It isn’t even “for health care,” really, though that’s a fiction that it suits all sides to maintain. The higher federal transfers have in fact underwritten a shift in provincial spending into other areas. Stephen Harper, tiring of the game, declined to indulge the premiers in the pretence of negotiations or even meetings. Understand: federal transfers would continue to rise — faster than inflation, faster than inflation plus population growth, as fast or faster than the economy. The three per cent escalator, they continue to claim, amounts to a “cut” in federal transfers.

Source: National Post October 04, 2016 00:22 UTC