The premiers didn't like Justin Trudeau's offer on health-care. But they accepted it. Michael Harris writes:
The chair of the premiers’ council, Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, noted the significant shortfall in requested funding. Quebec Premier François Legault griped that Ottawa’s package was not a long-term solution to the problems besetting the health system.
But not a single premier came out swinging against Ottawa’s offer, not a single one turned it down — at least not yet.
Calling Ottawa’s offer “fiscally limited,” as B.C. Premier David Eby did, is the understatement of this political season. It was a country mile from being enough. The premiers had asked for $28 billion a year to be added to the Canada Health Transfer. They got $46.2 billion spread over 10 years, with just under half of that coming in the form of a boost to the Canada Health Transfer.
Another $25 billion will be doled out through bilateral deals with individual provinces and territories, with strings attached. Ottawa would like the funding to be invested in areas such as primary care and mental health.
Most importantly, the offer puts Ottawa in the driver's seat:
What really puts Ottawa in the driver’s seat with this offer, should the premiers accept it, is the level of oversight the federal government will exercise. Through the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the provinces and territories will be required to share data that Ottawa will use to assess whether the new funding, such as it is, actually produces better outcomes for Canadians.
If surgical wait times don’t improve, if more doctors and nurses aren’t recruited, if more Canadians don’t end up with access to family doctors, new funding could dry up — though there are no explicit penalty clauses in the federal proposal. But why else measure performance outcomes, if failing grades don’t come with consequences?
Why did the premiers agree to Ottawa's demands?
It comes down to this. Health care is now an existential issue for every political party. With record numbers of Canadians without a family doctor, with a shocking number of patients dying in ERs and a COVID-weary medical profession barely on its feet in overwhelmed hospitals, health care in this country is not merely in trouble, there is a clear and present danger of a collapse.
Any new money is a good thing because the crisis has reached dysfunctional proportions. And Canadians don’t want their misery reduced to jurisdictional haggling between different levels of government. They want to see improvements on health-care frontlines.
That’s why Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose reflexive reaction to anything Trudeau does is shock and outrage, says he will not only honour the Liberal deal if he is elected prime minister, he will give even more money to the premiers. Even Poilievre understands that at a visceral level, Canadian identity rests on public health care, not hockey. Too bad he didn’t bother to tell Canadians just how much more he would be willing to spend if he ran the show.
The one politician who's questioning the deal is Jagmeet Singh:
Singh, who entered into a supply and confidence deal with the Liberals that could keep Trudeau’s minority in power until 2025, has accused the prime minister of endangering Canada’s public health-care system in the most fundamental way.
“Most concerning is that, according to the premiers, Prime Minister Trudeau did not raise a single concern with provincial plans to build more for-profit, private health care. When he had the chance to stand up for Canada’s public health-care system, he stood down,” Singh said in a statement.
Even though Trudeau has repeatedly said that health care in all provinces and territories must comply with the Canada Health Act, Singh thinks Trudeau has missed the point. Rather than easing staffing problems in hospitals by having some procedures done in private clinics, the NDP believes that approach will only make matters worse.
“Private health care will cannibalize ERs and ORs…. We must move towards more public delivery, not further away,” the NDP leader tweeted.
How will it shake out? Stay tuned.
Image: CBC
2 comments:
Our governments, both on the left and right, have let us down. They have fiddled while issues grew and grew until they are almost impossible to rectify. Climate change, housing affordability, health care, foreign affairs (dare I say China), abandoned oil wells, and on and on. I saw the health care crisis beginning 20 years ago and I'm not an expert, just a guy trying to find a family doctor. Now everything is in crisis and our governments are overwhelmed. What a mess.
There is a lot of work to do, Gordie.
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