Premier John Horgan

Premier John Horgan

The head of the Council of the Federation gathering in Victoria says the federal government needs to stop splitting hairs and work with provinces and territories on health care.

BC Premier John Horgan wants to sit down with the feds to work out how to restore Canada's ``crumbling'' system.

Horgan says the provinces can sit down and solve the problems for Canadians, not for provinces and the federal government, but for the people.

The premiers have called on the federal government to boost its share of health-care funding to 35 per cent from what they have said amounts to 22 per cent currently.

As premiers gathered in British Columbia to try again to make their case for a permanent increase in federal health transfers, they're also waiting on two-billion dollars they were promised for surgical and diagnostic backlogs.

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced the one-time top-up to speed surgeries on March 25th, and he and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland introduced a bill in the House of Commons.

Bill C-17 never got past first reading, and the promise was instead packaged into the federal budget roughly two weeks later.