The federal government is showing signs of impatience with the fact that no agreement on health transfers has yet been concluded with the Quebec government although Quebec Prime Minister François Legault has verbally agreed to the offer of ‘Ottawa for almost nine months.
“I understand that people – and certainly me too – want the agreement to happen soon,” federal Health Minister Mark Holland told The Canadian Press during a press scrum.
He promised that, for several provinces, the details of each agreement would be agreed between the levels of government soon. Earlier this month, British Columbia became the first province to sign a final bilateral agreement on federal health transfers.
“There are going to be many agreements with the other provinces,” said the minister in French, arguing that these agreements are “complex.”
Ottawa already has agreements in principle with each of the provinces and territories, with the exception of Quebec which still has “questions” to clarify, Mr. Holland said last Wednesday.
“It’s really not, for me, a question of jurisdiction, not at all,” he clarified.
According to him, “it’s really a question of the visibility of [l’]investment of money in the system.
“What is the result of that?” And also, for Quebecers, [on doit] ensuring that results are visible,” added Holland.
Last February, the provinces and territories accepted – through the Council of the Federation – a new agreement with Ottawa to improve federal health transfers by an amount of 46.2 billion spread over ten years.
Questioned on this subject, Quebec Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, repeated that Ottawa wants to impose “conditions” in exchange for the transfer of money. From the start, François Legault’s government has said it wants to avoid at all costs that Ottawa interferes in its area of jurisdiction, which is health.
“Some of my colleagues, who are perhaps better than me, managed to have an unconditional agreement on housing and daycare. In an area as important as health, I do not see why we would be obliged to accept conditions,” he continued.
However, the four conditions on which Ottawa and the Council of the Federation agreed are already priorities of the Coalition Avenir Québec government. This involves improving access to a family doctor; to support healthcare workers and reduce surgical waiting lists; improve access to mental health and addiction services; and improve access to digital data on the state of the health network.
When the increase in federal transfers was announced, François Legault summed up his position by saying that it was “better than nothing”, but that he intended to express his dissatisfaction in the hope of obtaining any further.
Quebec’s share amounts to around 10 billion, or a billion more per year while Mr. Legault called for an annual increase of 6 billion.
Ministers Christian Dubé, Eric Girard and Jean-François Roberge also signed a letter to the federal government in which they said that “Quebec intends to take advantage of its share of federal funding.”
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