Liberals call for health care leadership from Tories (Canada)

Citation

(2012), "Liberals call for health care leadership from Tories (Canada)", Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhs.2012.21125aaa.002

Liberals call for health care leadership from Tories (Canada)

Article Type:News and views From: Leadership in Health Services, Volume 25, Issue 1

Edited by Jo Lamb-White

Keywords: Healthcare leadership,Healthcare strategy, Healthcare funding

The Conservative government has abandoned its leadership role in health care and needs to pick it up again in advance of negotiating a new health accord with the provinces, the Liberal Party said.

Liberal health critic Hedy Fry said at a news conference that many of the goals of the existing accord, which expires in 2014, have not been met. Fry laid the blame for that on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.

The funding agreement between Ottawa and the provinces and territories set in 2004 was meant to ensure the system’s sustainability and improve timely access to care, Fry said, and the two levels of government were meant to work together on the accord.

“There was co-operation and collaboration and the federal government not only put the money in but had a role to play in leading certain national strategies,” said Fry.

But on health human resources and wait times, for example, the Conservatives haven’t carried on the work started by the Liberals and as a result, Canadians still don’t have timely access to the care they need, according to Fry. She said progress was being made but has been stalled since the Conservatives took power from the Liberals in 2006.

“This federal government has dropped the ball on all of that so we’re not seeing any of the things that we had hoped to achieve in the 2004 health accord,” she said.

Fry said Harper and the Conservatives have shown “absolutely no interest” in the health care portfolio and consistently say it’s provincial jurisdiction.

The provinces do deliver core health services, partly funded by Ottawa, but the federal government has responsibility for aboriginal health, for example, and operates the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“The federal government has to take a role in pan-Canadian issues,” said Fry.

A spokesman for Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq rejected Fry’s assertions that the Conservatives are inactive on the health file and have failed to deliver results.

“There have been significant improvements to the system since we formed government, including reductions in wait times for several key procedures, but there is still work to be done,” Aglukkaq’s director of communications Steve Outhouse said. “We are working collaboratively with provinces and territories to continue making progress now, and will do so leading up to 2014 and beyond.”

He also noted that while Fry was “holding a press conference to complain,” Aglukkaq was making a health funding announcement in Edmonton. Ottawa is investing $2.5 million to help develop and test a new technology for cancer treatment.

“Ms. Fry neglected to point out how years of Liberal cuts to transfer payments set provinces and territories back a decade in their quest to deliver quality healthcare,” he added.

Fry called on the prime minister to convene a meeting with the provinces’ health ministers, something he hasn’t done since he took office in 2006, and Fry said that demonstrates that health care isn’t a priority for his party.

She said preparations for the upcoming re-negotiated health accord should start now.

“We don’t need to wait until 2014 to talk about it, but the Conservatives have been silent,” she said.

Fry’s news conference to blast the Conservatives on health came on the same day the Canadian Medical Association said Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq will deliver a speech at the annual conference in St. John’s.

The negotiation of a new health accord is one of the topics for discussion at the conference.

The Conservatives said during the recent election campaign that post-2014 they would maintain the annual six per cent funding increase that exists under the current funding accord with the provinces.

For more information: www.cbc.ca