After the country’s premiers reluctantly accepted an offer from Ottawa this week that will provide extra funding for health care systems, the Yukon’s premier met with federal ministers Tuesday to start securing some of that money for the territory.

Ottawa will increase health funding to the provinces by almost $200 billion over 10 years, including $46.2 billion in new funding.

Premiers agreed to the deal Monday after having met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Feb. 7 in Ottawa.

They wanted the federal government to increase the health care costs it covers from 22 per cent to 35 per cent, translating to approximately $28 billion annually. The accepted offer provides an average increase of less than $5 billion per year.

“While premiers have accepted the federal government’s overall proposal, work is now underway towards a Yukon-specific agreement that will address the distinct needs of our territory,” Premier Ranj Pillai said Tuesday.

The premiers of Manitoba and Nova Scotia said Monday health care needs in their provinces are so dire they had to take the offer – even though they felt it wasn’t enough to bring sustainable improvements to systems on the brink.

Pillai is mostly pleased with what the territory will get from Ottawa.

“As my colleague from Nova Scotia (Tim Houston) said, we’re always going to be looking for more; that’s our job to ensure that we are fiercely defending the needs of our citizens that we represent,” Pillai said at a news conference early Tuesday evening. “With that being said, I feel very good today.”

Pillai was joined by Yukon MP Brendan Hanley, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities, at the Jim Smith Building.

The ministers are flying around the country, stopping in the Yukon on their way to Yellowknife that evening. They’re starting work on the specifics of bilateral health care funding agreements with each individual territory and province.

Those meetings will wrap at the end of the week.

“The team from (Ottawa) will be leaving here (Tuesday) knowing that we’re on board and we’re ready to work on the last of the details,” Pillai said.

“We want (funding) to be in place in 2023 to start delivering even more enhanced health care to Yukoners and the health care that they deserve.”

Before last week, Canada’s premiers had been calling for a meeting with Trudeau for two years to discuss the struggles of health care systems to provide adequate services for Canadians. Here in the Yukon, health care has become increasingly difficult to access in recent years.

More than 3,000 Yukoners are on the waitlist for a family doctor.

With no walk-in clinic in the territory, emergency departments have been burdened with patients who need non-urgent care but have nowhere else to go. 

The lack of health care professionals doesn’t stop there.

The territory’s vacancy rate for community nurses is over 40 per cent. Meanwhile, about half of elective surgeries at Whitehorse General Hospital have been postponed this month and next due to a shortage of nurses.

On top of that, the Yukon Medical Association says that 1990s-era hospital’s operating room urgently needs to be modernized and expanded to meet the needs of a growing population.

While new funding can provide capital spending for things like health care infrastructure, data collection and mental health and substance abuse services, labour shortages present a unique challenge, as they’re a Canada-wide problem.

“We didn’t do a really good job nationally in terms of understanding the future needs of the health workforce,” Duclos said. 

“Planning ahead also requires collaborating together because we can’t just try to steal nurses from other territories or from other places because they’ll try to do the same thing, and in the end, we all lose.”

Investments in training new health care workers, considering national licensing for doctors and nurses, as well as recruiting from outside Canada and recognizing international credentials more quickly will be part of the solution, Duclos said.

Pillai added that the Yukon is already looking to recruit from Ukraine and the Philippines specifically.

Ottawa will provide new funding through increases to the Canada Health Transfer over the next decade, but $25 billion has also been set aside to “advance shared health priorities.”

Each jurisdiction will negotiate individual agreements to access that funding. Territories and provinces must show that the money will be used to address the following health priority areas: family health services, health workers and backlogs, mental health and substance use, and modernizing health care systems. 

They will also have to adopt “common standards and policies” for data collection and sharing.

Pillai said these priority areas align with the needs of Yukon health care and recommendations in Putting People First, a 2020 report on how the territory can improve health and social programs.

“This (funding) is going to really be key to us to put this plan into work,” Pillai said. “The themes that are in place… are very consistent with our priorities.”

Duclos said although this funding comes with stipulations, territories and provinces shouldn’t expect future federal health care money to come with strings attached, as health care is not under federal jurisdiction.

“The federal government should never claim that it is better at managing the health systems in territories and provinces,” he said.

Duclos said premiers and the federal government are on the same page with these priority areas.

“What (Canadians) want to see is governments talking about how they can improve results for patients.”

Territorial Health Investment Fund

Monday’s agreement also provides $35 million annually over five years to the territories to address “medical travel and the cost of delivering health care” in the North. The Yukon will receive $10 million per year.

Pillai noted that specialized health care services aren’t always available in the Yukon, so this funding will help patients travel to B.C. and Alberta in special circumstances.

There’s no clinic nor hospital that can provide hemodialysis treatment in the Yukon, for example.

The money, he said, will also help the territorial government work in partnership with First Nations governments to develop a new health authority.

Money from the Territorial Health Investment Fund will also help plug holes not covered by the bilateral funding agreement the territory will work out with Ottawa this year, Pillai said.

He added he was encouraged by the support he received from provincial premiers for special territorial funding to be part of the deal.

“I would also like to assure Yukoners that sharing personal health information was never part of the discussions, and it would be illegal to share such information under the Yukon’s Health Information Privacy and Management Act,” Pillai pointed out.