Federal budget sees mixed health concerns
Posted Feb 11, 2014 5:30 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The federal government is boosting funding for veteran’s funerals and making it a priority to hire military personnel in the public service.
Dave Howard, President of the Canadian Legacy Project in Calgary, said Ottawa is not doing enough.
“Seeing our veterans taking their own lives, its happened for the last three months, we’re losing soldiers, many soldiers are young soldiers coming back with post traumatic [stress disorder] and the government isn’t dealing with it. There needs to be better services in places to help these kids get on with their lives,” said Howard.
Howard also said there needs to be a program similar to one in the U.S., where companies are given tax incentives to hire veterans.
When it comes to Canada’s health care system, Sandra Azocar, Executive Director of the Friends of Medicare’s provincial office, said this budget has come down at a very crucial time.
She said the new way of calculating Canada Health Transfers could mean Alberta would see an increase of close to $954-million.
“That’s close to a billion dollars so it will be very interesting to see how the provincial government will be allocating this money and we will be watching them very closely in terms of what improvements we can make to the system in this province,” said Azocar.
Alberta is the only province that stands to see that much of an increase under the new funding formula.
She said the passing of the buck from the federal to the provincial level does cause a bit of concern for the future of the health care system.
As for an increased tax on cigarettes laid out in the budget, which will be in effect as of Wednesday, she said education is more valuable in helping people quit.
