PM Trudeau presents $196B 10-year heath care deal with $46B in new funding

PM Justin Trudeau on Tuesday presented to the premiers of Canadian provinces and territories the much-anticipated healthcare deal, detailing a 10-year plan of the federal government and an increased $46.2 billion in new healthcare spending.

At the start of the deal, all provinces and territories will receive an unconditional $2 billion in funding for the Canada Health Transfer (CHT)  to aid with the backlogs and burdens faced by Canadian healthcare providers over the past few months. Thereon, a 5% increase in CHT funding will ensue for the next five years, with the funding to be increased by 3% thereafter.

Proposed data indicates that the increments to CHT would lead to around a 61% increase in funding after 10 years.

However, in order to access these funds, provincial governments must commit to “collected, shared, used and reported to Canadians to promote greater transparency on results, and to help manage public health emergencies”, according to background documents accessed by media outlets.

“Canadians should be able to access their own health information and benefit from it being shared between health workers across health settings and across jurisdictions,” the background documents further read.

Head of the Council of the Federation and Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, while speaking of the funding, stated, “It’s significantly less than what we’re looking for”, adding that the premiers were “disappointed” by the size of the proposed funding. The premiers, who had been demanding the healthcare funding meeting for the past few months, were advocating for a $28 billion increase to the CHT per province per year.

“We just received that proposal today…We’ve only had it for a couple of hours,” added Stefanson, stating that the premiers have not decided to reject the proposal just yet and that the premiers are to schedule another meeting in a few days.

“It is more money than it was yesterday,” the Manitoba Premier added.

Echoing similar sentiments, Ontario Premier Doug Ford stated, “It’s a down payment on further discussions.”

However, when asked if the federal government is willing to offer more funding, PM Trudeau stated, “This is the offer we put forward on the table…This is the billions of dollars that are there for provinces and we certainly look forward to working with them to be able to deliver not just that money, but those healthcare improvements to citizens across the country.”