Roundup: The healthcare debate needs to include strings

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Our healthcare system is the topic du jour across much of the media, with a lot of “told you so,” and handwringing about how provincial governments drove “efficiencies” over the past number of decades that left almost no surge capacity­—Ontario most especially—while not doing anything about its robustness. And through it all, there are a number of opportunists saying “See! We need more private options!” which in turn leads to accusations of “See! You want American-style healthcare!” and the argument goes binary and unhelpful. (And here is some perspective on the American system amid COVID, which had more capacity, but is similarly overburdened now and some hospitals are declaring bankruptcy because they have had to cancel elective surgeries).

What I find particularly curious, however, is that in none of the pieces I read over the weekend was it ever acknowledged that over the decade that the health transfer escalator was at six percent annually, that provincial health spending didn’t match that growth, and that the money was being spent elsewhere. Provincial governments should be held to account for the fact that they were given money to fix their healthcare systems, and they didn’t, which has led us to this situation, and while my reply column on Twitter likes to insist that this is just conservative governments, no, it was common to governments of all stripes for decades now. This is why we need all future federal transfer agreements to come with hard strings, and compliance measures to ensure that we actually use those federal dollars to fix the system, not paper over cracks while they use the money to lower taxes elsewhere.

Good reads:

  • The government is not backing down from their vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers, which goes into effect later this week.
  • Mélanie Joly says that she is working on a new China strategy, and that she has not ruled out sending weapons to Ukraine as the Russia situation intensifies.
  • There is a movement to have certain pardons be made automatic between two and five years after their sentences are completed.
  • Canadian Forces members have touched down in Bearskin Lake First Nation to assess the community’s needs and what help they can provide.
  • Here’s a look at the RCMP’s investigation into foreign corruption by way of Canadian firms, and why deferred prosecution agreements changed the game.
  • Here is a lengthy read on the downing of Flight PS752, two years after it happened.
  • Here’s a look at the needed renovations at Queen’s Park, which needs a top-to-bottom overhaul like Centre Block is getting.

Odds and ends:

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: The healthcare debate needs to include strings”

  1. Thank you for paying attention to the debate, and for presenting the facts.
    Our Canada Health Act needs updating to incorporate all the new technology and things like increased day surgeries.
    We have the tools and expertise, but need political will both provincially and federally to make the changes. And NO, privatization is not the answer!

  2. Yes Dale, although the Federal Government pays approximately a quarter of the cost of healthcare with the exception of the past two years of Covid, the sole jurisdiction of Provinces over it has been problematical. I would like to see the media take up the transfer of money received for non health issues. Canadian opposition politicians continuously take the government to task but seemingly never hold the provinces to account on this score. Hopefully there will be a fulsome examination of how funding for provincial healthcare works after the Covid has been turned from pandemic to endemic. O’Toole would never call out his conservative colleagues in the Tory held Provinces. That wouldn’t be good politics. Liberals don’t say much either for fear that future negotiations would suffer. The end result vis viz handbacks is that too much money is spent and the burden is on the taxpayers who get shabby and diverse services dictated by diverse provincial oversights.

  3. Doesn’t help matters either when the nation’s largest newspaper oligopoly (that feeds its bad-faith hot takes to TV) is owned by an American hedge fund with ties to the GOP, who believe anything less than patients declaring bankruptcy for treatment is tantamount to communism. The omertá MSM protects their own, and thus no one will dare report upon the embedded nature of the Tories both federal and provincial with their own personal (nationwide) equivalent of Fox News. Classic example: Doug Ford’s chief of staff sure is “cozy” with his PR mouthpiece from Rebel/Sun. Seems like it’s time to “find efficiencies” in the media’s undeserved bailout. Put that $600M into coordinating national standards for LTCs (Mike Harris, anyone?) instead of stuffing the pockets of Paul Godfrey and Rod Phillips.

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