Manitoba launches campaign critical of federal health funding plan

WINNIPEG – Manitoba is launching an online ad campaign against the federal government’s health-care funding plan and is hinting other provinces may follow suit.

The provincial government is starting a website later this week called Share The Health and is taking to social media to condemn Ottawa’s plan to limit annual increases in health transfer payments.

“We want to start that discussion, continue the discussion with Manitobans, so they have a clear understanding of what it is that (Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberal government are going to do in terms of reducing their health-care services,” Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said Tuesday.

Trudeau is to visit the province on Thursday.

The federal government has been criticized for weeks over its plan to limit how quickly health transfers increase.

For a decade, the transfers rose at a rate of six per cent a year under a deal reached in 2004. The Liberal government is offering annual increases of either three per cent or a three-year average of economic growth, whichever is higher.

It is also offering billions of dollars earmarked for mental-health and home care.

The Manitoba ad campaign says the result would mean $2.2 billion less for the province over the next 10 years — $39 million less in this fiscal year alone. It also spells out what it says that $39 million could buy: 55,000 MRI tests, 3,200 hip replacements or hemodialysis for 400 people.

Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott has said the funding increases being offered are significant and will address gaps in health care.

“The $11.5 billion (in mental-health and home care) offer we put on the table in December has the potential to be transformative and make a difference in the lives of Canadians,” said an emailed statement from Philpott’s office Tuesday.

“This is in addition to our existing commitments to the Canada Health Transfer, which will continue to grow every year.”

The federal government has reached funding deals with Saskatchewan, three Atlantic provinces and the three territories. But the other provinces remain opposed to the offer and Goertzen suggested they might also conduct public campaigns.

“I can tell you that in the discussions that we’ve had with other provinces, they recognize the need to communicate the difficulty this will put them and their residents in,” Goertzen said.

“I would be surprised if they didn’t want to communicate with their residents. Everything I’ve heard from health ministers is they need to get the word out.”

Royce Koop, who teaches political studies at the University of Manitoba, said ad campaigns against the federal government can be effective — such as former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams’s battle with Ottawa over energy royalties.

Health care is a topic on which Manitoba can win, he predicted.

“Health care continues to be a really important issue on the minds of Canadians,” he said.

“No (federal) government wants to have this kind of conflict. They’d rather have cordial relations with provincial governments to the extent that that’s possible.”