On Tuesday in Ottawa, Canada's 13 premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet, hoping to figure out a new health-care funding deal.
Canadian premiers listen to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the closing news conference at the First Ministers Meeting in Ottawa, Tuesday October 3, 2017.
In their 2022-23 budgets, the provinces collectively forecast to spend $203.7 billion on health care. Ottawa’s transfer accounts for 22 per cent of that. The provinces want that increased to 35 per cent, which would mean $26 billion more this year alone. It has evolved and changed at least five times since then, including splitting the federal share between cash and a transfer of tax points — when the federal government cut its income tax rates and the provinces could raise their own in exchange.
Over the last 10 years, the CHT has increased 67 per cent, to $45 billion from about $27 billion in 2012-13. It is adamant that will not be the case with a new funding deal, and is looking at a combination of an annual increase to the CHT and separate deals to target specific problem areas, like health-care worker retention and training, access to family doctors, surgical backlogs, and data collection and sharing.
Data — or the lack of it — is a long-standing weakness of Canada’s federalized system, with 13 separate health-care systems working alongside one another but not necessarily in tandem. Gaps in Canada’s data tripped up the national health responses in dozens of different ways during the pandemic, from tracking the number of COVID-19 cases to reporting adverse effects from vaccines.
It’s a problem that exists even within provinces, as incompatible technology makes records inaccessible between hospitals and clinics. The expert panel delivered a report last year that will likely serve as a road map for improving data sharing in Canada. It includes 31 recommendations, starting with provinces, territories and the federal government agreeing on a shared national vision for health data.
In the early months of the pandemic, Canada had the worst record for COVID-19-related deaths in long-term care of the world’s wealthy countries.Sign up for our newsletter to get breaking news and daily digests sent to your email.Meanwhile, residents were isolated from the outside world and workers struggled to provide basic care and ensure dignity.
Several provinces have already announced plans to increase the number of hours of care residents receive per day and build new spaces for the growing number of seniors who are living longer with more serious cognitive and physical impairments. Still, there is plenty of work that needs to be done if provinces have a hope of meeting the standards, especially when it comes to the workforce.
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