Canadian health care system will collapse, say leaders

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 25 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

Canada's leaders have predicted that their health care system will collapse unless a way is found to regularly fund it from central government, say Canada's premiers.

They said that Ottawa should transfer C$2 billion more each year to the provinces. If not the system will be in a shambles by the end of the decade.

The country's leaders also accepted that they had to reform their health care practices. They said it was necessary to make the national system more sustainable. They pledged to look at ways of doing this.

Canada has always been famous for having a universal health care system. The trouble is it is bursting at the seams.

This was the conclusion at the end of a two-day meeting of the new Council of the Federation, a bi-annual meeting of the provincial premiers and territorial leaders.

There is general confusion in the funding of the nation's health care. Finance Minister, Raloh Goodale had announced a one time boost of C$2 billion for health care funding. However, he also announced that equalization payments to the 8 have-nots (provinces) would go down by C$3 billion. In fact, a real drop of one billion.

The premiers (in Canada) called on Ottawa to adopt the recommendation of the Romanow Commission on Health Care. This commission said that the federal share of health care funding should go up by 25% (currently 16%).