Ottawa, premiers not likely to agree on funding
In a year when so many traditions are going out the window, it’s nice to know that one will remain intact this week, when Canada’s first ministers sit down to argue over spending on health.
Federal-provincial tussles over health spending are not new and — spoiler alert — are unlikely to be solved when Justin Trudeau holds a virtual meeting with the leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories on Thursday.
Where this meeting veers away from tradition will come in the battle over time. For Trudeau, the immediate future is the priority. For the premiers, this get-together is supposed to be about the years ahead, not just days.
Premiers have served plenty of notice that they want to talk about the long-term future of health care at this meeting. Back in September, several of them convened at the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa for the singular purpose of saying they needed a lot more health money from the federal government.
But here it is December, in the middle of COVID’s second wave, and Trudeau’s govern
ment clearly prefers to talk about the present, and the price of the pandemic in the here and now, including the cost of rolling out all the vaccines at Canada’s doorstep.
COVID has changed the nature of time for many people. (Was March only nine months ago?) So perhaps it’s not surprising to see it stirring up this rift at the first ministers’ table, pitting urgent needs now against urgent needs of the post-pandemic future.
If nothing else, this schism gives a good way to keep score on who’s in charge at Thursday’s meeting. If all the talk is about COVID, then Trudeau’s government is steering the
discussion. If the first ministers actually do get down to the business of talking longterm health dollars, the premiers will have seized the day.
Trudeau’s team has been sending all kinds of signals to the provinces that now is not the time to talk about major investments over the long haul, especially with a nearly $400billion deficit looming for this year.
The hints were all over last week’s economic statement in Ottawa, which was punctuated with boasts on how much the federal government had been footing the bill for COVID relief.
“The federal government has provided more than eight out of every 10 dollars spent in Canada to fight COVID-19 and support Canadians,” the statement proclaimed.
Ottawa has also been throwing around the figure of $24 billion — which it will again on Thursday — as the sum of its pandemic generosity so far to provinces.
That’s remarkably close to the $28-billion boost that the premiers are demanding in increased dollars to the provinces for health, annually, over the long term. The difference is that provinces and territories are asking for these dollars to be permanent, while Trudeau’s government is talking about what it’s done for the health system lately.
Ottawa hasn’t completely lost sight of the more distant future. It has big ideas for national standards on long-term care, as Jacques Gallant reported in the Star this week. It’s also promising to work on a national child-care plan and a pharmacare program, all of which will require some intense negotiation with the provinces.
As things now stand, none of those negotiations will be a breeze. Initial reaction from the provinces, especially but not exclusively from Quebec, is that the federal government should keep its nose out of provincial business. Little wonder that Trudeau has decided to keep all these grander plans on his to-do-later list.
Coincidentally — or maybe not — the whole debate over long-term versus short-term goals at the first ministers’ meeting matches the hard political reality for the players.
Trudeau will be one of the very few leaders around the table on Thursday who is facing the prospect of an election in the short term. Given that most minority governments in Canada last less than two years, it’s entirely possible Trudeau will be back on the campaign trail in 2021.
In contrast, many of the premiers sharing the stage on Thursday don’t have to worry about an election for some time. Several got their elections out of the way this year and others, such as Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Quebec Premier François Legault and Alberta’s Jason Kenney, won’t face the voters until 2022 or 2023.
So in a world where time is also measured by elections, Trudeau and most of the premiers are watching different clocks. Time management is always a problem in meetings. In Thursday’s first ministers’ gathering, it is the main issue, making the traditional arguments over money more timesensitive than usual.