QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Health Transfers
March 26, 2021
We will hope for better luck this time. Thank you very much, Your Honour.
Honourable senators, my question is also for the Government Representative. On Thursday, the government introduced Bill C-25, which amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act. The bill promises $4 billion in additional cash to provinces for health care, including an extra $465.3 million for my home province of Alberta. The bill also promises an additional $1 billion to assist provinces with COVID-19 immunization, including an extra $116.3 million for Alberta. There’s also a promise of $2.2 billion to provinces, municipalities and First Nations for infrastructure spending.
In the past, the people of my province have faced difficulties and delays in receiving COVID-relief dollars because the provincial and federal governments couldn’t agree on the conditions governing these payouts. Many Albertans missed out on their chance to receive the support they needed when they needed it most.
Can you tell me what conditions, if any, are attached to the funding enumerated in Bill C-25? What guarantees can you offer that the people of Alberta will indeed receive the benefits of this funding without seeing it caught up in political squabbles between the provincial and federal governments?
The Government of Canada continues to work closely with the provinces and territories, municipalities and Indigenous communities in the face of COVID-19. Indeed, the bill to which you refer, colleague, reflects the extraordinary pressures that all orders of government and First Nations communities are experiencing and have expressed to the Government of Canada.
I’ve been advised that the government has been in touch with the provincial governments on the specific question of whether there is funding or what the conditions might be that are attached to this funding, but I am not in a position to provide further information at this stage.
Senator Simons, did you have a supplementary?
Yes, a simple supplementary, which is to ask the Government Representative to provide the answers at the soonest available opportunity, if he would be able to do that.
It would be my pleasure.
