"Health-care funding: How Prime Minister Stephen Harper views the Canadian federation
Geoff Norquay, Special to Globe and Mail Update, Published Friday, Dec. 23, 2011 2:00AM EST
In the wake of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s surprise announcement on the future of health-care funding, the hand-wringing has already started. Many in the media were looking forward to months of rhetorical pre-positioning leading to a make-or-break first ministers conference with 13 angry premiers arrayed against a recalcitrant Prime Minister. And the dark talk has already started about the presumed federal abdication of national leadership: “If the feds aren’t telling the provinces how to fix health care, well, they obviously don’t care.”
But there’s another story here. It’s about a Prime Minister with a very different federal-provincial agenda, based on a view that seriously respects the Constitution. It’s also about provinces finally coming of age and being mature enough to manage their own affairs.
The Finance Minister’s announcement this week is a surprisingly generous offer: continued 6-per-cent annual increases in federal transfers for three years after the current health accord ends in 2013-14, after which transfers will be pegged at the rate of nominal GDP growth with a guaranteed base of 3 per cent a year. By short-circuiting the expected federal-provincial negotiating process, it effectively marks the end of executive federalism, that time-honoured Canadian way of running the federation. It also provides the clearest window yet into how Prime Minister Stephen Harper views the federation.
Much of the history of our federation has been defined by the mismatch between provincial responsibilities and their corresponding taxing authorities. In the 1950s and 1960s, successive federal governments used their superior revenue muscle to create the architecture of the modern welfare state, largely in areas of provincial jurisdiction. The result was a 40-year evolution of federal transfers to the provinces through a series of complex mechanisms leading, ultimately, to the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer that exist today.
Signed in 2004, the Paul Martin health-care accord was the logical outcome of this long evolution, both in its contents and how it was achieved. In exchange for stable and predictable federal transfers escalating at 6 per cent a year, the provinces promised to improve wait times in several areas and to work toward other reforms to make the system more efficient and effective. How the deal was achieved was another matter, involving non-stop negotiations over several days, raised voices and threats, and pressure-filled all-night sessions with pizza deliveries to exhausted participants at 3 a.m. It was a noisy and messy process.
Mr. Harper had a better idea, and it started with the Constitution. As a classic federalist, he believes passionately in the sanctity of Sections 91 and 92, which define the respective responsibilities of the two levels of government. As he told Policy Options in March of 2006: “It’s always been my preference to see Ottawa do what the federal government is supposed to do. … Ottawa has gotten into everything in recent years, not just provincial jurisdiction but now municipal jurisdiction. And yet at the same time if you look at Ottawa’s major responsibilities, national defence, for example, the economic union, foreign affairs, beginning obviously with the most important relationship, with the United States, Ottawa hasn’t done a very good job of these things.”
From the beginning, Mr. Harper started by addressing a number of long-standing federal-provincial issues. These included the transfer of billions to the provinces to address the fiscal imbalance, federal recognition that provinces and territories are best placed to design and deliver labour-market training, and legislation to limit use of the federal spending power to create new shared-cost programs in areas of provincial jurisdiction with opting-out.
There have been changes in style as well. Much has been made of the Prime Minister’s avoidance of first ministers’ conferences, those clambakes of inflamed rhetoric in which premiers play to their home parish and lacerate the prime minister of the day for real and imagined slights. Mr. Harper’s approach is different: quiet, calm, private conversations conducted one on one by telephone or in person with premiers. The issues are worked out or there is agreement to disagree quietly.
Mr. Flaherty’s announcement should be viewed as the next logical step in a maturing federation. The Martin accord contained all the vestiges of the old executive federalism – glowing commitments on the part of the provinces to make things better, and grand federal claims about “buying change.”
Seven years into the agreement, the proof has not been in the pudding. There have been some improvements in some areas; in others, not so much. The Martin accord bought peace, but it didn’t buy nearly enough innovation in health care. The federal approach announced this week finally recognizes that the levers of change for the health-care system reside in 13 provincial and territorial capitals, just like it says in the Constitution.
Geoff Norquay was social policy adviser to Brian Mulroney from 1984 to 1988 and director of communications for Stephen Harper in 2004 and 2005."
