Provinces don’t want/want to meet with feds over health care

Provinces are sending mixed messages. First they meet but reject previously negotiated terms. A month later, they want to meet but are unwilling to negotiate.

Make up your mind. Meetings require negotiations, not a hand-out.

It seemed like a done deal when provincial and federal health ministers met in Vancouver in November.

Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos had negotiated in advance of the meeting with his provincial counterparts and all seemed to be going well. In a proposed deal, the feds would give the provinces more money in exchange for two things: a human-resources action plan which would see the credentials of health care workers recognized from province to province; and the sharing of health care statistics across Canada.

Provincial health ministers had voiced no objections just days before the meeting.

Image: CTV Montreal

Then the premiers got involved.

It’s hard to know just which premiers pulled the rug from under the proposed agreement.

British Columbia Health Minister Adrian Dix, co-chair of the get-together, seemed disappointed. He told a news conference that the federal offer had moved the parties “a sound bite further ahead.”

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs was ready to deal. He said there should be talks and “let’s see where the discussion goes.”

Other premiers categorically dismissed the federal plan. Quebec Premier François Legault rejected any transfer from the feds that came with conditions.

It seems reasonable to me that data on diseases and successful treatments be shared nationally. It’s reasonable to make the movement of health care workers across the country as seamless as possible.

Now, only a month after rejecting the fed’s modest proposal, premiers want to meet again to ask, again, for money without conditions. It would be a short meeting because the feds won’t, and shouldn’t, hand over money unconditionally.

Even before any new money is negotiated, the provinces and territories are already on track to get a 9.1 per cent boost next year – a $4.1-billion increase.

Federal Health Minister Duclos is ready to talk but belligerent premiers only have their hands out. What the feds want to talk about is data and indicators that measure results. “The problem is, until now, the premiers refuse to speak about those results,” Duclos said.

The problem is that money transferred to the provinces is not necessarily spent on health. The feds can specify targeted transfers for things such as mental health but provinces will do what they want with it. Ontario Premier Doug Ford was candid. He said provinces need flexibility to move money between different “buckets.”

In other words, provinces will do want they want with federal transfers.

“All that premiers keep saying is that they want an unconditional increase in the Canada Health Transfer sent to their health ministers,” said Duclos. “That is not a plan; that is the old way of doing things.”

Money alone will not fix our health care. More national data would make the system more efficient by putting resources where they are needed. Health care workers should be able to move easily from province to province where the need is greatest.

Bluffing on the part of premiers is so tedious, as Alberta Premier Smith has demonstrated so well. Let’s get past the BS and get down to honest negotiations.

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The new threat to health care is not privatization, it’s viral

The COVID pandemic has gone viral. I don’t mean the Delta variant. I mean the mania created by antivaxxers who have whipped up opposition to panic levels.

Potesters in front of Kamloops hospital image: CFJC Today

Antivaxxers are angry over their perceived loss of rights. At a Trudeau rally in Bolton, Ontario on Aug 27, 2021, dozens of protesters, some holding babies, shouted expletives, waved middle fingers, and made references to Nazis over megaphones. The rally was cancelled over safety concerns.

The viral nature of antivaxxers is not even about the disease –it’s about their purported rights and freedoms. Their rights are being infringed, they claim. They have the constitutional right to infect others with a potentially deadly disease because they selfishly refuse to be vaccinated.  

That’s the nature of viral crazes –they’re irrational.

Antivaxxers are mad as hell at the B.C. government for introducing vaccine cards. Some business owners have threatened not to screen customers for the card. But if they thought about it, they’d realize that customers are less likely to enter their premises if their health is at risk.

To be clear, I’m not saying that those who haven’t yet been vaccinated are antivaxxers. Most of the unvaccinated are not against the jab, they just haven’t found the time or motivation. Motivation was provided with the announcement of vaccine cards and vaccination clinics are suddenly busy.

In an attempt to invent a reason to call an election, Prime Minister Trudeau is trying scare voters into believing that the Conservatives will put an end to our cherished public health care system. He defended a tweet in his deputy prime minister that painted Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole as an advocate for private health care.

Twitter marked Trudeau’s retweet of the edited video of O’Toole as ‘Manipulated media.’

What O’Toole actually said was that that he wanted to find public-private synergies. Later, he said that he “100 per cent” supports the public and universal system and pointed to a promised $60 billion in health funding in his platform.

Nice try Prime Minister, but the immediate threat is not privatization but burnout of health care workers. Yes, privatization is a perennial threat but the urgent threat is the fatigue experienced by health care workers.

Nurses are suffering from burnout and frustration. They are tired of caring for COVID infected people who refuse to get vaccinated. Patients get sick from a preventable disease and then look for sympathetic treatment. Nurses are leaving Royal Inland Hospital at alarming rates.

However, the viral mania seems to have spread to some nurses as well. 

A group called “Canadian Frontline Nurses (CFN)” is advertising protests against vaccine mandates, which are slated to take place at Kelowna General Hospital, Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, and other cities across the country. The CFN website states their mission:

“To restore our freedoms and rights as Canadian citizens and reinstate the four ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice within nursing.”

A Royal Inland Hospital nurse told iNFOnews.ca that she is concerned about protests in front of the hospital.

Instead of investing reasons for an election, that is nothing but a power grab, Trudeau should address the immediate problems of our health care system.