The provincial NDP introduced a bill which would ban parking fees for cancer patients at health authority facilities.

NDP MLA Jared Clarke brought the bill forward at the legislative assembly Thursday morning.

Clarke said he can’t imagine the hardships of those going to the hospital on a regular basis for cancer treatment.

“When people are struggling with that, they shouldn’t have to worry about whether they have to pay for parking or not,” he said.

Dennis Ogrodnick has terminal cancer and is being attributed to the creation of the bill. His parking privileges were revoked in 2024 from the Prince Albert Victoria Hospital.

Since then, he has been advocating for parking privileges of all Saskatchewan cancer patients to be reinstated.

“People don’t realize the out-of-pocket expense once you are given that diagnosis,” he said.

“The biggest expense per-cancer patient is transportation and parking.”

Lori Carr, minister responsible for rural & remote health, said the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) strives to balance compassion, fairness, and consistency in all its policies.

“The SHA administers parking fees to help recover costs of maintaining parking facilities so that health care funding and resources can be directed to frontline health care,” Carr said.

Clarke challenged this argument, saying parking for cancer patients is not consistent throughout the province.

“The government doesn’t need this bill to make this change. It would be a simple policy change, and they could actually show some compassion to cancer patients,” said Clarke.

The bill did pass its first reading.

When asked if the Government of Saskatchewan is open to supporting the bill, Carr said the policy is probably going to stay as it is.