“As we continue to face the pressures of the Omicron variant and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has underscored many challenges facing our country’s health care system.
I, along with my fellow Premiers, are renewing our call for the Prime Minister to commit to increasing the federal share of provincial and territorial health care costs through the Canada Health Transfer to 35 per cent, and to maintain this level over time with an appropriate escalator.
Our government is making unprecedented investments to build a health and long-term care system that delivers the quality of care our loved ones deserve, including investing $30.2 billion over the next 10 years to build, expand and renovate hospitals across the province. To reduce the surgery backlog and wait times, we are investing up to $324 million to allow Ontario’s hospitals and community health sector to perform more surgeries, MRI and CT scans and procedures. To ensure that qualified health care workers are by a patient’s side when they need care, we are growing the health care sector workforce by adding and upskilling over 5,000 registered nurses and registered practical nurses and 8,000 personal support workers.
As Premiers have advocated for over the past few years, we need the federal government to join us at the table as a fuller partner and provide provinces and territories with sustainable, predictable, and adequate health care funding for the long-term. Rebuilding our health care system after a once-in-a-century pandemic requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. It is more important than ever that the federal government work with provinces and territories to urgently resolve the structural funding shortfall facing our health care systems.
I stand ready to work with Premiers across Canada and the Prime Minister to secure a new funding agreement on health care to continue building strong, resilient health care systems that the people of Ontario and Canada can rely on and deserve.”