{"id":1971,"date":"2019-07-16T01:02:36","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T01:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/?p=1971"},"modified":"2019-07-16T01:02:36","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T01:02:36","slug":"finding-the-bright-side-in-the-premiers-dreary-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/2019\/07\/16\/finding-the-bright-side-in-the-premiers-dreary-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the bright side in the Premiers’ dreary performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The annual premiers\u2019 conference, hogging much of last week\u2019s national political spotlight, came off as a polarizing affair. The tone was set in advance when Alberta\u2019s Jason Kenney invited some of his fellow resistance fighters[i]<\/a> (premiers Doug Ford and Scott Moe and newbies Blaine Higgs and Bob McLeod from the Northwest Territories) to a special pre-conference photo-op in Calgary.<\/p>\n

There the gang of five (in Doug Ford\u2019s characterization \u201clike-minded premiers that want their provinces to thrive\u201d) flipped pancakes at a Stampede breakfast and complained about the federal government in general and Justin Trudeau\u2019s carbon tax in particular.<\/p>\n

When the main meeting got underway in Saskatoon the following day the media were quick to note another divide. With Kenney replacing Rachel Notley as Alberta premier, for the first time in over a decade there were no women around the table. Bruce MacKinnon\u2019s editorial cartoon in the Chronicle-Herald<\/em> featured nine of the provincial and territorial leaders \u2013 middle-aged white males all \u2013 sitting primly as host Scott Moe announced \u201cWe had a robust discussion of women\u2019s issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Globe and Mail<\/em> columnist Elizabeth Renzetti, calling the meeting \u201ca sausage party to which no girls we invited\u201d bemoaned the pro-business bias of the participants, a complaint borne out in the communiqu\u00e9s that form the public record of the closed-door meeting.<\/p>\n

The document<\/a> <\/strong>on \u201cEconomic Competitiveness and Responsible Resource Development\u201d could have been written by an oil industry lobbyist or Conservative party researcher. It called for increased \u201ccertainty for investors\u201d by ensuring that federal environmental assessments don\u2019t get in the way of moving stuff \u2013 especially oil and gas \u2013 to markets. To that end, the premiers embraced a version of the federal Conservatives\u2019 dubious energy corridor idea, backing \u201cfurther discussions on pan-Canadian economic corridors, both east-west and north-south, to increase productivity by distributing energy, communications, and economic potential currently locked in a single province or territory to other jurisdictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

A separate<\/a> c<\/strong>ommuniqu\u00e9 on \u201cHealth Sustainability and Mental Health\u201d lacked any new ideas \u2013 even wacky ones. A statement on mental health and addiction expressed concern about many issues, including the opioid overdose epidemic. But no initiatives came forward beyond a promised symposium for sometime in the future. The Premiers also addressed pharmacare, showing no more enthusiasm this year than they displayed at their 2018 meeting<\/a> <\/strong>in St. Andrew\u2019s. Their main goal seems to be retaining provincial responsibility \u201cfor design and delivery of public drug coverage,\u201d a stance that prompted a letter to the Globe and Mail from a Toronto reader who wrote:<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t remember a time when such a collection of petty, tin-pot wannabe-dictators were in power, and showed such disdain for the country as a whole and its people.” \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

That is a compelling observation, but before writing off the entire exercise as a pre-election, politically driven waste of time and money, there is one section of the health communiqu\u00e9 worth noting. The Premiers repeated their familiar demand for increased health transfers, citing reports from the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), discussed most recently here<\/a>.<\/strong> As the communiqu\u00e9 notes, PBO reports show that the federal government \u201chas the fiscal capacity to increase its healthcare funding and return to a more equitable partnership with provinces and territories\u201d.<\/p>\n

In search of a more equitable partnership, the Premiers put back on the table as a starting point an annual transfer increase of 5.2 per cent, up from about four per cent now. That higher figure represents the position the provinces had put forward in negotiations on a new health accord in 2016, a demand that disappeared after Liberal governments in the Atlantic provinces led an exodus away from the provincial common front.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s forgiveness, forgetfulness or the fact that charter member of the resistance, Brian Pallister of Manitoba, continued to complain long after the rest of the smaller provinces had agreed to Trudeau\u2019s health deal, the communiqu\u00e9 tosses an important sop in the direction of Atlantic provinces with higher health care needs, reciting that “the Conference Board of Canada also notes the Canada Health Transfer does not factor aging into its payments, and as such, federal transfers are not sufficient to support the additional care needs of Canada\u2019s aging population.\u201d<\/p>\n

While not exactly a ringing endorsement of a much-needed demographic top up, that part of the communiqu\u00e9 complements the efforts of the Atlantic premiers. They convened their own pre-conference meeting (without pancake flipping) last week to compose a statement calling on the feds \u201cto increase health care funding to address the impact of the region\u2019s aging population on Atlantic Canada\u2019s health care systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

So an event that from all appearances was about aggrandizing Ford, Kenney and their like-minded friends ended up putting back on the pre-election agenda an item of considerable importance to voters in this region. It will be interesting to see how it is addressed as party platforms are released in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n

-30-<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> The Macleans magazine cover of December 2018 that will live in infamy featured the Resistance – Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, then Alberta opposition Leader Jason Kenney and Premiers Doug Ford of Ontario, Scott Moe of Saskatchewan and Manitoba\u2019s Brian Pallister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual premiers\u2019 conference, hogging much of last week\u2019s national political spotlight, came off as a polarizing affair. The tone was set in advance when Alberta\u2019s Jason Kenney invited some of his fellow resistance fighters[i] (premiers Doug Ford and Scott Moe and newbies Blaine Higgs and Bob McLeod from the Northwest Territories) to a special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-health-transfers","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}