Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced they had settled on the fine print about how Ontario would spend the health care funding.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have finalized a federal-provincial deal on health care funding, meaning that $3.1-billion in new federal cash will flow over three years in return for pledges from Ontario to boost enrolment in medical schools and improve access to family doctors.
The money is a first tranche of Ontario’s $8.6-billion share of the $25-billion in extra federal cash put forward as part of the 10-year health care deal Mr. Trudeau and the leaders of the country’s provinces and territories agreed to in principle almost a year ago. Ottawa has since been negotiating bilateral deals with each provincial and territorial government.
On Friday, Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Ford announced they had settled on the fine print about how Ontario would spend the new money, making Ontario the fifth province to finalize a funding deal, after British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Alberta and Nova Scotia.
The announcement, made in the nursing-school wing of the campus of Seneca Polytechnic college in King City, north of Toronto, comes as Ontario’s health care system, like others across the country, continues to buckle, with staffing shortages and long waits or shutdowns in emergency rooms.
Health care unions and political critics blame Ontario’s health care crisis squarely on Mr. Ford’s government, pointing to its legislation, known as Bill 124, that capped wage hikes for nurses and other public-sector workers but was struck down by a court. A decision in the government’s appeal of that ruling is expected on Monday.
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The new federal cash announced Friday will see Ontario continue to expand the number of what are known as primary health care teams, made up of family doctors, nurses and other professionals, in order to address the needs of the many Ontarians without family doctors. Ontario had just announced $110-million to expand the reach of these teams last month.
The province will also increase enrolment in health care education programs by more than 700 spots, including more than 70 in Northern Ontario, the federal government said in a press release. Ontario and the federal government also pledged to make it easier for foreign-trained doctors to practise and to modernize computer systems to allow for better collection and sharing of health data. More money will also go to youth mental health centres and psychotherapy.
Mr. Trudeau was blunt in acknowledging the strain under which hospitals in Ontario and elsewhere in the country have been operating.
“To health care workers: I know it’s been really tough over the past few years. You want to do good work, but you’re stretched too thin or sometimes you don’t have the right tools,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters. “We’re working hard to get you the reinforcements you need.”
Mr. Ford and his Health Minister, Sylvia Jones, have previously argued they were doing all that could be done to shore up the health system, including spending billions on hospital expansion and hiring thousands of new nurses. But the Premier suggested on Friday he was now seized with the issue of emergency-room waits, even though health care workers and opposition leaders have been raising alarms for years.
“I’m going to be zoned-in on these emergency departments and I’m going to work with the OMA [Ontario Medical Association] because the doctors play a massive, massive role in making sure we clear that up,” Mr. Ford said. “I’ll put the money in that is needed, but we need the co-operation from everyone.”
The OMA praised Friday’s deal but said it falls billions of dollars short of the long-standing demands from Mr. Ford and other premiers for the federal government to increase its share of health care funding to 35 per cent from the current 22 per cent.
Both opposition politicians and health care union leaders raised concerns about handing cash to Ontario even as it goes ahead with a plan – not mentioned on Friday by Mr. Trudeau – to expand the number of publicly funded surgeries at private clinics.
Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called the funding a “$3-billion gamble,” accusing Mr. Ford in a statement of “aggressively” pushing “for-profit care.”
Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie warned that Mr. Ford “has repeatedly proven he cannot be trusted to support our universal, public health care system.” She accused Mr. Ford of “intentionally starving” hospitals of federal COVID-19 funding and of planning for a “two-tiered, for-profit system.”
Mr. Ford and Ms. Jones have repeatedly said the outpatient surgeries, such as hip and knee replacements, that they intend to move to private clinics will be paid for by the health system, not patients themselves.
Ontario NDP health critic France Gélinas criticized the fact that it took a year to finalize the federal deal, even with the health care system under strain.
Sharleen Stewart, president of SEIU Healthcare, which represents more than 60,000 frontline health care workers in Ontario, welcomed the additional funding but called on Ontario to scrap its fight to revive its wage-cap law for nurses.
Lana Payne, the head of Unifor, the country’s largest private-sector union, praised the funding but warned against allowing it to be “siphoned off by private interests.”
Jeff Gray
Laura Stone