Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing MP, Carol Hughes writes a regular column about initiatives and issues impacting our community.
Last week, Canada’s premiers met in Victoria for the annual Council of the Federation.
While these meetings can frequently be contentious, Canada’s provincial and territorial premiers were united on one topic in particular: the need for increased health transfers to respond to labour shortages, wait times, burnout, surgery delays, and other significant challenges our health care system faces on the back end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their message was simple and unified across national and political divides: the federal government needs to increase its share of healthcare funding from 22 to 35 per cent to address these challenges.
The premiers have been trying, unsuccessfully, to organize a meeting with the federal government for months to convene a meeting to discuss health transfers. They have invited the Prime Minister to work with them on the First Ministers’ Agreement on Sustainable Health Care Funding to begin negotiations on consistent, sustainable health care funding from the federal government, and yet the Prime Minister has not taken on this clear, direct request.
BC Premier John Horgan, who chaired the Council of the Federation this year, was quite blunt in his assessment of the lack of participation from the federal government: "Twenty-four months ago, we were collaborating in an unprecedented way. There was unprecedented collaboration and the federal government was right there and we applauded that engagement … and now, eight months later, we're exchanging notes through the media. Where'd the love go?”
It should be clear that now is the time to discuss the future of health care in Canada. With significant delays in surgeries, frontline health care workers feeling burnt out from long shifts and staffing shortages, doctors’ offices and ERs closing, and with one in seven Canadians without a family doctor, it’s vital that health care be one of the most pressing matters for the federal government to commit to fixing.
The situation also disproportionately affects patients in rural, remote and Northern communities. But even the combined voices of premiers across the country can’t seem to get the federal government to commit to doing their part to correct issues with our universal health care system.
This government has maintained the cuts to the Canada Health Transfer that were made under former Conservative PM Stephen Harper, and the current concern about the future of health care is the result. That’s why New Democrats have put forward a number of significant proposals that could help deal with our health care woes now.
Health care is a shared responsibility, and regardless of jurisdiction, it must be addressed by all levels of government.
This includes increasing the Canada Health Transfer to provide stable, long-term funding to the provinces, as the premiers have requested. But funding is only one area where we can improve on our cross-jurisdictional efforts.
We’ve also proposed creating a national healthcare human resource data collection and coordination agency that can help address staffing shortages in key regions. On staffing, we must also work to accelerate foreign credential recognition so that people who come to Canada with appropriate medical training can enter the field faster, and work with the provinces to increase the number of available medical and nursing school seats to ensure we are training enough doctors and nurses for the future.
We also must invest in preventative care that can keep people out of doctors’ offices and ERs in the first place.
We understand that some of these solutions are federal, some are provincial, and some will require joint efforts by both to come together and hash out details.
Some are quick, some will take time. There is no quick fix to alleviating the issues faced by our ailing health care system, but one key aspect to this is actually having the tenacity to work across jurisdictional lines to ensure that we listen to the voices, either individual or collective, of our provincial and territorial leaders.
If they believe health care and the Canada Health Transfer are the most pertinent issues facing their collective jurisdictions, the Federal Health Minister, the Finance Minister, and the Prime Minister are obligated to work with their counterparts to find a solution. Refusing to do so and arguing through media will not remedy the problem.
Health care is a concern we all share. The pandemic not only exposed the cracks in the system but has also exacerbated the situation.