Planned changes to Ottawa’s Canada Health Transfer in the 2028-2029 fiscal year will likely result cuts of more than $50 billion for health care in Canada’s provinces and territories over the subsequent decade, a report published this early morning by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions concludes.
That is, of course, unless Canada’s provinces decide to put more money into their public health care systems to make up for the expected shortfall of federal cash – and we all understand why that’s not going to happen, even in provinces that unlike Alberta aren’t bent on dismantling public health care entirely and replacing it with a U.S.-style health care catastrophe.
The report by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives health policy researcher Andrew Longhurst and CFNU government relations officer Nate Little projects that if the Canada Health Transfer escalation formula reverts as planned to its previous rate from the 5-per-cent growth in the rate paid since the 2017-18 federal fiscal year the result will be a loss of $51.8 billion from what would have been paid if the rate continued to rise at 5 per cent a year as it does now.
That’s an estimate, of course, so while someone is likely to argue it could be less, history suggests it will likely be more.
Sorry, dear readers, but this is complicated because the federal formula for determining how much to pay through the Canada Health Transfer is based on projections of Canada’s gross domestic product and have changed for various reasons from time to time over the years.
So, as the CFNU report puts it, with “the CHT growth escalator reverting to a three-year moving average of nominal GDP growth with a 3-per-cent floor in 2028-2029 … the federal government projects that nominal GDP growth will be about 3.8 per cent per year from 2008-2009 to 2030-2031.” Ottawa expects an average growth rate of 3.8 per cent annually in that time frame.
This is the kind of calculation that makes ordinary citizens’ eyes glaze over as they return to working out how to feed the kids and gas up the truck right now. By the way, had the 6-per-cent escalator rate in effect from 2006-07 to 2017-18 remained, the loss to cumulative CHT funding would be approximately $98 million lower, the report indicated.
As the report’s authors explained, the cut to funding currently anticipated by Ottawa “risks plunging provincial and territorial health care systems into a deeper crisis.” I would suggest, though, that “risk” is the wrong word here. A worse crisis is a virtual certainty.
What that means, in case there’s any doubt in your mind, is more deterioration in Canada’s health care system, more excuses for provincial governments like Alberta to propose co-pays, private billing and private insurance as “solutions,” and a swifter drift for most of us into the Third World system that exists already south of the U.S.-Canadian border.
As CFNU President Linda Silas put it more politely in a news release accompanying the report this morning, the expected cuts will “create a drastic reduction in public health care funding, and it is patients, nurses and health care professionals who will bear the weight of this austerity measure.”
“There is no way around it,” she continued, “a reduction in federal funding will hurt access to care for everyone in Canada.” Well, not quite everyone. Don’t worry, the ultra-wealthy will be just fine.
The report’s authors note that additional cuts to federal health care are also looming: $1.2 billion for home and community care and mental health and addiction care set to expire next spring and $600 million more for long-term care will expire soon after that.
Short-sighted cuts to public health care, Ms. Silas said, “come with the added risk of making privatization schemes even more appealing to provinces and territories. We know that public health care creates strong value for our economy and at the same time delivers better patient outcomes and better access to care than for profit services.
“Now is the time to invest in Canada’s public health care system, not undermine it,” she concluded.
Indeed. But while Prime Minister Mark Carney may lead a political party called Liberal, other than the fact there are no known or suspected Alberta separatists in his caucus, there is not a lot of light between his policies and those of the Opposition Conservatives. To give him his due, though, they’re more competently delivered than they likely would have been by a government led by Pierre Poilievre.
That said, for all his talk about nation building, Mr. Carney seems to have missed the obvious point that Canada’s public health care system was and continues to be the greatest national-building project since the railroad-building spree of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The UCP are already intent to destroy the public healthcare system in Alberta, which began with Ralph Klein. The damage he has done still can be felt today. They had the same goal of private for profit, US style healthcare.
There is never good news these days. I’ve just read about another one of Danielle Smith’s orders-in-council, regarding preventative health tests, signed yesterday. Will there be anything left of our health system by September?
