Philip Authier , Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, January 12, 2008
MONTREAL -- Just in time to escape the snow and muck of January, a
Senate committee has found it necessary to conduct an eight-day
fact-finding trip in sunny Cuba.
But the chairperson of the committee insists the five senators who were
to hop an Air Canada flight to Havana Saturday morning are going to do
real work, not lie around the pool and beaches while other Canadians
wrestle with winter's woes.
"I'm not even taking a bathing suit," Ottawa Senator Wilbert Keon said
in an interview just before departing. "I will never visit a beach while
I am there. That's absurd."
Announced in a press release earlier this week, the trip is touted as 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.
The budget covers air fare, ground transportation, meals and seven
nights at Havana's posh five-star Hotel Melia Cohiba in Havana. The
hotel's website says it "just may be Havana's finest hotel." Double
occupancy rooms at the 22-storey ocean view hotel with poolside bar and
snack services go for about $171 Canadian a night.
The other four senators on the trip are former Prince Edward Island
Liberal premier Catherine Callbeck, Quebec's Lucie Pepin, Newfoundland
and Labrador's Joan Cook and Ottawa's Jim Munson, a former director of
communications for Jean Chretien.
Three or four Senate researchers are accompanying the team, which was to
land in Cuba - where the temperature Friday was 29 degrees Celsius. They
return to Canada next Saturday.
Keon said he personally has always kept such trips and senatorial
expenses to a minimum.
"This one I feel is important to Canada," Keon said noting Cuba's
excellent record with maternal and infant survival in the context of the
underfunded Cuban health care system is worth studying.
Added Keon: "When I get back I'm going to Iqaluit for a week. That
should balance it off."
Montreal Gazette
pauthier@thegazette.canwest.com
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