Premiers Want to Maintain ‘Futile Fight’ Over Federal Health Transfer Dollars, Says Minister Duclos

Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos rises during question period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 31, 2022. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said on Dec. 14 that the premiers from provinces and territories are obstructing the process of coming to an agreement with Ottawa on health care in order to maintain the fight over federal health transfers.

“We were in total agreement in Vancouver in private. The problem is that the premiers don’t want us to speak about those outcomes and those results, they want to maintain a futile fight on dollars,” Duclos said in a press conference in Ottawa.

Duclos was referencing the meeting of the country’s health ministers in Vancouver in early November, which was said to be focused on the issue of increasing the federal health transfers as provinces and territories grapple with a crisis in their health care systems.

The minister said there is agreement among his counterparts about what problems are plaguing the systems and what solutions should be adopted, yet details cannot be released due to the premiers’ instructions.

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix has said that Duclos didn’t bring anything specific to the table at the meeting and that discussions about health transfers remain difficult with the Liberal government.

“It’s always a new moving excuse, a new line in the sand that drifts away after the tide comes in,” Dix said.

Duclos also pushed back on the provinces’ demand that Ottawa increase its health transfers from 22 to 35 percent, claiming that this target is already being met, and has been for 45 years.

“If you do the calculations correctly, we’re already at 35 percent. If you do what premiers ask us to do, if you add the whole package, the cash transfers and the transfer that comes with the tax points, we are 35, roughly speaking,” he said.

The minister suggested that Canadians are not interested in this accounting of percentages, but instead want to know how the investments being made are going to bring positive changes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is currently not willing to increase health transfers without first setting conditions with provinces and territories.

“It wouldn’t be the right thing to do to just throw more money at the problem and sit back and watch the problem not get fixed because we didn’t use this moment to say, ‘No, no, no, it’s time to improve the system,'” Trudeau said on Dec. 12.

Meanwhile the premiers do not want to accept any deal with Ottawa without meeting as a group with Trudeau, which he has not committed to doing.

Duclos says “the ball is in the premiers’ court.”

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.