(Ottawa) Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos believes there is still “a lot of work” to be done to reach an agreement with the provinces on the increase in transfers they receive from Ottawa to cover part of the costs of their public health systems.
The elected official made such remarks on Tuesday on the sidelines of a local funding announcement in Prince Edward Island.
Several media outlets have reported since Monday that a deal is within reach. The CTV network reported that Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe feels that way. Radio-Canada, for its part, wrote that the provincial and territorial premiers are even going so far as to plan an upcoming meeting in Ottawa to which they would like to invite their federal counterpart, Justin Trudeau.
“Yes, we are all looking forward to a final agreement, at some point, but we are all very aware that there is still a lot of work to do to get there,” said Mr. Duclos on Tuesday when questioned by a journalist on a possible agreement.
Mr. Duclos also reiterated that the discussions focused, among other things, on ways to achieve “results” in order to improve health systems across the country. In particular, he mentioned the desire to reduce waiting times to receive care and to overcome the problems of retention and recruitment of professionals.
“A lot of work needs to be done before we come to an agreement on the importance of these results and on the ways we will achieve them,” added the federal minister.
Over the past few months, Prime Minister Trudeau has argued that it is not enough to simply inject more money into health care systems, arguing that improvements are needed so that Canadians have access to better services.
In an interview with The Canadian Press before the holiday season, he declared that it was “completely reasonable” to ask for results to be achieved with the additional amounts expected from the federal government, since it is, according to his government, what Canadians expect. He noted that when the federal government makes health transfers, “it’s taxpayers’ money.”