If I knew where it was, I’d grab a shovel, head to the Winchester and wait for all this to blow over.
And yet, we apparently have multiple Billions to spend on military trucks and tanks, and bullets, and rifles, and bombs, and drones. My kids and grandkidlettes will not be happy with what the boomers and Gen X have done to them!
If anyone hasn’t noticed, we’re all in deep shite right now. We’re in an economic war with a country that is actively trying to crush us, so they can later invade us at their leisure. And it’s not looking to improve any time, soon.
Healthcare is a problem. It’s likely to continue to be one for the feds, if the recent premier’s conference is any indication. There are some cheaper ways to do things such as, why do people need to see a doctor to get a prescription refilled? Or a basic antibiotic regime? Etc. A practical nurse can do that. When I was working in healthcare we did that and cut down the amount of time doctors had to spend on routine work such as re-bandaging abscesses, renewing scripts, basic neo-natal care, etc. thus filling in a ton of service gaps.
But what do most places tend to do? Fire some doctors. Cut some services. Lock up clinics. Make your visit 10 minutes. At one point, a doc wanted me to go to a gynaecologist for a basic pap smear. That’s insane. A nursing student can do one.
Right now, the USA has *sanctioned* Cuban doctors and nurses. They’re used to working in war torn countries. Surely we can give some of them a new home for at least awhile, anyway.
We need to find some creative ways to work our way out of this because the fact is, we’re suffering across the board, economically. Yes, healthcare could be better funded. Yes, Dixie Dani is lying and cheating and stealing and what I’d like to do, I can’t say on the internet as she digs in her heels thinking Alberta will be spared if only they can separate and submit their throats to the bootheel of the United States rather than help other premiers dig their way out of the wreckage.
Dixie Dani is everyone’s problem but when it comes to Albertan healthcare I’m going to say the same thing to Alberta as I say to apologizing Americans.
Get off your butts and shut sh*t down. Now. Before it’s gone forever.
Not to mention those wonderful fax machines that doctors’ offices still use!
That is just another fact of our future lives. Carney is not that interested in Universal health care anyway. It is way more important to increase our military contribution to 5% then caring about people. We have to adjust to go bankrupt when we get sick. I am sure it is coming. Hopefully I will not be here for that one. In Alberta we will carry the flag of the Health Olympic destruction.
There is no question that if these fake conservatives, Reformers, had been collecting proper royalties and corporate taxes Canada would not be in this financial nightmare it’s in today. Catering to the rich is all they care about and AI data centres, a $120million useless referendum, and a two-tiered healthcare system will not help.
This is a life and death issue. It does not get any simpler than that. Yet, you justifiably write, “This is the kind of calculation that makes ordinary citizens’ eyes glaze over as they return to working out how to feed the kids and gas up the truck right now.” That is the kind of traction this issue gets in the Hinterland in large measure, and elsewhere to a lesser extent, to be fair. Alberta, where Canadians don’t want to go to be sick and die.
Talk about destruction. It seems we are now on a destruction competition. Here is what premier Ford said today
‘Ford says Canada could ‘dismantle the U.S. if we wanted to’ as premiers gather in P.E.I.’
Well premier Ford you do not have to do that because the US is doing it themselves. Save your energy which is always like TACO – you always just make noise. By the way you are doing better than our silliness here in Alberta. She just smiles and says that we need to behave like adults with a person that cannot put a sentence together. This from a premier that does not know what being an adult means. This all looks like a Salvador Dally painting.
The Liberal Party is the real conservative party. Trudeau resisted as much as he could initiatives like pharmacare (a no-brainer) and electoral reform. At least he had the spine to ignore Conservative howling about cutting carbon emissions, something that Carney promptly rolled back. Plenty of money for arms, though, and even if we don’t get health care, we will be able to pay for a pipeline that private investors won’t touch.
The problem in Smith’s mind, as well as the minds of the UPC and others, is there’s no profit in public health care. So by killing our health care system, these greedy, corrupt U.S. companies make money and the UPC make bank under the table. It’s simple mathematics. Oh and who gives a sh*t about the health of Albertans.