Nova Scotia’s finance minister says the province is getting more money than it would have under a new health care funding deal with Ottawa.
After talks collapsed last Monday for a pan-Canadian deal, Randy Delorey says Nova Scotia was able to negotiate a deal that is better than both the one provinces rejected and the one the former federal Conservative government put in place.
Had no new agreement been reached, Delorey says the province would have gotten $11.14 billion over 10 years. Alternatively, if the provinces had accepted the proposal made in Ottawa last week, Nova Scotia would have gotten $11.36 billion. Instead, Delorey says the province is expecting $11.48 billion under the bilateral deal it struck with the federal government on Friday.
READ MORE: Justin Trudeau mis-remembers health funding platform promise
The difference is an additional $340 million, according to the province.
“It gives us, certainty going into the budget process, we know what we’re going to have to put towards our health care system,” Delorey said.
The total amount includes targeted funding for mental health care and home care, in addition to the annual increase to the Canada Health Transfer that Nova Scotia gets from Ottawa every year.
Last week, Premier Stephen McNeil said the province needed a 5.2 per cent annual increase to the money Nova Scotia gets from the federal government. But the deal he accepted is lower.
Starting in April, Nova Scotia will get an increase of 3.5 per cent for each of the first two years. Subsequently, it will receive an increase tied to the nominal GDP rate, with a base of three per cent. GDP is expected to grow around four per cent over that time.
Could Nova Scotia have gotten a better deal?
Both opposition parties slammed the deal. The NDP said it believed Nova Scotia would have gotten more had it held out longer with other provinces.
“Nova Scotia would have got a better deal if we had remained united with the other provinces,” NDP Leader Gary Burrill said in a statement. “McNeil signed a bad deal and the health care services people in our province rely on will suffer as a result.”
Dalhousie political science professor Katherine Fierlbeck says Nova Scotia chose to go with certainty over a faint possibility that it could strike a richer deal.
“Nova Scotia took the guaranteed route, sub-optimal but still better than the status quo,” she said.
She said the Trudeau government likely knew that smaller provinces like Nova Scotia were more keen to secure federal cash but she says the provinces weren’t “misguided or ill advised” to accept the bilateral deals.
Risks of a souring relationship
Asked if the bilateral deal jeopardised his relationship with other provinces, Delorey said he believed his counterparts were “mature and professional individuals.”
“They’ll move on and when it comes to the next file, we will sit down at the table and we’ll work through that file,” he said.
Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette slammed New Brunswick when it announced the first side deal but after Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador announced similar deals, he appeared to wipe his hands of the maritime provinces.
“We moved from a weak unanimity to a strong majority,” he tweeted.
But Fierlbeck says bilateral agreements with Ottawa are nothing new and reflect that different provinces need different things in a funding deal. She said their financial positions, population, and health indicators all mean they’re interested in a different deal from Ottawa.
“The assumption that provinces can work in lock-step really assumes that they have similar interests, similar needs and that they’re similar provinces and they’re not,” she said.
Delorey said the new deal with Ottawa in part went up because Ottawa accounted for Nova Scotia’s ageing demographics.
Comments