CAMPBELL CLARK and RHéAL SéGUIN
From Monday's Globe and Mail
Montreal and Quebec — Canadians will demand that premiers reach an agreement with Ottawa on health care at their meeting next month, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien warned on Sunday.
Little new in PM's speech to Quebec Grits
In comments aimed chiefly at Quebec, Mr. Chrétien warned that the people are insisting on a deal after last week's Romanow report on health-care reform, and they will not stand for bickering over jurisdictions. "We must have success, and it is the citizens who demand it," Mr. Chrétien told a convention of the Liberal Party's Quebec wing. He again pledged to act quickly to reach a deal with the provinces based on the report by former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow on the future of medicare. The Prime Minister also promised additional federal money, but suggested the provinces must sign on to change if they want the funds. A meeting with the premiers has been scheduled for late January. "If we have an action plan to effect important, long-term change, and if all the governments agree on this plan, I can assure you that the necessary federal dollars will be available." Some provinces -- notably Quebec and Alberta -- have sharply criticized the Romanow report for recommending what they say is a federal intrusion into health-care policy, a matter of provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution. On Sunday, Quebec Premier Bernard Landry said serious consequences will follow if Mr. Chrétien implements the Romanow report's recommendations. Quebec is demanding unconditional federal funding for health care and rejects any attempt by Ottawa to dictate how the money should be used. If Ottawa refuses, Mr. Landry warned, his government is preparing a major offensive. "There will be one hell of a battle," Mr. Landry told a news conference at the end of a Parti Québécois meeting. "You can count on me, serious things are being prepared." Mr. Landry refused to say what actions his government would take. But with an election campaign only months away, the Romanow report has given the PQ a major plank in its campaign. "The joke is over. We have crucial needs. Our patients are waiting. We have to renew our medical equipment. There can be no federal-provincial haggling," Mr. Landry said.
The PQ Leader said his government will enter the negotiations with Ottawa in good faith at next month's first-ministers meeting. He warned Mr. Chrétien and the federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Stéphane Dion, not to use the issue to pursue a nation-building agenda that denies Quebec the money it needs to fund a distinct health-care system. "Jean Chrétien is a Quebecker, Stéphane Dion is a Quebecker . . . who know that they are strangling us, that they are choking us on the question of health care," Mr. Landry said. Quebec's response will depend on what Ottawa proposes between now and February's federal budget. Mr. Landry said that without additional money for health, Quebec will be facing a deficit and voters will have the federal government to blame for the fiscal crisis that may unfold. Mr. Chrétien suggested yesterday that the PQ government -- third in opinion polls -- will be punished by voters in the coming election if it does not negotiate change. "Quebeckers want both levels of government to work together with a common objective: quality health-care services," he said. "They are not at all interested in jurisdictional quarrels nor in partisan rhetoric."
However, some Liberal MPs in Quebec have shown unease with the conditions for funding recommended by the Romanow report, which calls for some federal funds to be earmarked for specific purposes, and a nationwide body to monitor how the money is spent. They are clearly concerned that will set off objections among autonomist or nationalist Quebeckers. All three parties in Quebec's National Assembly rejected the Romanow report in a resolution last week, and Montreal MP Liza Frulla, a former provincial cabinet minister, said Friday she would have had no difficulty voting for that resolution. Mr. Chrétien argued yesterday that many of the Romanow report's recommendations -- guaranteeing access to care 24 hours a day and providing home care for those just released from hospital, for example -- are identical to those proposed by Michel Clair, who headed Quebec's own inquiry into health care in the 1990s. However, those arguments have also been undermined by Mr. Clair's own criticism of the Romanow report as an invasion of Quebec's jurisdiction. Several Liberal MPs from Quebec have stressed that Mr. Romanow's report will not be adopted holus bolus, but will be altered in negotiation with the province -- a means of deflecting attacks on his calls for strings to be attached to federal health-care funds. Mr. Chrétien echoed that tone when he spoke briefly to reporters on Sunday. He insisted that a new federal-provincial deal on health care is no more an intrusion by Ottawa than the deal struck in 2000, which set a five-year plan for health-care funding to the provinces.
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