Photo: Curtis Geroux/CKRW
In their recent stop on their cross-country trip, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister of Health met the Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai to discuss the increase in health funding
YUKON – An agreement in principle was reached between Yukon’s Premier and the federal government over healthcare funding.
On February 14, 2023, Canada’s Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc and federal Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos met with Yukon’s Premier Ranj Pillai over the proposed $46 billion health care funding offer. The $46 billion offer would be divided up over the next 10 years.
In return for additional funding, the federal government has asked the provinces to commit to some conditions, including better data gathering and sharing.
The meeting with Pillai was built off of the week’s prior First Ministers meeting regarding health care in Ottawa and advanced Yukon-specific negotiations on bilateral agreements on health care funding.
The federal government’s additional investments will help to achieve a number of common goals, such as expanding access to family health services, attracting and retaining healthcare workers, increasing access to mental health and substance abuse treatments, and modernizing the healthcare system.
Premier Pillai looked back on the government’s work in the past 5 years and see’s similarities in the new plan.
“We’ve done a lot of work over the last five years and that work has been extremely progressive and innovative. As people will know on childcare. We were out ahead of the federal government on that and on dental we were ahead and when it came to our Climate Change plan, and the putting people first plan is similar. That is a fully integrated approach to governance with First Nation governments and a very modern approach. And so the themes that have come out of Health Canada and the work that’s come of the areas and the pillars that are being looked upon to invest in is actually where we are”
Pillai spoke briefly about the takeaways from last week’s talk.
“My takeaways from last week were that the provinces, the 13 premiers, understand the challenges that the federal government have in where we are financially as a country. As my colleague from Nova Scotia said we’re always going to be looking for more. That’s our job to ensure that we are fiercely defending the needs of our citizens that we represent.”
The Premier emphasized the necessity of tackling the particular issues of health care delivery in the North, notably via northern-specific investments like the Territorial Health Investment Fund.
