MONTREAL - Calls for more help to beef up electronic health records, reverse health professional shortages and build a national pharmaceutical plan are topping wish lists to be presented to federal Health Minister Tony Clement during a meeting with his counterparts.
Ministers from the provinces and territories will compare notes - and demands - at a conference beginning Thursday in Quebec City.
But with a federal election call expected in the next few days, some ministers, such as Nova Scotia's Chris d'Entremont, say a major goal of the two-day summit is to plant mounting health-care worries back on Ottawa's radar.
"(We're) trying to get a better idea of what the federal government is thinking when it comes to health care because it's been pretty quiet over the last couple of years," d'Entremont told The Canadian Press on Wednesday.
"Even though I think the minister is doing the best he can, I don't think there's a lot of attention being given to the health of Canadians by the federal government."
D'Entremont said he expects ministers to forge a common front and press for the construction of an electronic health records system.
"It's gone too long that my information cannot be seen in Vancouver, or even worse, my information from Yarmouth in Nova Scotia can't be seen at the main hospital in Halifax," he said.
"We don't have a lot of that interconnectivity yet."
Clement, meanwhile, is scheduled to attend both days of the conference.
But Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert wonders if Clement will even make it to the summit if there's an election call as widely predicted, with reports circulating that the writ may drop anytime between Friday and Sunday.
"We're heading into a federal election and I don't think the issue of health care is at the top of the agenda for any of the parties, so I'm not anticipating that there's going to be much of anything (that will) result out of the meetings," Liepert said in a telephone interview.
He questioned whether federal-provincial health minister meetings are as meaningful as they have been during periods when federal governments wanted to be more involved in provincial health care.
"This government has given no indication that they want to do that," he said.
Meanwhile, Saskatchewan Health Minister Don McMorris said his province needs help in its quest to add new technology and cure its dearth of health-care providers.
In March, the province moved to ease its nursing shortage by recruiting nearly 300 new nurses from the Philippines.
Saskatchewan is currently short some 1,000 nurses, according to the nurses union. Hundreds more are expected to retire over the next three years.
McMorris, whose Saskatchewan Party government is eight months old, said the province hasn't done enough training from within in recent years.
"That's something I think all provinces have to look towards, becoming self-sufficient so we aren't recruiting from other jurisdictions," he said.
"I think that's extremely important."
McMorris also expects the motion dubbed "Jordan's Principle," which aims to resolve funding squabbles between provinces and Ottawa over who should pay for severely disabled kids on native reserves, to be high on the agenda.
In a statement, Clement's office said Wednesday that he is looking forward to meeting his provincial and territorial counterparts to discuss issues such as electronic health records, pandemic preparedness and aboriginal health.
"He has a good working relationship with all his counterparts and expects this meeting to be productive and successful," the statement said.
Liepert, meanwhile, said the ministers will continue their push for a federal strategy to help provinces pay for exotic drugs needed to treat rare diseases.
"It seemed to me that this is the kind of initiative that should be led by the federal government," Liepert said.
"We've been talking about that for a number of years and not much has developed."
Nova Scotia's health minister agreed.
"There are some very expensive medications out there, therapies that people need that are really beyond the capacity of the provinces," d'Entremont said.
