The script never changes: the provinces demand more money, the feds demand more financial oversight. After every failure, each side stages childish finger-pointing press conferences.
As an opening agenda, they could agree on three achievable reforms. Perhaps one might be breaking down the walls we have allowed the medical profession to build to prevent immigrants from practicing medicine. A two-year deadline might be needed to implement a nation-wide digital database, based on shared measurement standards and real-time data collection.
On Ottawa’s demand for greater fiscal oversight, often put by this prime minister in the patronizing tone of a distrustful parent to a child, has an easy solution. It is one he was offered almost two years ago and ignored. The provinces came close to agreement on third party evaluation of performance under former B.C. premier John Horgan’s leadership.