After two and a half years of demands from the premiers of the provinces and territories, Justin Trudeau gave them food for one-sixth of what they demanded for the upgrading of health systems. The mountain gave birth to a mouse.
Ottawa’s offer seems to be take it or leave it. Thirteen resigned prime ministers appeared before the media on Tuesday, including François Legault, who obviously decided to swallow the pill stoically. At the National Assembly on Wednesday, he gave the assurance that the Minister of Health and Social Services, Christian Dubé, would still have the sums he needs for his “refoundation” of the health network, even if it means increase the state deficit.
That won’t prevent the CAQ leader and his candidate Victor Pelletier from campaigning in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne by promising tax cuts, a commitment made during the last general election. We are not close to a contradiction, a contradiction that the Trudeau government will not fail to point out.
In a burst of political marketing, Ottawa has inflated with helium the additional sum it will pay over the next ten years, ie 196 million. In reality, this is a real increase of $46.2 billion for all the provinces and territories, including $20 billion for the increase in the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) and the rest under bilateral agreements with some form of accountability.
We are very far from the global agreement — and asymmetric for Quebec — that Paul Martin signed in 2004 with his provincial counterparts. All things considered, given the increase in provincial health spending since then, Justin Trudeau’s offer is equivalent to about 40% of the amount that Ottawa had put on the table at the time.
Quebec thus receives only one of the six billion that it claimed. A positive point: the annual indexation of 5% of the TCS, instead of the current 3%, which means that the percentage share assumed by the federal government will not decrease, as before. But this indexation, corresponding to the growth of provincial health spending, is only valid for five years. There is no justification for this step backwards, especially since the demand for health care provided by public plans will increase and peak at the beginning of the next decade due to the aging of the population and the strong growth in the cost of cutting-edge technologies and treatments.
Ottawa responds to the most urgent matters without fully taking into account the enormous challenges faced by health systems in terms of organization, computerization and human resources. It’s all in all a poultice that we apply to a wooden leg, an offer – we can’t talk about an agreement – that we will be forced to review in a few years in view of the deterioration of the financial situation. of the provinces.