Montréal, May 20, 2021 – As the provinces engage in a tug of war with the federal government to demand an increase in the Canada Health Transfer, a study by the Centre for Productivity and Prosperity – Walter J. Somers Foundation (CPP) reveals that they would do better to free themselves from this dependency. “To help citizens better understand the issue of federal health transfers, we reviewed the historical context in which they were introduced,” explains CPP Director Robert Gagné, co-author of the study. “This sheds more light on why Ottawa is encroaching on provincial areas of jurisdiction today. Above all, though, it shows how the existing system has become a political football over time, and one that very ill serves the interests of users of the provincial healthcare systems and the taxpayers who finance all these systems in the final analysis.”