Premiers move meeting on federal health care funding offer to Monday

The Premiers’ meeting that was scheduled to happen on Friday to discuss Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposed 10-year healthcare plan of the federal government, which proposed an increased $46.2 billion in new healthcare spending has now been postponed to Monday.

“It’s significantly less than what we’re looking for…We just received that proposal today…We’ve only had it for a couple of hours”, Stefanson has previously stated about the proposal, adding that the provinces would take time to examine the proposal before passing a judgement about the same.

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.

The postponement of the meeting was announced by a spokesperson for Premier Stefanson, with the spokesperson for the Council of the Federation Secretariat adding that the meeting had been moved up due to scheduling conflicts as some of the premiers had to travel after first ministers’ meeting in Ottawa a few days back.

Federal Health Minister Jean Yves-Duclos and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc had previously held a meeting with Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Thursday, which the latter had described as productive and added that there are still some details to be worked out before an agreement is reached

“We all have the same objective, to make sure we deliver better health care,” Premier Ford stated.