Senate Committee To Study Cuban Health System

Announced in a press release earlier this week, the trip is officially a fact-finding trip on Cuba's maternal health and early childhood development programs. It is part of the committee's study of the Canadian health-care system. The committee, the Senate subcommittee on population health, is in Cuba at the invitation of the Cuban ambassador to Canada, Ernesto Antonio Senti, but Canadian taxpayers are picking up the tab. Although the actual cost of the trip will not be known until they all come back and submit their receipts, the senators voted themselves a total budget of $72,000 for the trip, which originally was to have included nine senators but was scaled back to five, a spokesperson for the Senate said. ... While in Havana, subcommittee members will visit Cuban health and education officials as well as officials from the United Nations Development Program, United Nations Children's Fund and World Health Organization. They will also meet representatives of the People's Power National Assembly and visit local health clinics and hospitals. The agenda, Senate officials said, will fill their days but the senators are aware the optics such a mission might create, said Senate media relations official Alexandre Asselin, adding now is the only time the senators can go if they are to produce their report by this spring. The trip had been planned for November, but was delayed when the House of Commons recessed. ... http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=de31925e-b6f0-42f3-ab83-e15505f025f5

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