Photo courtesy Government of Alberta

By Justin Goulet

SUMMIT IN OTTAWA

Premiers push for increase to health care funding from federal government

Sep 19, 2020 | 11:10 AM

OTTAWA, ON – Four of Canada’s premiers gathered in Ottawa Friday morning to discuss what they want from the federal Liberals’ Throne Speech next week.

Alberta’s Jason Kenney, Manitoba’s Brian Pallister, Ontario’s Doug Ford and Quebec’s François Legault put their focus on health care and are asking the federal government to boost health transfers, or health care costs, from 22 percent to 35 percent.

The transfer this year will come out to almost $42 billion under an arrangement that has it increase by at least three prevent each year. The premiers want that funding to be upped to $70 billion per year.

The premiers all agreed that health care is a primary concern, with Ford saying without proper health care, there will be no economy.

“Provincial taxpayers are carrying nearly 80 percent of the burden in a system that becomes more costly as our population ages and that is more clear now than ever in the midst of the worst health crisis in a century,” added Kenney.

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“Our ability at the provincial level to pay for the quality care that people rightfully need and expect is increasingly limited, in a bargain that was supposed to be fifty-fifty federal-provincial share of health care costs when Medicare was formalized as a national priority five decades ago.”

Kenney said Alberta is facing a situation he described as a “fiscal calamity”, citing the decline in energy prices as well as the “biggest contraction of the global economy since the 1930s”.

“We just reported two weeks ago, a $24-billion deficit, the largest per capita in Canada,” he said.

Kenney added that the province “has been there for Canada” and now the federal government “has to be there for Alberta”, as well as other provinces he says are facing the “greatest economic and fiscal challenge since the depression”.

The premiers are also asking for $10 billion per year for 10 years from the federal government for the development and streamlining of infrastructure.