Flaherty Says Canada Needs ‘Realistic’ Health-Care Transfers

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the nation’s provinces need to be “realistic” about future payments they receive for programs such as health care, as the federal government copes with slowing growth while planning to balance its budget.

Flaherty said he will have a “serious discussion” with his provincial counterparts at a two-day meeting in Victoria, British Columbia about growth in transfers, adding it makes sense to consider pegging them to economic benchmarks such as nominal gross domestic product, which he called the “best predictor” of government revenues