Midweek podcast: will the health ministers come to Ottawa?
Canada's provincial and territorial health ministers are holding a conference call on Thursday to figure out if it's worth their time to come to Ottawa to discuss the expiring health accord.
British Columbia Health Minister Terry Lake said Jane Philpott, his federal counterpart, invited them to meet in the capital early next week.
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Health ministers deciding whether Jane Philpott's invite worth the trip
"We'll assess that and determine whether it is worth the taxpayers' dollars to go all the way to Ottawa because our concern is we really haven't seen much movement in many other meetings both in person and over the phone. So I want to assess whether it's a rational decision to go or not," Lake told CBC's Chris Hall in an interview for The House.
"If it's a one-hour meeting tacked on to the finance ministers' meeting, and really there's no willingness on the part of Ottawa to even consider new proposals, then there really isn't much sense in going."
Next year the Canada Health Transfer will stop increasing by six per cent and fall to an annual increase of three per cent.
The federal government has pledged more than $3 billion in targeted funding for home care over four years, but hasn't signaled a willingness to budge on that three per cent annual escalator.
Lake said a three per cent increase from Ottawa can't keep step with British Columbia's aging population, suggesting the Conference Board of Canada's and the Parliamentary Budget Officer's assessments that an annual increase closer to 5.2 per cent is needed.
On Tuesday Ontario proposed that a 5.2 per cent annual increase form the basis of a new 10-year funding plan.
What will a national price on carbon mean for you?
"Simple is better for policies."
That's the message Nick Rivers has for the country's politicians as they set to work translating the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change into programs and policies.
Rivers, the Canada research chair in climate and energy policy, told The House that the plan, and putting a price on carbon, will affect consumers.
But he also said governments can help by leaving decisions to the market.
He said Canadians should make no mistake, a price on carbon will mean higher prices, particularly with goods with a high carbon footprint.
"The intent of this carbon tax, or carbon price, is to reflect the cost of carbon emissions in the prices of goods and services, and to cause people to change their decisions," he said.
But Rivers argued there are ways to mitigate the impact of higher prices, especially for Canadians with lower incomes.
"One of the things it can do with that revenue, one of the things we've seen it do with that revenue when it imposes these taxes, is to make sure that the people at the low end of the income distribution are made whole again," he said, using British Columbia as an example.
Back to his point about keeping things simple, Rivers used some of the Ontario government's energy decisions as a cautionary tale.
"In the Ontario situation, there was a lot of central kinda decisions that were made around our electricity system," he said.
"I would say that if those decisions were made with a market mentality, that we would have seen much less of an impact on our electricity bills than we've seen."