2026-08-12 from thestarphoenix.com
Maybe that herb atop the baked PEI spuds served at the premiers’ meeting in Charlottetown a couple of weeks ago wasn’t rosemary. Or maybe the hosts swapped out Anne of Green Gables for the Man of La Mancha. Whatever, the premiers went full Don Quixote, and dreamed the impossible dream: Ottawa boosts its share of public health care spending to 50 per cent from the current 22 per cent.
In 2022 the premiers’ ask was a piddling 35 per cent of the total. That went nowhere, which possibly convinced the Charlottetown assembly that their predecessors’ ambitions were too modest to be taken seriously. So they pivoted to go big or go home.
They shrewdly dressed up the pitch in Carneynomics, with references to nation-building and shoring up health care infrastructure, alongside submarines and pipelines.
Total health care spending in Canada will reach $400 billion in 2026-27. Of that, $280 billion is government-funded, 78 per cent by the provinces and 22 per cent by Ottawa. Increasing the feds’ share to half would cost about $80 billion a year.
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