By Canadian Press

Critics stress health system capacity constraints ahead of first ministers meeting

Jan 10, 2022 | 11:03 AM

OTTAWA — Health experts and government critics are calling on the prime minister and premiers to fix cracks in Canada’s health system and improve surge capacity as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will speak with provincial and territorial leaders this afternoon to discuss the mounting health crisis posed by the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

In a press conference Monday, Conservative ethics critic John Brassard said Canadians have been dealing with lockdowns and restrictions for two years while very little was done to address surge capacity in hospitals.

“This is a failure to plan on the part of the federal government, working with the provinces, to ensure that our surge capacity and our health care capacity is at a pace right now where we can keep up,” Brassard said. 

Ontario Premier Doug Ford plans to raise the provinces’ plea for more federal health-care funds with the prime minister.

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Provincial and territorial leaders want to increase the federal share of health spending from 22 per cent to 35 per cent, to about $71 billion.

The federal government has committed to a 4.8 per cent increase, bringing the total for 2022-23 to about $45 billion.

“This persistent gap represents billions of dollars in lost funding that Ontario could use to accelerate progress in delivering better care to our citizens,” said Ivana Yelich, Ford’s director of media relations, in a statement Monday. 

Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos says Ottawa spent another $63 billion on health care since the pandemic started to help shore up provincial systems, and has promised another $25 billion in the relatively short term. 

Trudeau has said repeatedly negotiations to adjust health transfers will happen after the pandemic but several health-care experts argue those conversations should happen now.

HealthCareCAN, an association of health-care organizations and Canadian hospitals, has urged the federal government to go beyond funding and lead provinces to make strategic changes to develop a more cohesive and resilient health system. 

“There’s always a temptation, in formulating public policy, to wait until a situation has moved beyond crisis management to make systemic changes; or, in health care terms, until the patient stabilizes before a comprehensive examination of the symptoms and well-informed diagnosis can be reached,” HealthCareCAN CEO Paul-Émile Cloutier wrote in an opinion piece for Policy Magazine last week.

“Our political leaders have not just an interest but an obligation to devise an effective intervention to stabilize the system so that it doesn’t become the biggest, costliest casualty of this pandemic.”

While the association says “sufficient” health transfers are urgently needed, Cloutier also called for a national dialogue about fundamental health care reform, including data collection and shortages in the health workforce.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan 10, 2022.

Laura Osman, The Canadian Press