Moe hoping more health-care funding is on the way

Premier Scott Moe is continuing to push Ottawa on the healthcare front.

The No. 1 item on the agenda for the premiers was asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for more money when it came to funding health care.

The premiers want an increase in funding from the current 22 per cent up to 35 per cent in order to combat various challenges faced across the country. That would be an increase of $28 billion.

Speaking on Gormley on Wednesday morning, Moe said this ask isn’t anything new.

“We’ve asked the prime minister to meet for the entirety of those 2 1/2 years and he hasn’t come or offered first ministers a meeting in that time,” Moe said. “Essentially, we’re going to find our way to Ottawa and we expect that he’ll make himself available to meet with Canada’s 13 premiers.”

Moe’s hopeful a meeting between the premiers and prime minister can happen in January.

If they can convince Trudeau and the federal government to give the provinces a boost in health-care funding, Moe says it’ll be used to help innovate the provinces’ systems.

“I think our priorities line up quite nicely between all of the provinces and territories across Canada and quite likely the federal government as well,” he said.

“We need more people, we need more hands in our health-care facilities, we need to do something innovative to reduce our surgical wait times and we need to add other innovative entry points for patients to receive the health care that they need rather than (at) the emergency room.”

Moe said the Saskatchewan government is doing some of this work on its own by recruiting workers from the Philippines and attempting to use private options to help reduce surgical wait times.

But Moe remains worried that if funding is expanded, it could be prescribed in ways by the federal government, which would not help.

“If it’s overly prescriptive — understanding there are some differing challenges when you look from Ontario to Quebec — it’s going to be extremely challenging for the provinces to access those dollars,” he said,

Moe also wants the federal government to be a full funding partner in provincially delivered health care, which he says was always the intent of the Canada Health Transfer when it began.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article suggested Premier Moe was in Manitoba for the premiers conference. It was a virtual meeting. We regret the error.