Premiers split, Canadians agree on federal involvement in health care standards

Should Stephen Harper be at the Premier's health conference currently being in held in Victoria?

If you asked Canada's 10 premiers that question, you might get a wide mix of responses.

At issue is how much the Federal government should be involved in terms of setting national health care standards.

Last month, the Harper government introduced a new funding model whereby health funding increases would eventually be tied to our country's nominal GDP.

Critics argued the take-it or leave-it deal was void of federal direction and could be a deliberate strategy by the Harper government to leave health care to the provinces.

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty is one who believes Harper should be in Victoria.

"I believe it would have been better for us to come together to so that we could better grapple with the challenge and lay out a plan forward," McGuinty told reporters, noted the National Post.

"That's why we have a federal government. We look to our federal government as Canadians to ensure that we have in place national standards. And that Canadians from coast to coast to coast can access good quality health care of a comparable standard wherever you find yourself in this country."

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter said Harper is moving away from "classical federalism."

He said that will hurt regions such as his, with weaker economies and aging populations, that face immense health costs.

"You cannot deny fundamental differences among the regions," said Dexter.

"We really ought to have first ministers meetings that include the prime minister."

The alternate view was put forward by B.C. Premier Christy Clark who told reporters "what (the Harper government is) essentially doing is they are vacating the policy field for premiers. And so the challenge ahead of us is going to be how much courage are we going to show in taking up that challenge."

"To me, this is really a huge opportunity for premiers to step up and to take the reins on health care in a way that we haven't been really welcomed to do, I think, for decades," said Clark, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

Meanwhile, Ipsos Reid released a poll which indicates that the vast majority of Canadians want the federal government to be involved in health care.

Here are some of the results of the poll, as published in the Ottawa Citizen:

- 97 per cent of Canadians think the federal government's responsibility for the Canada Health Act is important.

- 70 per cent say they are "worried that without accountability to the federal government, provinces will have no incentive to achieve health care efficiencies."

- 88 per cent are worried that "without national standards, Canadians will have different levels of health care depending on where they live."

- 74 per cent believe that health care is a shared responsibility between the provincial and federal governments. Few believe it is solely a provincial (13 per cent) or federal (11 per cent) responsibility.