It’s hardly the first relationship to struggle under the pandemic’s health and financial pressures, but Canada’s dysfunction-prone federation appeared to be in need of a skilled mediator or two this week.
Like aggrieved partners now speaking only through lawyers, premiers gathered in Victoria, B.C. on July 11-12 to reprise their call for an urgent First Ministers meeting to negotiate an increase to the Canada Health Transfer (CHT). As premiers made their pitch to assembled journalists, senior federal ministers popped up in the media to blow off their demands.
“Where’d the love go?” soon-to-retire B.C. Premier John Horgan said in his final press conference as chair of the Council of the Federation. “Everything was so fine. And then it wasn’t.”
To reporters who covered the several dozen first ministers’ meetings held during the COVID scramble, it seems a bit revisionist to say the relationship was “fine” during the pandemic.
Sure, the first ministers talked a lot (virtually). But it took a lot of talking to hold together all that was coming apart in that emergency, and to pursue border restrictions and vaccination policies.
Patience is frayed now because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hasn’t been meeting with the premiers in person. One-time funding for specific things like surgical backlogs was announced by Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos in March but Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s spring budget offered nothing longer-term.
“Ghosted,” is how Horgan described — “with sadness, not anger” — what he sees as a lack of federal engagement.
Horgan said federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc only got around to calling him to check in prior to the meeting last Sunday morning, as premiers were already winging their way to Victoria.
“Is there anything else on his docket beyond the 13 of us?” the premier said. “I wouldn’t think so, but here we are.”
The day after the premiers went home, Freeland’s office issued a press release confirming she’d just transferred the $2 billion top-up to the CHT Duclos promised. It gave reporters a chart describing how transfers break down by jurisdiction. And then Freeland left for the G20 finance ministers meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
Practitioners and patients agree — the health care system is breaking down. But the governments responsible appear to be in a stalemate, counting on each other’s inaction to distract from their own ineffectiveness.
‘Fake’ figures and ‘triple Rs’
The shots fired this week were aimed at two things: math and accountability measures.
LeBlanc called the premiers’ figures on the federal contribution to health care “fake.”
The premiers are still using the same favourable-to-them calculation they’ve put out for months to make the case that Ottawa is no longer paying its share.
Was the CHT ever intended to pay for half of rising health costs? Not really. But did LeBlanc really need to use a provocative term like “fake”?
Both sides agree new investments are needed. Trudeau maintained Wednesday they’re still coming.
“The federal government will be there to invest in health care,” he said, “but we are going to make sure that those investments deliver for Canadians.”
Protesters greeted premiers on the second day of their Council of the Federation talks in Victoria. Public health advocates regularly meet with the leaders during their summer meetings but the current funding dispute added urgency to those conversations. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press)
And that’s where the accountability fights start.
The federal instinct to attach strings and safeguards is understandable. Ask Stephen Harper how it feels to reform equalization payments at the request of lobbying premiers — only to watch one use the new money to roll out a big provincial tax cut. More recently, provincial watchdogs concluded that billions of dollars in federal COVID support for the provinces was not spent as intended by Ottawa.
But federal ministers who try to tell provinces how to spend in an explicitly provincial jurisdiction like health can expect some pushback. That may explain why Duclos, in a recent interview with CBC News, sounded like a management consultant giving a Ted Talk — framing his arguments around what he called a “triple-R rule”: respect for jurisdiction, shared responsibility, and a focus on results.
“The federal government is unable and will never try to micromanage the health care system in Canada,” he said.
Negotiations have to be “sequential”, Duclos said. Health ministers must first meet to set the “results” they want to achieve — a process that’s not finished yet, apparently — before anyone can talk money, he added.
‘Ragging the puck’
Premiers pushed back hard at the suggestion that they can’t be trusted to spend health transfers on health. Their books are public, they told reporters in Victoria, and they should be scored by the voters who elect them, not according to some checklist on Duclos’ desk.
Horgan accused Ottawa of claiming a problem that doesn’t exist. Holding back federal money until certain conditions are met would be a “cop out,” he said, and attaching strings to new health care funding makes it seem as if the two levels of government have a master-and-serf relationship. (He’s not wrong. Constitutionally, the provinces are not subordinate to the federal government, even if the federal government has demonstrably more fiscal capacity.)
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, a lame duck premier now free to speak as who will never again have to negotiate with the feds, put it bluntly.
“If they’ve got something to say to us about conditions, come and sit down and say it,” Kenney said. “But so far, it just looks like they’re ragging the puck because they have no intention of paying their share.”
To sum up: the feds say they won’t negotiate the cash until they’ve worked out the conditions, while the provinces remain wary of any conditions and say they can’t proceed without more cash.
Trudeau’s vague explanation for not meeting with the premiers to discuss the CHT is based on bandwidth: a pandemic, he said, isn’t the time.
But when the federal government wanted a national child care program in the middle of the pandemic, it put up the money first and then found the time and energy to negotiate a custom slice for each province.
Freeland’s current fiscal framework lacks a CHT hike and she’s warned more restraint is required to counter high inflation. What message does that send about her intentions?
The federal government also pointed to election timing as one reason for the lack of engagement between the PM and premiers on health spending. The Liberals say they fought a bruising federal election last fall and didn’t want to meddle in the Ontario and Quebec election campaigns this year.
Will Trudeau’s calendar suddenly free up after Quebecers vote in October? Or was that just an excuse to kick the can?
Pushback and payback
Two signs emerged this week that the provinces want to raise the political cost of federal inaction. One was a public relations gambit, while the other threatens to take hostage some Liberal policy priorities.
CBC News reported that the premiers are considering a national advertising campaign to make the case to Canadians that their health care system will suffer if the federal government doesn’t spend more on it.
A new “blame Ottawa” offensive could redirect anger away from provinces responsible for backlogs and bad health care experiences. But it ignores a point made by health care advocacy groups — that some reforms, such as interprovincial recognition of professional licences and credentials, can happen without an argument with Ottawa over money.
The annual summer premiers’ meeting was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID pandemic. While the premiers seemed to enjoy meeting again in person, they didn’t have much to announce. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press)
The potential hostages are the Liberals’ pledges to implement national pharmacare and dental care coverage – two conditions set by the federal NDP earlier this year in return for its support on confidence votes in the House of Commons.
Adding drug and dental coverage, Horgan said, isn’t possible without a “firm foundation” of financing for the services already covered.
“You can’t get to one without the other,” he told reporters.
Since federal officials need provincial cooperation to implement national schemes outside federal jurisdiction, could these programs slow-walk or stall until the CHT increases?
That might test the patience of the federal New Democrats currently protecting Trudeau from snap election threats.
Announcement-free event
The first big win for the Council of the Federation (COF) in 2004 was a deal with Paul Martin’s Liberal government on health funding.
At its inception, COF was supposed to be about leading in its own right, not waiting for Ottawa to solve national problems. And Canada’s premiers showed themselves capable of more than lobbying the feds by coming up with an agreement on bulk drug purchasing and the imperfectly implemented interprovincial trade deal.
But there were no actions or announcements approaching the significance of those measures in this year’s COF communiqué. Instead, it piled on more demands for Ottawa beyond health care, on things like infrastructure and immigration.
Did losing a few years’ worth of in-person meetings make it difficult to advance other files? Perhaps.
Victoria’s Empress Hotel was full of officials getting face time again with their colleagues across the 13 jurisdictions. Media were denied access to not only their meetings but also their social and networking events, so it’s possible reporters simply couldn’t get a line on other work going on behind the scenes.
The earnest rhetoric in Victoria made evident the premiers’ collective determination to prevail in a 2022 rematch of the health transfer payment fight. But it’s possible they focused on federal demands because they had no progress to announce on other things under their control.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Employers and the union representing supervisors embroiled in a labour dispute that triggered a lockout at British Columbia’s ports will attempt to reach a deal when talks restart this weekend.
A spokesman from the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has confirmed the minister spoke with leaders at both the BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, but did not invoke any section of the Canadian Labour Code that would force them back to talks.
A statement from the ministry says MacKinnon instead “asked them to return to the negotiation table,” and talks are now scheduled to start on Saturday with the help of federal mediators.
A meeting notice obtained by The Canadian Press shows talks beginning in Vancouver at 5 p.m. and extendable into Sunday and Monday, if necessary.
The lockout at B.C. ports by employers began on Monday after what their association describes as “strike activity” from the union. The result was a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals across Canada’s west coast.
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint against the employers for allegedly bargaining in bad faith, a charge that employers call a “meritless claim.”
The two sides have been without a deal since March 2023, and the employers say its final offer presented last week in the last round of talks remains on the table.
The proposed agreement includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker.
The union has said one of its key concerns is the advent of port automation in cargo operations, and workers want assurances on staffing levels regardless of what technology is being used at the port.
The disruption is happening while two container terminals are shut down in Montreal in a separate labour dispute.
It leaves container cargo traffic disrupted at Canada’s two biggest ports, Vancouver and Montreal, both operating as major Canadian trade gateways on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
This is one of several work disruptions at the Port of Vancouver, where a 13-day strike stopped cargo last year, while labour strife in the rail and grain-handling sectors led to further disruptions earlier this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Judicial recounts in British Columbia’s provincial election should wrap up today, confirming whether Premier David Eby’s New Democrats hang onto their one-seat majority almost three weeks after the vote.
Most attention will be on the closest race of Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP were ahead by a mere 27 votes, a margin narrow enough to trigger a hand recount of more than 19,000 ballots that’s being overseen by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
Elections BC spokesman Andrew Watson says the recounts are on track to conclude today, but certification won’t happen until next week following an appeal period.
While recounts aren’t uncommon in B.C. elections, result changes because of them are rare, with only one race overturned in the province in at least the past 20 years.
That was when Independent Vicki Huntington went from trailing by two votes in Delta South to winning by 32 in a 2009 judicial recount.
Recounts can be requested after the initial count in an election for a variety of reasons, while judicial recounts are usually triggered after the so-called “final count” when the margin is less than 1/500th of the number of votes cast.
There have already been two full hand recounts this election, in Surrey City Centre and Juan de Fuca-Malahat, and both only resulted in a few votes changing sides.
A partial recount of votes that went through one tabulator in Kelowna Centre saw the margin change by four votes, while a full judicial recount is currently underway in the same riding, narrowly won by the B.C. Conservatives.
The number of votes changing hands in recounts has generally shrunk in B.C. in recent years.
Judicial recounts in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky in 2020 and Coquitlam-Maillardville in 2013 saw margins change by 19 and six votes respectively.
In 2005, there were a record eight recounts after the initial tally, changing margins by an average of 62 votes, while one judicial recount changed the margin in Vancouver-Burrard by seven.
The Election Act says the deadline to appeal results after judicial recounts must be filed with the court within two days after they are declared, but Watson says that due to Remembrance Day on Monday, that period ends at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
When an appeal is filed, it must be heard no later than 10 days after the registrar receives the notice of appeal.
A partial recount is also taking place in Prince George-Mackenzie to tally votes from an uncounted ballot box that contained about 861 votes.
The Prince George recount won’t change the outcome because the B.C. Conservative candidate there won by more than 5,000 votes.
If neither Surrey-Guildford nor Kelowna Centre change hands, the NDP will have 47 seats and the Conservatives 44, while the Greens have two seats in the 93-riding legislature.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
