Last week, the provincial government announced that as part of the 2021–2022 provincial budget, they’d be spending over $3.5 billion on continuing care.
Jason Kenney, premier, and Tyler Shandro, health minister, were present at the announcement, which is an increase of $200 million over last year.
Technically, it’s not $200 million more on continuing care: it’s $179 million on continuing care, community care, and home care.
Here’s how it breaks down for each of the 3 areas.
| 2020–2021 budget | 2021–2022 budget | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Continuing care | $1.157 | $1.207 | $0.050 |
| Community care | $1.478 | $1.587 | $0.109 |
| Home care | $0.711 | $0.731 | $0.020 |
| $3.346 | $3.525 | $0.179 |
This amounts to a 5.3% increase over the previous budget year.
And here’s what the increases look like compared to previous budgets:
2018–19 increase | 2019–20 increase | 2020–21 increase | 2021–22 increase | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuing care | 3.3% | 1.5% | 1.7% | 4.3% |
| Community care | 6.7% | -1.5% | 1.2% | 7.4% |
| Home care | 6.9% | -1.3% | 4.3% | 2.8% |
| 5.6% | 0% | 2.0% | 5.3% |
It’s great that the UCP have increased combined funding for these 3 areas by a collective 5.3% for the new budget year, but when you average out the increases during all 3 of their budgets, the average increase per budget is only 2.4%.
