Archives for March 28, 2018

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix promises 20% increase in annual number of diagnostic exams

British Columbia is increasing the number of MRI exams that will be done across the province.

Health Minister Adrian Dix says 37,000 more MRIs will have been performed by this time next year in the public health-care system.

The province says 188,000 of the exams — which use magnets and radio waves to make a detailed picture of specific parts of the body — are being scheduled this year at hospitals and clinics in the public system.

Dix says $11 million is being made available to add resources and capacity, allowing for the completion of 225,000 MRIs in 2018-19.

He says that is nearly a 20 per cent increase, which he describes as a “bold step” towards delivering on a NDP promise to restore health services and cut waiting lists.

The Health Ministry says overall wait times for the exams exceed 41 days for half of all patients, with 10 per cent waiting more than 199 days.

Preclearance will not amount to much if governments cannot cut red tape: official

Canada could soon have its first customs facilities inside the United States, says an American official who cites Florida and Arizona as potential sites for pilot projects in ongoing experiments to modernize the border.

This would come decades after American preclearance facilities were first placed at major Canadian airports, where travellers have long cleared customs before flying to the U.S., with the goal of reducing wait times at the back end.

Newer innovations involve train travel, with pilot projects to have rail passengers clear U.S. customs in Montreal and B.C., as the latest in ongoing efforts between the administrations of Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

Next, the project could spread south, an official said Monday.

“While Canada has not yet deployed inspection personnel to the United States to facilitate pre-clearance movement into Canada, we hope to see steps on this in the near-future. Perhaps in a pilot project in Scottsdale, or in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for example,” said Kenneth Merten, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state.

“Such deployments can only make cross-border commerce and travel more efficient. … With the world growing smaller every day, we look to these and other programs to further facilitate trade and travel flows.”

He was among several speakers at a conference about the future of the Canada-U.S. border, hosted in Washington by the Wilson Center.

A Canadian official speaking at the conference says speeding up the border is an economic imperative. He said border wait times cost the Canadian economy somewhere between one per cent and 1.8 per cent of GDP in 2010.

“A more efficient, seamless border will make it easier for passengers,” said Vincent Rigby, associate deputy minister at Public Safety Canada.

“It’s also essential to our economies.”

Customs and policy

His boss, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, has said his ultimate prize is introducing preclearance for cargo. In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, he described the goal this way: have customs officers inspect car parts at an auto-manufacturing plant, observe the sealing of cargo packages and send them on their way for speedy movement between the countries.

But one longtime trucking industry official raised a note of caution.

Jennifer Fox expressed her concern that all these big-picture modernization efforts will be for naught if the countries fail to improve the smaller details. She said she was speaking from experience, with frustrations about red tape.

One problem she cited: government departments not connected to customs systems.

She said a decade-old U.S. program aimed at automating customs barely does anything as a result of this. For example, she said a company importing tires still faces border delays — because the customs system has no idea if the tires meet standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And a company importing health products would face the same delays, because the customs system doesn’t communicate with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“USDA, FDA, EPA. Whoever has a hand in those goods — they need to be talking,” said Fox, now with the North American Strategy for Competitiveness group.

She said these technical details need to be straightened out first, before the countries create new systems that don’t work. For example, even the payment systems for customs fees differ from one country to the other and are somewhat archaic.

“(Truckers) are still paying cash at the border (in the U.S.),” she said in an interview.

“You’ve got to have exact change… If you don’t have enough — say, you show up with a $10 bill and it’s $13.75 — they send you to secondary (inspection).”

FREDERICTON — New Brunswick’s Crown-owned utility has reached a settlement with insurers who underwrote an all-risk policy for refurbishment of the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station, which took three years longer than planned and cost a billion dollars more than budgeted.

NB Power CEO Gaetan Thomas did not disclose the terms of the settlement Monday, citing a confidentiality agreement.

However, he said the proceeds from settlement will allow the utility to seek a lower electricity rate increase “for all New Brunswickers.”

In a 2018-19 rate application, the utility had asked the province’s Energy and Utilities Board to raise rates by about two per cent.

NB Power wants to temporarily adjourn the rate hearings so it can assess the settlement.

In January 2015, the province’s auditor general uncovered problems with the $2.4-billion project, saying the cost was reasonable — but NB Power might have lost opportunities to save money by using sole-source exemptions rather than seeking competitive bids.

The utility later agreed with 10 recommendations from the auditor general, which included obtaining competitive bids for all significant engineering services.

The refurbishment was aimed at extending the plant’s lifespan by at least another 25 years.

The 660-megawatt station produces enough electricity to supply more than 333,000 homes.

“NB Power is pleased to have resolved this matter and to be in a position to share the benefits of this settlement with our ratepayers,” Thomas said in a statement.

The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version put the cost at $2.4 million rather than billion.

The commitment is part of $2.2-billion investment in province’s daycare system

Ontario’s Liberals plan to make full-day daycare free for children aged 2-and-a-half until they are eligible for kindergarten should they form government after the June election, Premier Kathleen Wynne said on Tuesday.

The program would begin in 2020 and come at a cost of $930 million to the province. The move is part of a larger, “historic” $2.2-billion investment to expand access to licensed childcare for families.

“Not being able to find or afford child care is stressful. It is troubling, and it is holding families back at a time when it is already hard enough to get ahead,” said Wynne, who was joined by Finance Minister Charles Sousa and Indira Naidoo-Harris, minister responsible for early years and child care and minister of education.

“No more anxiety about costs … The freedom to choose when it’s time for mom or dad to go back to work. This is a big change,” Wynne said. “We’re playing the long game here, folks. This is the investment in the people of this province.”

Wynne made the announcement to a room of parents and children at Nelson Mandela Park Public School in Toronto, saying more details about the promise are coming in Wednesday’s pre-election budget.

According to Wynne, the plan would save the average family with one preschooler some $17,000. In Toronto, where the average cost of daycare is more expensive than any other Canadian city, families would benefit even more, she added.

Growing list of Liberal promises

The policy was largely devised by Gordon Cleveland, a University of Toronto economist, who called the current daycare regime a “punishing financial burden” for families. Cleveland said his research shows that yearly daycare fees for Ontario families, on average, range between $10,000 to $22,000 depending the age of children and where they live.

The typical family with one child between the age of two and four use more than 23 per cent of their after-tax income to pay for child care, Cleveland explained.

“Making child care free for preschool children will be transformative for Ontario’s families; it will help families balance the demands of work, education and family life, and will dramatically improve affordability, especially for children in low and middle income families,” Cleveland said in a statement issued to reporters.

The Liberals also committed $162.5-million over three years to boost access to licensed care, decrease fees and reduce wait list for parents applying for fee subsidies. Furthermore, a Liberal government would introduce a wage grid for early childhood educators to bring their compensation to the level of peers working in the school system.

Other elements of the plan include funding specifically for First Nations communities and $90-million to continue increasing the number of child care spaces in Ontario. In 2016, Wynne pledged to build 100,000 new spots for children under four by 2021.

Ontario’s Liberals have rolled out a number of costly commitments in the run-up to the release of the 2018 budget. Last week, Wynne revealed that OHIP+ will be expanded to include all Ontarians 65 and over, and promised extensive new funding for hospitals. Yesterday, she pledged $300-million for special needs education.

The provincial election is set for June 7.