We are blessed to have a forward looking Prime Minister who is looking this far ahead... and obviously cares!
Another article... that tells a different angle on PM Harper!
Is Stephen Harper the Dear Leader in disguise?
Margaret Wente, From Thursday's Globe and Mail, Published Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011 2:00 AM EST
Is there any difference between Stephen Harper and North Korea’s defunct Dear Leader? Maybe not as much as you might think. Many eminent Canadians are warning that Mr. Harper and his hard-right Conservatives are turning our beloved nation into a thuggish, dictatorial, one-party state.
In an exit interview the other night with As It Happens, outgoing Senator Tommy Banks (appointed by the Liberals, and best known as a jazz musician) declared that he is deeply alarmed about the country’s direction. He vowed to keep fighting as long as he has breath to set things right. Chronicler Peter C. Newman is similarly distressed. In his book When the Gods Changed, he argues not only that the Natural Governing Party is finished, but so too is the Canada he once knew and loved.
A lot of people in my postal code (adjacent to the University of Toronto) believe that our progressive paradise is lost. “The most remarkable feature of the first half year of Conservative majority rule is how quickly we have been herded toward a one-party system,” writes critic Michael Harris. Our international reputation is also on the skids. By abandoning Kyoto, Mr. Harper has turned us into a pariah state.
Contempt of Parliament. Authoritarian rule. Demagoguery, deceit and dirty tricks. Abuse of power, along with the growing stench of corruption, as the country hurtles down the wrong track. Why, it almost sounds like – the Chrétien government circa 2000!
If this indictment sounds familiar, it’s because the Conservatives made the same case against the Liberals when their positions were reversed. Majority governments in Canada have a lot of power, which is great if you’re on the winning side and awfully frustrating when you’re not. Their power is even greater when the opposition is hopelessly fragmented, essentially leaderless and out of new ideas. Today, the federal centre-left in Canada is furiously impotent – just as the centre-right was for most of a decade.
If you happen to identify with the out-group – as Mr. Banks and some of our leading public thinkers do – it’s a whole lot more satisfying to demonize the bad guys than try to unite the good guys. Perhaps that’s why so many of them insist that Mr. Harper is “dangerous,” or even “extremely dangerous.” This view was recently expressed by Stephen Clarkson, a prominent liberal academic, who warned that Canada is being crushed under the jackboots of the reigning proto-fascists. Mr. Harper, he wrote in the Literary Review of Canada, is “a dangerous figure” who “threatens the country’s constitutional heritage,” and “has rejected consensual centrism in favour of a program carefully conceived to overturn the social-market legacy he has inherited.”[Editorial note: I sure hope so. GE]
If you are a faithful follower of the mainstream media, you will also know that Mr. Harper is guilty of valorizing the military, being indifferent to the plight of downtrodden aboriginals and clamping down (at vast expense) on imaginary crime. He has also created a quasi-totalitarian world called Harperland in which no dissent is tolerated.
But here’s the worst part. Canadians don’t care! In fact, they claim to be pretty happy with the way things are going. According to a new poll published in Maclean’s, 86 per cent of us believe Canada is the greatest country in the world. For some unfathomable reason, we are way more optimistic than either the British or the Americans. On top of that, the Harper government’s dangerous and misguided policies are overwhelmingly popular. According to a poll by Ipsos Reid, two-thirds of Canadians approve of its efforts to boost the military and fight crime. Sixty per cent of the public feel the government is enhancing Canada’s reputation in the world. And a whopping 80 per cent agree with its decision to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies – a move derided by much of the progressive left.
It doesn’t get worse than that.
To tell the truth, I don’t agree with all of Mr. Harper’s policies myself. (e.g., the niqab.) But it seems obvious to me that his government is far more in touch with mainstream Canadians than all those critics who accuse him of abandoning the mainstream. He’s worse than an extremist – he’s a populist. Or else he has duped and terrorized the masses so effectively that they are powerless to resist. Kind of like you-know-who."
There is no question as an Alberta pioneer family... working away since 1881 here... which PM Harper we know.
Merry CHRISTMAS PM Harper and Family!
You are a Great Prime Minister... Right Honourable in all the most important ways!
Cheers!!!
May 2012 bring more great governance... perhaps you can even look at the CBC then!!!
