Sask. NDP to lobby for $6 million contract with Calgary clinic

“The people of Saskatchewan have a lot of questions about what happened.”

Alec Sallum, Regina lead-post

A $6 million contract between the province and a private surgery clinic in Calgary was in the opposition's crosshairs during a contentious question period Thursday.

Surgical Centers Inc., along with former NDP finance minister Kevin Doherty, is registered as a lobbyist for the clinic. (a division of Clearpoint Health Network) has targeted a donation of $14,000 to the Saskatchewan Party.

“The people of Saskatchewan have a lot of questions about what happened,” NDP MLA Miara Conway said, calling it a “sweet deal.”

According to the Lobbyist Act, a lobbyist must register within six months with whom he or she wishes to communicate. This includes e-mails, letters, phone calls or in-person conversations, but it may mean that the person on the list has never been contacted or lobbied.

Between 2022 and 2023, a registration of lobbying activity forms from Saskatchewan's Office of the Registry of Lobbyists shows nine entries that potentially lobbied ministers and the premier to “work with the Ministry of Health to help with the surgical backlog.”

Doherty, vice president of Prairie Sky Strategy and one of two lobbyists listed with the firm, fills out lobbyist forms.

Health Minister Everett Hindley is listed nine times, eight of them as Minister for Rural and Remote Health, but this does not mean that Doherty met Hindley nine times to lobby on behalf of the clinic.

“As health minister, I have not met with Prairie Sky Strategy specifically to talk about the operation,” Hindley said when asked specifically about meetings with Doherty and lobbying forms.

When he became rural and remote health minister, Hindley said: “I can't believe I've done it. I met dozens, even hundreds of people.'

Hindley said he wasn't sure who Doherty had met during the lobbying process, but reiterated that he didn't think it was him.

Still, the registry raised eyebrows from the opposition.

“This private clinic has donated over $14,000 to Sask. Party and what did they get? They had a single initial contract of $6 million for hip and knee surgeries,” Conway said during question time Wednesday.

Hindley pushed back, saying the contract was tendered through a request for proposal (RFP) “an open, transparent process that we would have used to do this.” It's not a secret.”

He later retracted that comment, explaining that it wasn't actually done through the RFP process.

“It was the only company that could provide short-term hip and knee surgeries, and as a result it was not an RFP,” Hindley said Wednesday.

At the heart of the problem is Saskatchewan's wait times for hip and knee replacement surgery, which had the worst wait times in the country in 2023, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

The average wait time for knee surgery in Saskatchewan was 318 days, compared to a national average of 161 days. The average wait time for hip surgery was 232 days in Saskatchewan, compared to 131 days nationally.

Hindley said on Thursday that the contract with the private clinic was part of the government's strategy to reduce waiting times.

“There were 161,000 surgeries that were delivered privately but with publicly funded options,” he said.

But Conway said the $6 million the contract cost should be kept in Saskatchewan and questioned the contract's effectiveness.

“We have the worst waiting lists for hip and knee surgery in the country before single source contract, the worst in the country after single source contract,” Conway said, adding that instead of signing a contract with the Calgary clinic, the government “maybe . used that money to build a public system here.”

Hindley said the province has done so and the budget plans to increase capacity in Saskatchewan.

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