Mandate letters echo PC campaign promises, but give P.E.I. ministers more time

New mandate letters made public this week outline the tasks that P.E.I. Premier Dennis King has laid out for his cabinet ministers over the course of their terms.

Those ministers were sworn in at a ceremony back in April.

For the most part, the letters reflect commitments the Progressive Conservatives made during the province's spring election, but in some cases the letters create a little more breathing space, giving the King government more time to achieve its goals.

For example, a commitment to create 16 new collaborative practice medical homes by the end of 2024 is repeated in the mandate letter for Health Minister Mark McLane. So too is a commitment to have all Islanders on the province's patient registry attached to a medical home within 24 months.

But when the PCs first made that promise in the early days of the campaign, that 24-month window meant a deadline of March 2025 to get everyone off the patient registry.

In McLane's mandate letter, dated Aug. 8, the premier seems to have pushed that deadline to August 2025.

Meanwhile, the number of Islanders on the patient registry seeking a primary care physician has grown from more than 28,000 when the election was called to 32,542 as of July 31.

More time for housing, environment goals

The same extra breathing room seems to have been given to Housing Minister Rob Lantz, who still has 24 months to eliminate P.E.I.'s social housing registry, a list of Islanders seeking space in government-run housing for seniors and families. That's five months longer than the 24-month promise made in March would have indicated. 

There's no deadline for Environment Minister Steven Myers to develop a new coastal management plan, even though he originally promised to bring forward a new policy to protect P.E.I.'s shorelines in time for the spring 2023 sitting of the legislature.

Myers's mandate letter orders him to "increase setback requirements in sensitive areas, including shorelines," addressing an issue brought into the spotlight with the construction of an enormous rock breakwater in Point Deroche to protect a new seasonal residence there.

Myers' mandate letter also includes measures to make P.E.I. more resilient in the face of major storms, to work with Maritime Electric to "ensure proper preventative measures are in place to reduce power outages," and to build capacity to "increase restoration efforts when power outages do occur."

He was also tasked with establishing "a generator power network to ensure essential services and critical infrastructure can continue during significant disruption periods," and to "assess the viability of burying power lines."

Emissions reductions targets, medical school and more

Some further highlights from the commitments included in the 12 mandate letters published Tuesday:

• Implement common standards, including uniform inspection practices taking in both public and private long-term care facilities in the province.
• Create a capital loan program to allow private community and long-term care facilities to expand over the next five years.
• Expand patient capacity at existing primary care access clinics, and open new clinics in West Prince and Kings County to provide care for patients without a primary care provider.
• Increase housing starts in order to bring P.E.I. back to a three per cent vacancy rate (former housing minister Matthew MacKay had set the bar at four per cent, which if achieved would have made it easier for apartment hunters to find a place to live in P.E.I.).
• Reduce building permit wait times to a maximum of 30 days by the end of 2023, and introduce "instant building permits" for straightforward builds.
• In education, pilot a school bus monitoring program "to support bus drivers and protect students while traveling to and from school."
• Also in education, begin planning to include a new junior high as part of planning for a new high school in Stratford, a commitment the PCs originally made during the 2007 election campaign.
• In justice, implement P.E.I's first domestic violence court service.

Some significant issues which didn't get mentioned in the mandate letters: meeting the province's ambitious emissions reductions targets for 2030 and 2040, building a new medical school at the University of Prince Edward Island, and returning the province to a balanced budget.

Senior staffing changes

Along with the mandate letters, the province issued a news release Tuesday highlighting changes to come in senior administrative positions within government.

Notable among those changes: The head of Finance P.E.I., Jamie Aiken, will become clerk of cabinet, the most senior bureaucrat in the province, and deputy cabinet clerk Pam Trainor will take a position at UPEI "providing strategic support to the board of governors."

The head of the Public Schools Branch, Norbert Carpenter, was announced as the province's incoming deputy minister of environment, energy and climate action. There's no word on who will replace him at the head of the organization that oversees the province's English-language public schools.