GRIN!!!
Geoff Norquay, Special to Globe and Mail Update, Published Friday, Dec. 23, 2011 2:00AM EST
In the wake of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s surprise announcement on the future of health-care funding, the hand-wringing has already started. Many in the media were looking forward to months of rhetorical pre-positioning leading to a make-or-break first ministers conference with 13 angry premiers arrayed against a recalcitrant Prime Minister. And the dark talk has already started about the presumed federal abdication of national leadership: “If the feds aren’t telling the provinces how to fix health care, well, they obviously don’t care.”
But there’s another story here. It’s about a Prime Minister with a very different federal-provincial agenda, based on a view that seriously respects the Constitution. It’s also about provinces finally coming of age and being mature enough to manage their own affairs.
The Finance Minister’s announcement this week is a surprisingly generous offer: continued 6-per-cent annual increases in federal transfers for three years after the current health accord ends in 2013-14, after which transfers will be pegged at the rate of nominal GDP growth with a guaranteed base of 3 per cent a year. By short-circuiting the expected federal-provincial negotiating process, it effectively marks the end of executive federalism, that time-honoured Canadian way of running the federation. It also provides the clearest window yet into how Prime Minister Stephen Harper views the federation.
Much of the history of our federation has been defined by the mismatch between provincial responsibilities and their corresponding taxing authorities. In the 1950s and 1960s, successive federal governments used their superior revenue muscle to create the architecture of the modern welfare state, largely in areas of provincial jurisdiction. The result was a 40-year evolution of federal transfers to the provinces through a series of complex mechanisms leading, ultimately, to the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer that exist today.
Signed in 2004, the Paul Martin health-care accord was the logical outcome of this long evolution, both in its contents and how it was achieved. In exchange for stable and predictable federal transfers escalating at 6 per cent a year, the provinces promised to improve wait times in several areas and to work toward other reforms to make the system more efficient and effective. How the deal was achieved was another matter, involving non-stop negotiations over several days, raised voices and threats, and pressure-filled all-night sessions with pizza deliveries to exhausted participants at 3 a.m. It was a noisy and messy process.
Mr. Harper had a better idea, and it started with the Constitution. As a classic federalist, he believes passionately in the sanctity of Sections 91 and 92, which define the respective responsibilities of the two levels of government. As he told Policy Options in March of 2006: “It’s always been my preference to see Ottawa do what the federal government is supposed to do. … Ottawa has gotten into everything in recent years, not just provincial jurisdiction but now municipal jurisdiction. And yet at the same time if you look at Ottawa’s major responsibilities, national defence, for example, the economic union, foreign affairs, beginning obviously with the most important relationship, with the United States, Ottawa hasn’t done a very good job of these things.”
From the beginning, Mr. Harper started by addressing a number of long-standing federal-provincial issues. These included the transfer of billions to the provinces to address the fiscal imbalance, federal recognition that provinces and territories are best placed to design and deliver labour-market training, and legislation to limit use of the federal spending power to create new shared-cost programs in areas of provincial jurisdiction with opting-out.
There have been changes in style as well. Much has been made of the Prime Minister’s avoidance of first ministers’ conferences, those clambakes of inflamed rhetoric in which premiers play to their home parish and lacerate the prime minister of the day for real and imagined slights. Mr. Harper’s approach is different: quiet, calm, private conversations conducted one on one by telephone or in person with premiers. The issues are worked out or there is agreement to disagree quietly.
Mr. Flaherty’s announcement should be viewed as the next logical step in a maturing federation. The Martin accord contained all the vestiges of the old executive federalism – glowing commitments on the part of the provinces to make things better, and grand federal claims about “buying change.”
Seven years into the agreement, the proof has not been in the pudding. There have been some improvements in some areas; in others, not so much. The Martin accord bought peace, but it didn’t buy nearly enough innovation in health care. The federal approach announced this week finally recognizes that the levers of change for the health-care system reside in 13 provincial and territorial capitals, just like it says in the Constitution.
Geoff Norquay was social policy adviser to Brian Mulroney from 1984 to 1988 and director of communications for Stephen Harper in 2004 and 2005."
We are blessed to have a forward looking Prime Minister who is looking this far ahead... and obviously cares!
