Opinion: Ottawa is right to demand accountability for public dollars. It is right to attach conditions to federal funding.
If there’s one thing Canadian politicians agree on, it’s this: our health care system needs more money. With crowded emergency rooms, long wait times, and too few staff, health care is in critical condition. We need to save the patient, and it will take a transfusion of cash.Canada’s premiers have been crying poor for a couple of years now, demanding billions of dollars from Ottawa. We’re at the point where a casual observer might think health care is primarily a federal responsibility.
The biggest shortfall will be in health care, the FAO says. Under current plans, funding for health care over the next three years will be $5 billion less than what is needed just to maintain existing programs. You wouldn’t know it from listening to Queen’s Park, but Ontario’s finances are in very good shape right now. Following last year’s $2.1 billion budget surplus, the FAO estimates the province will have a small deficit this year but then surpluses next year and beyond.
When it comes to drafting a bilateral deal with Ontario, this is no small matter. Since being elected in 2018, the current government at Queen’s Park has brought in over two dozen tax cuts, tax credits, and fee cuts. These changes are draining at least $8.2 billion a year from provincial coffers. That money — or some of it, anyway — could easily have gone to health care.
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