Manitoba to get $194M more for health from Ottawa

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Premier Heather Stefanson says Ottawa’s top-up to Manitoba’s health transfer payment will be too small to make a major difference in the coming fiscal year.

The province is expected to receive an additional $194 million in 2023-24, Stefanson said.

“It really doesn’t have a massive impact,” she said Tuesday.

Provincial and territorial premiers accepted Ottawa’s $196-billion, ten-year proposal to increase funding and to hammer out new bilateral agreements for priority areas on Monday.

The new money represents about two per cent of Manitoba’s $7.2-billion health-care budget for the current fiscal year, Stefanson said. Manitoba received $1.63 billion from Ottawa in 2022-23.

In its last budget, Manitoba earmarked $110 million for the surgical and diagnostic task force, $52 million for improvements to long-term care and the development of a seniors strategy; and $11 million to increase nurse training seats.

A $200-million health human resources plan was added to the mix in late November.

Stefanson said her Progressive Conservative government will direct the $194 million towards surgical and diagnostic backlogs, health human resources, long-term care, home care, and mental health and addictions services in its spring budget.

“This will have a very small impact in our overall budget. Having said that, it will make a difference, but our priorities remain the same,” she said.

However, the pre-election spending blueprint will also contain “commitments to significantly more dollars” for health care, the premier said.

The Tories have pledged to make a multi-year, multibillion-dollar capital investment in hospitals; create 1,000 new addictions treatment spaces; and launch a provincially co-ordinated suicide prevention program.

“So, this (federal funding) will be hopefully a part of that, but it will be, again, a very small part of it because that’s just what is being offered,” Stefanson said.

She and Health Minister Audrey Gordon are scheduled to sit down with federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc before the end of the week to start negotiating bilateral funding agreements.

Ottawa is offering the provinces and territories $25 billion over 10 years for mental health, family medicine, surgical backlogs, human resources and data collection through one-on-one deals.

Stefanson said the meeting will build on the province’s work on shared priorities, to hear about how other provinces are structuring their agreements, and to set a course towards inking a deal.

The premier said she also plans to discuss her concerns over the “fiscal cliff” of 10-year funding agreements from 2017 and any new bilateral agreements Manitoba signs.

It’s unclear how long it could take for the two parties to come to an agreement and for money to begin flowing to the province, but Stefanson said she wants to move quickly.

“There’s lots of questions that we have. That would be one of them,” she said.

“We’ll work on getting the best agreement between us and the federal government for Manitobans.”

Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew said bilateral negotiations should focus on improving the patient experience and getting Manitobans in to see their doctors, surgeons and specialists in a timely manner.

The province will need a strong negotiator to get the best deal in the shortest amount of time, he said.

“If you put an excellent hard-nosed negotiator in there, then I’d say let’s get this done as soon as possible,” Kinew said. “But I don’t have confidence that the PCs are going to drive that hard of a bargain.”

Kinew said the Tories must guarantee new funding is spent on health care and is not used to offset spending or cuts in other areas.

“We should see a commitment from the province that these new resources are actually going to represent new services for people in Manitoba — that it would be easier to see a family doctor in rural Manitoba, that it’s going to be easier to get access to emergency care,” he said.

”I think that’s the yardstick Manitobans are going to be using to measure progress here.”

— with files from The Canadian Press

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca