you determine that somebody needs a compassionate escort more than others? That is a real huge Pandora’s Box. For that reason, just for clarity and simplicity and ease of administration and for the people to know what they’re eligible for, that we need to have very, very clear guidelines and stick to them.

I’m not deflecting the Member’s question. This is a very, very complex area. If we’re going to change it, we need to change the policy. I am coming back to the Standing Committee on Social Programs with the results of our medical review and escorts will be a big part of that, so I look forward to having the discussion with the committee. Thank you.