Federal, N.S. officials to meet Monday to discuss health-care funding

Officials with the federal government will be in Halifax on Monday to meet with Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston and other senior members of his team to further discuss a bilateral agreement on targeted health-care funding.

In an interview, Houston said he's expecting the contingent from Ottawa to include Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos.

"We're anxious to kind of move forward," Houston said Friday.

"We have significant needs in health care, of course, and I have an incredible sense of urgency, I push an incredible sense of urgency through the team to move things forward. The discussions with the federal government are no different."

The bilateral agreements between Ottawa and the provinces and territories are part of an overall 10-year funding agreement the federal government is pitching to help ailing health-care systems across the country.

A need for long-term consistency

Houston and his counterparts learned during a meeting last week with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the offer would see Ottawa send the provinces and territories $196 billion over 10 years, $46 billion of which would be new money.

For Nova Scotia, that translates to an increase of $52 million a year through the Canada Health Transfer. The bilateral agreement with Ottawa would see an additional $102 million flow to the province.

Houston said something he needs clarified on Monday is whether the bilateral agreement would also last for 10 years.

"We think the commitments that we make to health care today need to carry on into the future," he said.

"We can't get into the situation where we commit to something today that we have to stop in five years or we have to modify in five years."

Offer not expected to change

Houston's government is working on its next budget. The premier has said he hopes to have the new money from Ottawa included in that document.

Reaction to Ottawa's offer to the provinces and territories has been less than overwhelming.

The consensus from provincial officials is that they went into last week's meeting expecting the federal government to put much more money on the table.

The premiers are scheduled to meet virtually on Monday for further discussion.

Houston said he would have liked to see a higher offer, but he's not expecting much to change about Trudeau's proposal.

"I think what the federal government has talked about, I think that's pretty much it."

Working quickly

There are still conversations to be had before finalizing the bilateral agreements, however, Houston said the priorities the federal government has identified for how that money is to be used align with things the Nova Scotia government is already doing and targeting. They include trying to increase staff numbers, improving access to primary care, tackling wait-lists and backlogs, and introducing a digital health record management system.

"We just want to sit down and have that discussion and make sure that we're working together to improve access to care for Nova Scotians," said Houston.

"We're going to do that quickly."

The agreements appear to be a way for Ottawa to address a concern of smaller provinces and the territories about the per capita formula used to calculate the Canada Health Transfer, and how it fails to recognize the large number of complex patients in some jurisdictions who require more costly treatment, said Houston.

Houston and his government have a lot riding on any injection of new cash.

System beset by challenges

The Tories were elected on a promise to fix the health-care system and have faced persistent challenges since coming to office in 2021.

The circumstances of the province's emergency department system faced heightened scrutiny last month after reports of two women who died after not receiving care soon enough.

A lack of in-patient and long-term care beds led to recent announcements of major construction programs aimed at addressing both issues, although it is acknowledged that work will take years to complete. The government also plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new electronic patient record management system.

Meanwhile, the list of people in the province in need of a primary care provider continues to grow, at last check sitting at almost 130,000 people.

The most recent monthly update was supposed to be released earlier this week but has yet to be posted online.

A spokesperson for Nova Scotia Health said the update would come next week.

The delay is due to a plan to add additional information to the list so people can understand how to access care if they do not have a primary care provider, said the spokesperson.