(OTTAWA) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged Thursday that the federal government is not the “boss” of the provinces when it comes to health, while saying in the same breath that he will make them accountable to their populations through the better sharing of data that will be provided for in the agreements on the increase in transfers.
“Provinces and territories deliver health systems. The federal government is not the boss of the provinces, is not the ‘boss’,” Trudeau said during a press briefing in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Targets will, however, be negotiated with the provinces based on what they deem achievable. “I don’t know, 80%, 90% access to family doctors, maybe 99% access to family doctors in a few places,” he gave as an example, while specifying that there will be targets on other aspects of the agreements, such as mental health care.
These targets will be made public, so that, according to Mr. Trudeau, when a province or a region has disappointing results, “citizens, journalists, researchers, unions will be well positioned to ask relevant questions of governments provinces on why we are not getting the same quality of services that others receive with similar funds”.
Earlier Thursday, the federal government announced that it had reached bilateral agreements with Ontario and the four Atlantic provinces for funding health care, two weeks after Trudeau offered the provincial premiers and territories $46 billion over 10 years in new federal transfers for health care.
The announced sum includes $25 billion over 10 years for priority areas: mental health, data collection, family medicine, surgical backlogs and health human resources.
Provinces and territories will only get the extra money if they agree to conditions, including an upgrade to health data collection to ensure transparency of how the system works and annual reporting on specific indicators .