N.B. premier hopes a health care deal with feds reflects shared priorities

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs says he hopes any deal with the federal government for additional funding for health care won’t “impose priorities” on the province.

But he’s optimistic that a deal that addresses access to primary care and reflects the province’s aging population can be reached.

“What I’m hoping is that the prime minister and the (health) minister are going to say, ‘OK what are the priorities’ because that’s where we want to present the challenges that we face directly and not try to impose priorities on us,” he said.

Premiers from across the country are scheduled to meet with the federal government next week to begin talks on boosting health transfers to the provinces. The premiers have put up a united front, calling for Ottawa to boost transfers from 22 per cent of health care costs to 35 per cent.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau and federal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos have signaled a willingness to do so, but have also spoken about the need to ensure the funding is results driven and may attach strings to an increase in federal cash.

2:08 Trudeau plans meeting with premiers to negotiate health-care funding

Higgs says he and his Atlantic counterparts are hoping to see additional funding that reflects the region’s rapidly aging population and the additional toll that can take on the health-care system.

“Just the cost of health care generally goes up with an aging population, that’s well documented,” he said.

“It could be more hip and knee surgeries are going to happen here just based on the population on a per capita basis than you’d see in like Alberta, so there would be very specific ties you could make to the aging population and the criteria of care that we would all need.”

But as Higgs prepares for the talks, opposition party leaders in the province are calling on the federal government to ensure that the money being sent to the province is well spent.

Liberal health critic Rob McKee says the funding must be earmarked for health care spending.

“There definitely needs to be some accountability. We know that this government has taken huge federal transfers in the past and it appeared as if they were just padding their surpluses,” he said.

The Higgs government is the only provincial government to have remained in the black throughout the pandemic and posted a record $ 777 million surplus last year. First-quarter projections for this year show the government is on pace for a $774 million surplus.

Green leader David Coon says he wants to see federal dollars come with a condition that they can’t be used in profit-driven health care delivery.

1:32 N.B. premier speaks about expansion of private health-care service

Coon has raised concerns over a recent piece of legislation that he says opens the door to surgery clinics run by corporate health-care companies. The bill allows the regional health authorities to enter into agreements with service providers to perform simple surgeries outside of hospitals. A pilot is underway in Bathurst, where a clinic is providing cataract surgeries.

The government has said the necessary safeguards are in place to ensure that there won’t be private for-profit clinics opening in the province, but Coon has argued the bill doesn’t explicitly rule it out.

Coon wants to see the feds provide that additional level of security.

“That money needs to support publicly owned, publicly operated, publicly delivered health-care services in the province. So, in a sense, attach that string,” he told reporters last week.

Negotiations will begin on Feb. 7 in Ottawa.