Health care is Canadians’ top priority, poll suggests
OTTAWA – Canadians want their federal politicians to make medicare improvement the top priority of the fall parliamentary session, a national poll has found.
Job creation runs a close second as the issue considered most important by the public, according to the survey conducted exclusively for Postmedia News and Global TV.
The poll comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government faced fresh criticism from the NDP and some premiers this week over its plan to reduce the federal share of funding for the health care system and to leave medicare reform to the provinces.
A decade ago, health care was one of the hottest political issues on the federal scene and a royal commission led by Roy Romanow proposed reforms to salvage the system.
More recently, the issue has been raised in the Commons much less frequently — but the Ipsos-Reid survey suggests Canadians would like to see it emerge as a main issue.
Two in three (68 per cent) of Canadians believe a top priority of Parliament should be to “improve the quality of the health-care system,” while 66 per cent want job creation at the top of the list.
Responses for other issues to be considered the top priority include: scaling back MP pensions (56 per cent); cutting taxes (42 per cent); Chinese ownership of the Canadian energy sector (22 per cent); pipelines to carry Alberta oil to foreign markets (16 per cent) and national unity and Quebec separatism (11 per cent).
“The public is very smart,” Ipsos-Reid senior vicepresident John Wright said Friday.
“The day-to-day issues are the smaller ones. The overarching ones are the ones you worry about. And that’s what we’re seeing here.
“I think it’s one of those things that reminds politicians that no matter where they are or what level of government they’re at, the public expects them to keep an eye on their most cherished asset.”
In last year’s election, Harper’s Tories promised to have “discussions” with the premiers to renew a 2004 federalprovincial health accord that pumped billions of extra federal dollars into medicare.
But several months after winning the election, the Harper government announced there would be no negotiations.
Instead, federal health-care transfers will continue to increase by six per cent until 2016-17.
After that, increases will only be tied to economic growth including inflation — currently roughly four per cent — and never fall below three per cent.
Responding to complaints by premiers, Harper said that health care falls under the constitutional jurisdiction of the provinces and they should control costs and reform the system. Critics have said his interpretation of the Constitution is too narrow and that, in fact, the federal government can play a greater role in health care.
This week, the issue resurfaced when Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page said the federal government has downloaded health care costs to the provinces, and the premiers themselves said the federal share will drop from an initial high of 50 per cent to 20 per cent.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair accused Harper of abandoning medicare and announced his party will hold “public consultations” on how to improve the system.
For its part, the government released a 20-page response to a recent report by senators who urged an active federal role in medicare reform.
The Harper government said it’s willing to work with provinces, but stressed that it will respect “jurisdictional roles and responsibilities” and that provinces are “primarily responsible for managing and delivering health care.”
The government also defended its decision to slow the growth rate of federal medicare support, saying provinces will have the “certainty and flexibility they need to deliver sustainable, responsive health care today and for the future.”