StarExclusive: The inside story of what broke Canada’s political stalemate on health-care funding
OTTAWA— The political stalemate over health-care spending in Canada began to ease one warm August day on a New Brunswick cottage porch 20 minutes north of Shediac.
In August, Premier Doug Ford drove to the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the invitation of federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc to come to his family cottage in Grande-Digue. From Ford’s perspective, it was the first time a top federal official had made clear that Ottawa didn’t want to run the health system, but genuinely wanted to understand how to bring provinces on board with reforms.
But as a federal cabinet minister later said privately, while provincial health ministers might have agreed, the premiers publicly stuck to a different line: they would not accept “strings attached” to federal health-care dollars. “I am an accountant,” said Quebec Premier François Legault, adding he understood the math and rejected federal government arguments that its share of health-care spending already was about a third, and not the 22 per cent share that provinces claimed.
Federal and provincial officials agree privately with that assessment. One federal source said key federal-provincial conversations shifted almost as quickly.
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