Health funding extension falls short: ministers

PROVINCIAL and territorial health ministers say a one-year extension of a 10-year, $12.2 billion annual funding deal announced by the federal health minister Wednesday is good enough.

“We are still facing an enormous fiscal crunch,” said Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, who is hosting the ministers in Winnipeg, said at a press conference Thursday at The Leaf in Assiniboine Park.

The one-year extension of funding for mental health, substance use and home and community care was set to end March 31, 2027, announced by federal Health Minister Mark Holland, who met with her Friday and territorial counterparts.

“Welcome and first step, however there is a lot of work that needs to be done,” said New Brunswick Health Minister John Dornan. “Asagwara said.”

Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara calling for long-term, sustainable funding from the federal government.

“We are not in a position of the federal government to continue to ensure that we are going to be able to continue to invest in public health care in the ways we’ve been doing for the last number of years,” she said. “We must continue to over the next decade.”

The provincial and territorial health ministers are taking a Team Canada approach to funding for long-term, sustainable funding.

“We continue to be unified in our call for long-term, sustainable funding that we have received over the past decade must continue,” Asagwara said. Wednesday’s promise from the federal government for a one-year funding extension falls short of their expectations.

“We cannot accept the reality that we are in what would be the absolute cut to health care is a generation if the federal government does not ensure that they’re meeting us where we need to be met in full, in long term, and that’s the Canada Health Transfer proceeds at either a minimum of five per cent or greater,” she said.