Federal vs Provincial Powers Call for Government to 'Stay in Its Lane'
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
193.00362
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with Alberta s Minister of Finance, Shep Miller, to talk about the ongoing negotiations with the federal government over funding for publicly funded pharmacare and dental care in Alberta. We discuss the challenges faced by the provinces and what they are asking for and how they are trying to address them.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Your government has said that it will opt out of dental care, it's considering opting out of the PharmaCare program.
00:00:07.960
I'd like to know, in terms of opting out, which is a possible option,
00:00:14.100
how would the federal government and how would the Canadian public know that if you opt out
00:00:20.120
and you still want the funds to put in those programs in your own jurisdiction,
00:00:25.400
how do we know that there will be a level of accountability from your government
00:00:31.240
to ensure that those services are getting to Alberta?
00:00:34.880
Well, look, I mean, the language that we're using of opt out is to send a signal to the federal government
00:00:44.040
And if they're not happy with our approach, then I guess they'll continue operating a parallel program.
00:00:48.660
But I don't think that that's good for patients because I think it's created confusion.
00:00:52.580
In Alberta, for instance, on the two programs you mentioned, we've had a publicly funded dental program since 1973.
00:01:04.680
And when we did our assessment of the federal program, if we collapsed our program and just went to theirs,
00:01:10.540
100,000 people would have been uncovered because we cover those who are vulnerable on AISH
00:01:15.100
and those who are children of those who are vulnerable as well.
00:01:18.840
We are not going to create a program. We're not going to opt out of our own program or cancel our own program
00:01:24.140
if it leaves people uncovered. So that's why we're frustrated that they didn't come to us first
00:01:28.660
and work with us to expand to different categories of patients.
00:01:33.060
That's what we're trying to do is they're saying, let's take this two-year period and let's see if we can get that right.
00:01:39.620
Like, I can't go to the people who are covered under our PharmaCare plan, which offers 5,000 drugs,
00:01:45.260
and say, okay, we're collapsing our program, and now you can have a two-drug plan by the federal government.
00:01:51.800
What we want them to do is to come to us so that we can maintain our 5,000 drug program
00:01:58.240
So that's where we're hoping the negotiations will go with the federal government.
00:02:03.260
We want especially the most vulnerable and those who are at the low end of the income scale.
00:02:06.420
And it would have been far better rather than them create an architecture
00:02:11.040
and a whole separate system with all that administration if they'd just collaborated with us first.
00:02:16.420
We recognize that every province is at a different state of development of those programs, and that's fine.
00:02:22.200
But you can't just put a one-size-fits-all program across the entire country,
00:02:26.420
especially when we're so far advanced on these two programs ourselves.