Even more healthcare funding demanded
January 30, 2004 · By Hugo Chesshire
Despite the glaring and massive inefficiencies in the Canadian healthcare system and persistent failure to deliver improvements despite huge funding increases, some provincial premiers apparently think that these problems can be fixed by… wait for it… yet another huge funding increase.
Ralph Klein and Dalton McGuinty took a different tack, the former describing the current system as a “black hole” and opining that without reform, further spending increases are useless in the face of what McGuinty termed a “sustainability issue” that prevented “money on its own… from bringing us real success.”
Premiers push Martin for health-care funding beyond $2 billion
Provincial premiers were in a feisty mood as they sat down with Prime Minister Paul Martin on Friday, saying they would not be satisfied with $2 billion in extra health-care funding Ottawa was expected to put on the table.
There would be no begging from the provinces for funding this federal program if the Feds had kept public faith/trust with the original Canada health act to fund 50% of the costs……that has deminished to as low as 12% under the Martin financial plans.
The true alternative is to follow the true letter of the constitution and get the feds out of a jurisdiction that is not theirs but the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces. Health care is the province’s jurisdiction and it is right they keep all the revenue collected for it’s running rather than send it to ottawa and get less than 50% of it transferred back.
Like most of the contentious issues in Canada today they have their impetus in the Federal governemnt acting outside it’s constitutional duty.