Trudeau, premiers to meet next month to discuss health-care deal

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with Canadas premiers next month to hammer out a deal on health-care funding following months of significant pressure from the premiers for a summit.

Trudeau said Wednesday he has invited the premiers to a working meeting on Feb. 7 in Ottawa to share the federal governments plans to support the health-care systems across Canada and to hear their priorities for investment.

Lets be clear, providing money is certainly part of the solution, and we will do that, but funding alone wont solve the issues that were seeing, he told reporters, speaking from Hamilton, Ont.

Reliable, universal public health care is fundamental to Canadians, and we need to keep it that way. Weve got a big, amazing country built on strong, progressive institutions like health care that Canadians care deeply about and were doing the hard work of strengthening health care and making sure that we all live up to the promise of this country.

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Canadas 13 premiers come from different political persuasions, but they have been united in their calls for an increase to the annual Canada Health Transfer to the provinces and territories. They want what would amount to a $28-billion increase to the Canada Health Transfer, which they say will bring the federal contribution toward health costs to 35 per cent from 22 per cent currently.