Health-care system needs fair funding fix

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/09/2022 (1186 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We all know our health-care system is in big trouble — nurses are burning out, doctors are hard to find and provinces are struggling to pay for it — or they say they are.

Canada’s premiers are blaming the federal government for problems in the health systems they run, and for which they set budgets. While the federal government needs to change health funding, we can’t let the premiers off the hook.

The premiers are ignoring a deeper problem — fixing Canada’s health system requires that funding flows to the people who need it the most. It doesn’t.

If we are going to have a truly national health-care system, it only makes sense to consider provinces’ real extra costs. This includes rural and northern populations, whether there are more seniors, or whether more people have cancer or diabetes.

That used to happen, but in its 2007 budget bill, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper created a ticking time bomb for Canada’s health-care funding model that went off in 2014. The Conservatives changed to funding on a “strict per capita basis.”

The Conservatives slipped the change into the 2007 budget, though it did not take effect until 2014. Conservative MPs who supported the measure included Maxime Bernier, Patrick Brown, Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, Brian Pallister and James Bezan.

Every province in Canada faced cuts, except Alberta.

A 2013 Globe and Mail article said that,

“Based on estimates for 2014-15, Alberta will receive $954 million more under the new formula than under the current formula — $235 for every man, woman and child in the province.

“Every other province will lose money as follows: Ontario, $335 million; British Columbia, $272 million; Quebec, $196 million; Newfoundland, $54 million; Manitoba, $31 million; Saskatchewan, $26 million; Nova Scotia, $23 million; New Brunswick, $18 million; and Prince Edward Island, $3 million.”

The long-term funding losses to some provinces is in the billions, and the people affected the most by service cuts are seniors in rural areas.

The Conservatives’ other funding changes also decimated provincial health systems and finances. They unilaterally cut annual health-care funding increases from six per cent to three per cent a year — but Manitoba ended up having its total transfers frozen for half a decade. Between 2010-11 and 2015-16, total federal transfers to Manitoba only increased by $11 million — an increase per Manitoban over five years of $8.50 per person. You read that correctly.

Since 2015, federal transfers to Manitoba have soared by over $1 billion a year—- but these didn’t go to health care, because the Manitoba PCs froze health-care wages and budgets for three years straight, and kept cutting even in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If the federal government included “equity” in its funding formula, nine out of 10 provinces, representing over 31 million Canadians, would see increased health funding without the federal government spending a dime more.

To fix health care, we need fairness and equity in federal funding to ensure that each province has the resources it needs to serve its citizens. We need agreements that ensure that provinces spend the money where it’s needed — on health, not on subsidizing corporate and property tax cuts.

If you agree, let us know.