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.