The situation is critical, but there’s no quick cure for our health-care ailments

Canadians have become accustomed to long waiting times for medical treatment in this country.

So perhaps it isn’t a surprise that when Canada’s first ministers showed up for a meeting in Ottawa to treat the ailments of the healthcare system, the immediate result was: “Just wait.”

Nothing in Tuesday’s meeting between Justin Trudeau and the premiers produced a quick fix for a system in crisis.

It wasn’t exactly take two aspirins and call in the morning, but it was close — take this $46.2-billion plan, Trudeau told his fellow first ministers, and call us in a day, or a week or so. Premiers, clutching Ottawa’s less-than-expected prescription, plan to meet “within days” — maybe as soon as Friday.

In the short term, that is a political win for the federal government, albeit a modest one. No one said “No” to the money being waved in front of the provinces and territories.

Provinces scored a symbolic win, too, when Trudeau acknowledged in his end-of-day news conference that Canada wasn’t going to emerge from this current crisis with one, cherished national health-care system. The country may have gone through COVID together, but it will exit from the pandemic as a complex web of health-care delivery systems across the nation. Universal health care, but not unilateral or even united.

“Each province and territory is facing different challenges,” Trudeau said. “That’s why we’re focused on negotiating 13 distinct bilateral agreements that will respond to various situations across the country.”

Despite that Trudeau nod to provinces’ authority, enthusiasm was in short supply when premiers filed out of the brief, two-hour gathering Tuesday, which the prime minister had pointedly billed as a “working meeting,” not a negotiation.

“We see this is a starting point,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said. “It’s a downpayment on further discussions.”

“It does not solve the fundamental problem of funding of health care in Canada,” Quebec Premier François Legault flatly declared.

And that is the thing. The problems plaguing Canada’s health-care system are long term, chronic ones, but politics is measured in small, short-term victories. Another meeting, another set of discussions, then, represent a short-term solution. But the first ministers were forced to admit that all they’ve done — for now — is take a step toward the more enduring, “transformational” change that is required to preserve universal health care in Canada.

Legault even mused aloud that some new deal might have to be made with some other government in future.

To be fair, the proposal that Trudeau put before the premiers on Tuesday hints at the kind of longterm change the system needs: improved access to family doctors and private care; more health-care workers and better compensation for them; increased attention to mental health.

“What gets measured gets done,” Trudeau said. “Data saves lives,” federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said.

These goals aren’t framed as “conditions” but they are contained instead in the data that Ottawa is set on tracking — and rewarding — through future side deals with the provinces. This is where, once again, Canadians are being told to just wait.

Officials close to Trudeau had been warning for a couple of weeks now that there would be no major breakthrough announced after first ministers held their meeting. The best-case scenario, they said, was that premiers would leave Ottawa saying there was more to discuss.

In that respect, it was mission accomplished. Premiers looked for all kinds of ways to say “we’ll see” to the Trudeau proposal without rejecting it out of hand. Some, such as Newfoundland’s Andrew Furey, said afterward that they could see ways to get from here to some better future for health care.

“It shouldn’t be just about money, it needs to be about modernization of the health-care system that has really stuck in the1960s,” Furey told reporters. “And there is a bit of a transformation and an approach here that I think needs to be recognized.”

Once upon a time in Canada — yes, the 1960s, as Furey observed — Canadians went to the emergency room to get speedy, urgent treatment, often as a last resort. Nowadays, in a world of doctor shortages and a crumbling system, the emergency room has become the first stop, with patients funnelled to specialized, subsequent treatment after getting through the ER.

In many ways, the first ministers’ health meeting has gone through a similar evolution. It’s no longer the fast and urgent fix, but the place to start before the ailing patient of Canada’s medicare is sent off to the specialists in the provinces in the days ahead.

And this is Canada and the healthcare system in 2023: The problem is urgent, even critical, but the solution requires a longer wait than expected.