For Mayor Craig Copeland, attracting new physicians has been a challenge for all of his six terms in office. His community has 15,000 people, and rural areas outside town count for another 15,000, meaning 30,000 people rely on the Cold Lake Healthcare Centre.
In Toronto, the University Health Network manages three of the GTA’s largest hospitals with more than 1,200 beds and nearly 18,000 staff. It’s all shaping up into an inevitable showdown over who will pump more money into the system. The provinces say their health systems are on fire, and they’re focusing their efforts on fighting Ottawa over who will pay for the water. The federal government, meanwhile, appears to be cool to the idea of spending more, and is looking to take more control over the way provinces deliver health care. In the meantime, the blaze keeps spreading.
“We are often operating well above 100 per cent of funded occupancy and we have a very tired workforce,” Smith said. Premiers have been waiting for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sit down with them to hash out a new health-care deal, but he has insisted he won’t until the pandemic is over, and he has set no date for any talks. When the premiers meet in Victoria, B.C. this week, they’re expected to try to pressure Trudeau again to open discussions. It will likely be in vain: Sources in the government don’t see Trudeau accepting at least until after the Quebec election in October.
In March, Duclos announced a one-year top up of $2 billion to help provinces clear backlogs and also made clear the feds have views on where federal dollars should be spent going forward. Still, Canada’s premiers say they’re being asked to shoulder even more than that. They calculate that Ottawa pays just 22 per cent of health-care costs today, with the number set to fall even further over the next couple of years. The Liberals insist it’s higher, counting tax points transferred in 1977, where the federal government agreed to lower taxes so provinces could raise their own taxes for health-care revenues.
“Canada’s biggest challenge isn’t that we don’t spend enough on health care,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said, when she was asked about health-care transfers after tabling her latest budget. “We actually spend quite a bit compared to peer countries and we spend quite a bit on health care compared to peer countries who get better outcomes than we do.”Article content
So after the premiers have burned down the firehouse, they now want someone else to pay for a new building…
The Fed's underfund healthcare purposely. They control utilisation and use the money for buying votes and developing their ideology. Funding used to be$50/50. Now provinces pay 75% and feds25%. They countrol numbers of nurses, doctors,beds, hospitals,services etc all purposely
Ottawa Citizen which part don’t you understand health care system is provincial. Why don’t you ask dougy where the 4 billion fir health care from the federal went….
ljb879 Canada's health system has been smouldering my entire life. No one dared actually fixing anything about it. All covid did was add fuel to that fire. And still, no one dares to actually fix anything about it.
Between Alberta and Ontario they misplaced close to 10 billion in federal funding earmarked for health care. Where did that money go?
more Yello-journo bullshit....every Province can raise their OWN damn taxes ANY time to meet the needs of THEIR citizens.... leave Trudeau alone.
Provinces, responsible for HC, were given millions to help with HC/Covid. Ask the Premiers where that money went, b/c it certainly didn’t go to HC. Your propaganda BS from the nationalpost is frightening.
Oh yay, another article espousing the idea that rich people should be able to pay for better, faster treatment. How novel.
Well I'm sure the feds would send some more money once Kenney and Moe fess up to what happened to the missing billions