Premiers who gathered Monday in Moncton, N.B. for a summit on health care called for significant changes to the delivery of services in their provinces and hinted at the possibility of offering more services through the private sector.
“The status quo is not working, folks,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford told a news conference following the meeting.
“We need to be creative, we need to come up with ideas from the [health care] sector.”
Ford met with premiers Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick, Tim Houston of Nova Scotia and Dennis King of Prince Edward Island during the summit.
Ford said health care was the “the number one priority” during the meeting, which was also attended by Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc.
Ford said the premiers had a “phenomenal conversation” with LeBlanc about the challenges facing provincial health-care systems.
“Urgent action is needed if the federal government wants to ensure the sustainability of health care and services across Canada,” Higgs said.
Disagreements over health care funding have strained the relationship between Canada’s premiers and the federal government for years now, but the increasingly dire situation in hospitals and emergency departments has pushed the premiers to push for change more aggressively.
At a gathering of all provincial and territorial leaders in July, British Columbia Premier John Horgan said Canadian health care had deteriorated to a point where Canada would have to “re-imagine” how public health care is delivered.
