ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

Skip to main content

Ottawa supports premiers' call for health-care deal reviews: Duclos

Share
OTTAWA -

The federal government supports calls from the premiers to establish a five-year review of health-care funding, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said in a letter to his Ontario counterpart.

Canada's premiers have been urging regular reviews to be established as part of the talks, saying the system needs predictability.

Duclos' letter to Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the province's bilateral agreement will include working toward certain health indicators, agreeing to provide "equity of access" for underserved groups and uphold the Canada Health Act to strengthen the public health system.

It also includes a commitment to streamline foreign credential recognition for internationally educated health professionals and multi-jurisdictional recognition of health professional licences. Ontario must also provide an action plan of how money will be spent and how progress will be measured and reported.

Duclos wrote that the review would consist of two phases, the first to "assess results and determine next steps" for existing bilateral funding deals the provinces made with Ottawa in 2017 to upgrade mental health and home care programs.

The second phase would be to formally review the current deal that's being ironed out after five years.

"This review will consider results achieved thus far in shared health priority areas of family health services, health workers and backlogs, mental health and substance use and health system modernization," Duclos wrote.

It would include "an assessment of progress-to-date on public reporting to Canadians using the common indicators, sharing depersonalized health information, and other health data commitments," he wrote.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford wrote Thursday on Twitter that he had been hearing from Ontarians concerned that the health data provisions in the federal agreement would mean their private information gets shared.

"I want to be clear, the Ontario government will never share anyone's personalized health information - digital or otherwise - with the federal government," he wrote in a statement.

"The only discussion that is taking place is how to better use non-personalized health-system statistics to improve performance, such as wait times for surgeries and the availability of family doctors."

Ottawa has offered more than $46 billion to provinces and territories to augment the Canada Health Transfer but the country's premiers say they're "disappointed" with the amount.

"While this first step marks a positive development, the federal approach will clearly not address structural health-care funding needs, nor long-term sustainability challenges we face in our health-care systems across the country," the premiers wrote Thursday to Trudeau.

are prepared to accept the offer for now, but further discussions are needed to establish longer-term predictability and stability in health care.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2023.

IN DEPTH

Opinion

opinion

opinion Don Martin: Gusher of Liberal spending won't put out the fire in this dumpster

A Hail Mary rehash of the greatest hits from the Trudeau government’s three-week travelling pony-show, the 2024 federal budget takes aim at reversing the party’s popularity plunge in the under-40 set, writes political columnist Don Martin. But will it work before the next election?

opinion

opinion Don Martin: How a beer break may have doomed the carbon tax hike

When the Liberal government chopped a planned beer excise tax hike to two per cent from 4.5 per cent and froze future increases until after the next election, says political columnist Don Martin, it almost guaranteed a similar carbon tax move in the offing.

CTVNews.ca ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

BREAKING

BREAKING

Three men were injured after a man armed with a knife entered a Montreal-area Islamic cultural centre Friday afternoon.

A 15-year-old boy who was the subject of an emergency alert in New Brunswick has been arrested.

Police have arrested an 18-year-old woman who allegedly stole a Porche and then ran over its owner in an incident that was captured on video.

Since she was a young girl growing up in Vancouver, Ginny Lam says her mom Yat Hei Law made it very clear she favoured her son William, because he was her male heir.

The parents of a teenager who died after allegedly consuming the poisonous products of a Mississauga man are now suing him, as well as several doctors involved in her care.

The search for a missing six-year-old boy in Shamattawa is continuing Friday as RCMP hope recent tips can help lead to a happy conclusion.

Local Spotlight

Getting a photograph of a rainbow? Common. Getting a photo of a lightning strike? Rare. Getting a photo of both at the same time? Extremely rare, but it happened to a Manitoba photographer this week.

They say a dog is a man’s best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.

A growing group of brides and wedding photographers from across the province say they have been taken for tens of thousands of dollars by a Barrie, Ont. wedding photographer.

Paleontologists from the Royal B.C. Museum have uncovered "a trove of extraordinary fossils" high in the mountains of northern B.C., the museum announced Thursday.

The search for a missing ancient 28-year-old chocolate donkey ended with a tragic discovery Wednesday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is celebrating an important milestone in the organization's history: 50 years since the first women joined the force.

It's been a whirlwind of joyful events for a northern Ontario couple who just welcomed a baby into their family and won the $70 million Lotto Max jackpot last month.

A Good Samaritan in New Brunswick has replaced a man's stolen bottle cart so he can continue to collect cans and bottles in his Moncton neighbourhood.

David Krumholtz, known for roles like Bernard the Elf in The Santa Clause and physicist Isidor Rabi in Oppenheimer, has spent the latter part of his summer filming horror flick Altar in Winnipeg. He says Winnipeg is the most movie-savvy town he's ever been in.

Stay Connected