After three years of stripping billions of dollars out of Canada’s social programs and health budgets, finance minister Paul Martin last week decided to throw some money at the problems earlier cuts have helped create.
The funds will be targeted to experimenting with new health-care programs and expanding aid for poor families with children.
In his Feb. 18 budget, Martin announced a $300 million, three-year program of small health system programs. Half will fund provincial health pilot projects, while $50 million will go for a health information network and $100 million for children’s health programs.
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The pilot projects will help fund experiments in public funding for pharmacare and home care, if the provinces can be convinced to pick up some of the tab as well.
Tied in with that was announcement of a Canada Child Tax Benefit program, combining an enriched child tax credit with an enhanced working income supplement for poverty-level families with children.
Much of the new federal spending on children takes effect in the summer of 1998. Many of the new programs will require federal-provincial agreement.
Martin anticipated criticism that the commitment is too little to make a difference in solving the child poverty problem and repairing cracks developing in the medicare system.
“Most of the great national programs in this country were built in stages,” he said in the budget speech. “This was true of medicare. It was true of seniors’ pensions. What is important is to take the crucial first step.”
Advocates for children and medicare were unimpressed, noting that cuts announced two years ago still are being implemented.
“In its bid to contain the deficit, the government has asked social programs to shoulder a disproportionate share of this fiscal burden,” said the Canadian Healthcare Association in a budget-night critique.
“If all scheduled cuts are implemented, social programs, including health, will lose $8.4 billion between 1996-97 and 1999-2000. Cuts of this magnitude will surely endanger our medicare system and put at risk access to health services that Canadians expect and deserve.”
