Legault and Ford, agreed on health, are rivals in attracting industry

Premiers François Legault and Doug Ford have common ground in health care as both of their provinces emerge from the worst of the pandemic.

Both agree that their provinces will share health performance data with the federal government in a bid to end the deadlock with Ottawa on increased Canada Health Transfer funding to the provinces.

“We have no problem sending that (data) to Ottawa,” Legault told reporters at a pre-cabinet meeting scrum, adding that he and Ford talk regularly, and both agree on that point.

Legault said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed open to an agreement on data sharing, rather than obliging the provinces and territories to observe conditions set by Ottawa, when the two met in Montreal before Christmas.

“Will the other provinces offer as much data?” Legault asked.

Despite what Legault interpreted as positive signs from Trudeau, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Tuesday there remains “a lot of work to do” to conclude a funding agreement.

Unresolved issues include the evaluation of treatment outcomes, with the goal of improving health care throughout the country, reducing wait times and staff retention and recruitment, Duclos said.

Legault said he and Ford also agree that more privately delivered health care could ease the ongoing crisis in public health care, at times overwhelmed by patient loads and burdened with lengthy waiting lists for surgery and other procedures.

Quebec is committed to building two new private hospitals in Montreal and Quebec City to ease the load, but medical care in those facilities would be paid for by Quebec’s medicare plan, Legault said.

Likewise, Ford maintains that Ontario's health insurance plan will cover procedures at the private clinics his province will be authorizing in the coming months and years.

While Legault and Ford share common positions on health care, Legault’s economic goal for Quebec is greater wealth creation, to end federal equalization payments for Quebec as a “have-not” province, and to close the income gap between the two provinces, now favouring Ontario.

Quebec’s gross domestic product, per capita, was 16 per cent less than that of Ontario when he took office in 2018. Now the gap is 13 per cent, Legault said, with a shortfall of 19 per cent between Quebec and the rest of Canada and a 50-per-cent gap between Quebec and the United States.

“We have an extraordinary opportunity to enrich Quebecers,” Legault said, while offering Quebecers “a better quality of life” thanks to the province’s hydroelectric potential.

Last week Sophie Brochu announced she was resigning as president of provincially owned Hydro-Québec, after expressing disagreement with Legault’s plans to build new hydro dams, generating electricity at a cost of 11 cents a kilowatt hour, rather than relying on wind energy, now costing about six cents a kilowatt hour.

Brochu had also suggested Legault intended to sell Quebec power at a discount to aluminum smelters and other energy-consuming industries the premier wants to attract to Quebec as part of his plan to close the wealth gap with Ontario.

Legault said Wednesday his goal is to decarbonize the Quebec economy and doing so means attracting new industries, such as the $500-million General Motors Canada, Korea-based Posco Chemicals plant in Bécancour, Que., to make electric vehicle battery components.

The plant, opening in 2025, will employ 200 workers, at salaries in the $100,000 range, Legault said.

Legault also rejected Brochu’s characterization of what she saw as his plan to make Quebec the “Dollarama” of discount electricity, referring to the Quebec-based discount retailer.