Phil Grewar
Last updated on May 9, 2023
"My career highlight was the first program that I put together shortly after joining the government. I joined the government in December and by April I had taken all the province's hospitals into a self-insured program. Cost savings in the first year approached $7 million. The K to 12 schools and post-secondaries were next."
Phil Grewar received the Legacy Premier’s Award in 2012 and was inducted into the Hall of Excellence in 2014.
In 1981, Phil was hired as a consultant to study the government’s risk management system. He discovered there was limited awareness of the exposures to risk and no consistent or cohesive plan of management. He also found that a lack of coordination in how the government purchased insurance was wasting tens of thousands of dollars annually and that many government assets were not insured.
In his report to the government, Phil recommended the creation of a central office responsible for coordinating the government’s risk management function. The government accepted Phil’s recommendation and created a central risk management office. In December 1985, the government asked Phil to take the position of the province’s first Director of Risk Management.
In the early years, Phil forged the province’s current risk management structure. The cornerstone of this structure is self-insurance covering liability (including medical malpractice), crime and property risks for all hospitals, midwives, schools, colleges and institutes. He also fashioned a program that provides similar coverage for these same risks for thousands of private contractors (mainly non-profit societies) who deliver social service programs for the government. But for Phil’s efforts, many of these contractors would have withdrawn their services as they were not prepared to operate without liability insurance.
Because of Phil, the branch provides Enterprise Risk Management consulting services to the public sector. The branch was instrumental in ensuring that the provincial risks arising out of the 2010 Olympic Games were identified, analyzed and brought to the attention of executive to facilitate effective risk mitigation strategies. The 2010 Games were the first games to use Enterprise Risk Management and the International Olympic Committee has now mandated it for all future Olympic Games.
