The quiet cuts
The Health Council’s funding is withdrawn
Patients line up on hospital beds outside the crowded emergency room at Montreal’s Sacre Coeur Hospital Thursday, Nov. 28, 2002.A new report says health-care costs in Canada doubled over the past decade and will cross the $200 billion mark this year. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Paul Chiasson
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Funding for the Health Council of Canada is being withdrawn. Health policy analysts are unimpressed.
“I don’t think it’s just a signal. I think it’s a bullhorn,” said Dr. Greg Marchildon, Canada Research Chair in public policy and economic history at the University of Regina and former deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs for the Saskatchewan government. “Both health reform and any kind of collaborative federalism are really off the agenda for the Harper government.”
“This is really a shame,” he added. “There are very few mechanisms that we have in this country that allow us to think about the large reform issues and the Health Council was one of them.”
See previously: The quiet cuts