Prime minister and premiers to discuss health-care funding during meeting in Ottawa

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will sit down with Canada’s premiers next month to try and hammer out a new deal for health-care funding.

Trudeau made the announcement Wednesday morning, saying the meeting will happen in Ottawa on Feb. 7. The prime minister said the sit-down will offer an opportunity to share the federal government’s plans to support the provincial health-care systems across the country.

The issue of health funding has been an important one for Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who’s been pushing for the federal government to increase its share of health-care funding from its current level of 22 per cent up to 35 per cent. That increase would total $28 billion.

Moe has been vocal in the past about wanting a direct meeting with the Prime Minister and the importance of increased health-care funding. Moe’s office issued a brief statement Wednesday saying he’s looking forward to the meeting.

“Premier Moe looks forward to discussing federal investment in healthcare, and how that can improve our shared priority of delivering high quality health care services for Canadians,” Moe’s statement read.

The premier previously told 650 CKOM that a federal funding boost would help provincial health-care systems hire more staff and make new innovations and improvements.

“We need more people,” Moe said. “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.”

While Moe has called for the federal government to increase its share of funding, he emphasized that health-care management should be left up to the provincial governments.

“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.

Tensions between the Saskatchewan government and Ottawa have been running high recently. The Prime Minister’s Office recently issued an apology after failing to notify or invite Moe to an event Trudeau hosted in Saskatoon.

–With files from The Canadian Press