Premiers demand meeting with federal government to talk health-care funding

Health spending tops the agenda for the 13 provincial, territorial premiers meeting in Victoria today
Canada’s premiers kicked off the second day of meetings in B.C. Tuesday by demanding a meeting with federal government representatives to come up with a new agreement on health-care funding. “It’s past time for the federal government to stop quibbling, to stop saying that we don’t have a problem with our publicly funded national health-care system, and sit down at a table with the 13 premiers from provinces and territories,” B.C. Premier John Horgan, this year’s chair of the Council of the Federation, said Tuesday in Victoria. Horgan said the two orders of government must meet to “do what Canadians want us to do and get ourselves back on track” with a “world-class health-care system, not one that is crumbling under our feet.”
Horgan said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised the premiers that, once the pandemic public health emergency was over, the two sides would meet to hash out the future of health care funding in Canada. No such meeting has been set, he added.. The premiers say the federal government is only covering 22 per cent of health-care costs in Canada. They say they want that federal share raised to 35 per cent and maintained at that level over time. The federal government, meanwhile, disagrees with the math the provinces are using to determine who should pay for what.? Source: cbc.ca/