Mr. Hugh Kane:

Probably not, although we will produce outputs as we go along. There are some ongoing issues. One is that we are a voluntary group and all of us have other day jobs. That mitigates against us being able to get together as often and to do work as required, so that is a particular challenge.

The focus of work during our first three meetings was deliberating on this complex area of mental health and what would be a good way to approach the development of a refreshed A Vision for Change. We spent a good bit of time deliberating, thinking about and discussing among ourselves the direction in which we would go.

When I was here on the previous occasion, I noted that the oversight group decided to take an outcomes-focused approach rather than focusing on outputs and that we would examine the issue in the whole other context I outlined. Considerable thought and deliberative time went into that. As we are an independent group whose members are drawn from many different backgrounds, we engaged in a considerable amount of discussion to reach consensus and agree on the best way forward. In respect of trying to write a report based on that kind of deliberative approach, nothing really comes out of that because one goes through a process and we work as colleagues, share ideas, argue the points backward and forward and move on. That took a particular amount of time.

We were anxious to establish the current status of all the recommendations in A Vision for Change. We contracted an external group to do that particular task. Obviously, when we were trying to determine what was in and out of scope in terms of the work we were doing, we felt this was a fairly key piece of work. We received a draft report in at the end of February on that work. This identified what was finished, what was not finished and why it was not finished, what else might be missing and whether changes had taken place in other areas that we needed to add to our work. We decided to hold that piece of work while we moved on to developing the overall framework we are using to look at the development of policy. Again, in looking at that framework, we spent a good bit of time looking at other jurisdictions that have used an outcomes approach and the places where it has worked really well. A few moving pieces are starting to fit together. We are at the point where we have a draft framework into which we can build a policy. That is what we consulted extensively on today with the people we met. We will work on that kind of framework. Tomorrow, we must finish the piece of work with the consultants who carried out the work on A Vision for Change to identify the gaps and the final pieces that need to be done. Once that is done, that becomes an output and, as I said, we will share that with the committee.