Another article... that tells a different angle on PM Harper!
Is Stephen Harper the Dear Leader in disguise?
Margaret Wente, From Thursday's Globe and Mail, Published Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011 2:00 AM EST
Is there any difference between Stephen Harper and North Korea’s defunct Dear Leader? Maybe not as much as you might think. Many eminent Canadians are warning that Mr. Harper and his hard-right Conservatives are turning our beloved nation into a thuggish, dictatorial, one-party state.
In an exit interview the other night with As It Happens, outgoing Senator Tommy Banks (appointed by the Liberals, and best known as a jazz musician) declared that he is deeply alarmed about the country’s direction. He vowed to keep fighting as long as he has breath to set things right. Chronicler Peter C. Newman is similarly distressed. In his book When the Gods Changed, he argues not only that the Natural Governing Party is finished, but so too is the Canada he once knew and loved.
A lot of people in my postal code (adjacent to the University of Toronto) believe that our progressive paradise is lost. “The most remarkable feature of the first half year of Conservative majority rule is how quickly we have been herded toward a one-party system,” writes critic Michael Harris. Our international reputation is also on the skids. By abandoning Kyoto, Mr. Harper has turned us into a pariah state.
Contempt of Parliament. Authoritarian rule. Demagoguery, deceit and dirty tricks. Abuse of power, along with the growing stench of corruption, as the country hurtles down the wrong track. Why, it almost sounds like – the Chrétien government circa 2000!
If this indictment sounds familiar, it’s because the Conservatives made the same case against the Liberals when their positions were reversed. Majority governments in Canada have a lot of power, which is great if you’re on the winning side and awfully frustrating when you’re not. Their power is even greater when the opposition is hopelessly fragmented, essentially leaderless and out of new ideas. Today, the federal centre-left in Canada is furiously impotent – just as the centre-right was for most of a decade.
If you happen to identify with the out-group – as Mr. Banks and some of our leading public thinkers do – it’s a whole lot more satisfying to demonize the bad guys than try to unite the good guys. Perhaps that’s why so many of them insist that Mr. Harper is “dangerous,” or even “extremely dangerous.” This view was recently expressed by Stephen Clarkson, a prominent liberal academic, who warned that Canada is being crushed under the jackboots of the reigning proto-fascists. Mr. Harper, he wrote in the Literary Review of Canada, is “a dangerous figure” who “threatens the country’s constitutional heritage,” and “has rejected consensual centrism in favour of a program carefully conceived to overturn the social-market legacy he has inherited.”[Editorial note: I sure hope so. GE]
If you are a faithful follower of the mainstream media, you will also know that Mr. Harper is guilty of valorizing the military, being indifferent to the plight of downtrodden aboriginals and clamping down (at vast expense) on imaginary crime. He has also created a quasi-totalitarian world called Harperland in which no dissent is tolerated.
But here’s the worst part. Canadians don’t care! In fact, they claim to be pretty happy with the way things are going. According to a new poll published in Maclean’s, 86 per cent of us believe Canada is the greatest country in the world. For some unfathomable reason, we are way more optimistic than either the British or the Americans. On top of that, the Harper government’s dangerous and misguided policies are overwhelmingly popular. According to a poll by Ipsos Reid, two-thirds of Canadians approve of its efforts to boost the military and fight crime. Sixty per cent of the public feel the government is enhancing Canada’s reputation in the world. And a whopping 80 per cent agree with its decision to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies – a move derided by much of the progressive left.
It doesn’t get worse than that.
To tell the truth, I don’t agree with all of Mr. Harper’s policies myself. (e.g., the niqab.) But it seems obvious to me that his government is far more in touch with mainstream Canadians than all those critics who accuse him of abandoning the mainstream. He’s worse than an extremist – he’s a populist. Or else he has duped and terrorized the masses so effectively that they are powerless to resist. Kind of like you-know-who."
There is no question as an Alberta pioneer family... working away since 1881 here... which PM Harper we know.
Merry CHRISTMAS PM Harper and Family!
You are a Great Prime Minister... Right Honourable in all the most important ways!
Cheers!!!
May 2012 bring more great governance... perhaps you can even look at the CBC then!!!
GRIN!!!
Comment