The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that the best time to talk about health transfers in the provinces is after the pandemic is over, that is, now, Prime Minister John Horgan said in Saskatchewan on Friday.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that the best time to talk about health transfers in the provinces is after the pandemic is over, that is, now, Prime Minister John Horgan said in Saskatchewan on Friday.
“Well, we’re here today, the pandemic is waning, it’s becoming endemic, and now it’s time to have this conversation,” said Horgan, who attended the meeting of provincial and territorial leaders in western Canada in Regina. . “I hope today was the beginning of that commitment to come sit with us.”
It is the first face-to-face meeting of Western prime ministers since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and federal health transfers and post-COVID recovery top the agenda.
Last year, prime ministers called on Ottawa for a $ 28 billion increase in health transfers, bringing the federal quota from 22% to 35%. At the 2021 conference of prime ministers, which he attended virtually, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the aim is to increase transfers, but the conversation should take place once the pandemic is over.
Some 900,000 British Colombians do not have a family doctor, including about 100,000 on the South Island, and a recent report from the Medimap Clinic Directory Service said Victoria had the longest waits in Canada for non-appointment clinics. Some four non-appointment clinics have closed in the capital region since January, largely as a result of staffing problems. Provisional funding of $ 3.46 million was earmarked to keep five others open.
Primary and emergency care centers have been built as part of a broader plan to address primary care needs, but are understaffed. At the UPCC in central Victoria, 45.66 full-time equivalent positions have been funded, but less than half have been filled —21.61. At the UPCC in Nanaimo, 16.83 FTE posts are funded, but only 5.73 are staffed.
BC liberal health critic Shirley Bond recently said during question period that less than two percent of people without a doctor have been linked to one through the UPCC.
The province has about 6,800 GPs trained, but only about 3,500 perform this function, according to GPs for better patient care in BC.
On Friday, Horgan blamed the primary care crisis largely on insufficient federal funding.
“We have a shortage of general practitioners because of funding problems. Is it just about money? Yes, it’s about money, because money translates into services for people.”
In Victoria, he said, “we have more 70-year-old doctors with 80-year-old patient panels than anywhere else in the country.”
Horgan expressed his frustration that, although there has been much discussion about how to get on the table with the federal government on health transfers, “we are not at the table.”
“Ottawa has to come back to the game is to be a full member, and we’re not even asking for full members, we’re asking for two-thirds of the partners to run what is the most important national program we have.”
Horgan said he is in a unique position to not only see the challenges of the health care system as a first, but as a patient, after being diagnosed with throat cancer late last year and completing successfully. radiation treatments.
The tension over BC health workers is “doubled across the country,” Horgan said, adding that for two years Canadians watched health workers spend an extraordinary time. “And now is the time to go back to the system and say, ‘We will rejuvenate and present new human resource development initiatives so that we can have more caregivers for the challenges of an aging population.
“We don’t have to wait any longer to do what the public expects of us.”
Horgan said that as soon as BC receives a commitment to funding Ottawa’s long-term sustainable health care, the province can “make sure we’re creating the spaces or training the next generation of health workers to deliver the services that Ottawa people need it. ”
In addition to addressing the surgical and diagnostic waiting times that have grown during the pandemic, prime ministers want the money to go to mental health initiatives, addressing substance use and long-term care.
The federal government has signed agreements with many provinces to address these needs, but Saskatchewan Prime Minister Scott Moe, the host of the meeting, said it is not viable in the long term. “We don’t know if this funding will be two years, five years, seven years.”
Horgan, who addressed the issue of federal health transfers with Trudeau while in BC earlier in the week, noted Friday that inadequate health care funding began long before the current federal and provincial governments.
The Federation Council, made up of the prime ministers of each of Canada’s provinces and territories, will meet in Victoria from July 11-12.
Horgan and Moe joined Regina for their counterparts in Alberta, Manitoba, Nunavut, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories.
The prime ministers also plan to talk about economic recovery, energy security, employment and immigration.
ceharnett@timescolonist.com