‘I don’t recall’ is the most common sentence uttered at the public inquiry.”

Many memories have drifted away since the old health regions were abolished. Maybe that’s why “I don’t recall” is the most common sentence uttered at the public inquiry into queue-jumping.

Former health minister Ron Liepert said it more than 20 times in his testimony Tuesday. He’s not the only witness to repeat this mantra.

In the absence of memory, evidence is hard to pin down. And the inquiry — which is not a trial, as

Tantalizing hints are routinely raised, and then dropped without a followup ...

Commissioner John Vertes keeps reminding us — is hardly zealous about following clues wherever they lead.

Tantalizing hints are routinely raised, and then dropped without a followup question. Inconsistencies are rarely pursued.

On Tuesday, Lynn Redford and Brian Hlus — former government relations people in Calgary and Edmonton, respectively — both said they got calls from MLAs asking for help on behalf of constituents.

They insisted they just provided information, not access.

Redford and Hlus also said they didn’t know the identities of people the MLAs were trying to help.

Through all this, neither witness was asked an obvious question.

Which MLAs? Names, please? Let’s have them up here on the stand.

No, that doesn’t happen. The witnesses were never even encouraged to identify politicians.

But the MLAs, it’s now clear, are the heart of all this.

They are perhaps the only ones who can tell us whether VIPs might have jumped the queue through their influence.

This system grew up because of the MLAs. When constituents complained bitterly about health care, they wanted the ability to say, “don’t worry, I’ll make a call, see if we can get your wife (or granny, or child) into the system a little faster.”

So the government relations people got the job. What happened next was either queue-jumping or “system navigation” depending on your view of the world.

To me it was, by definition, a kind of queuejumping because it was so exclusive and limited.

Only a tiny fraction of the populace understood there were people your MLA could call to help find a quicker way into a specialist’s office or a sur- gery suite. This is a classic symptom of a supplydriven system.

There are always shortages, and where shortages exist, shortcut routes spring up.

Such aids to “navigation” might even be a good idea — if everybody knew it they were available. But very few Albertans did.

The MLAs also believed, and still do, that they were helping people find solutions, without hurting anybody else.

But they also knew it would be hard to explain this to the larger public. When the calls for an inquiry became a chorus, some were spooked at the thought.

It turns out there was another system, too, called patient representation.

Lynn Redford recalled how health region officials, whose job was to sort out patient problems, would follow up on some of the calls she received.

Well, then, if there was a regular route for patients to take, why did the MLAs need their own pipeline?

The MLAs should be made to explain all this. And they should tell us whether or not VIPs were ever eased into care.

But that won’t happen, for another reason that’s gradually emerging.

Privacy. The health system — and this inquiry — will not breach one patient’s privacy. And no patient who truly jumped the queue is going to waive privacy rights.

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