OTTAWA -- Canada's premiers intend to put the health-care needs of the country's seniors and crumbling infrastructure in the spotlight in advance of this year's federal election, P.E.I. Premier Robert Ghiz said Friday.
Ghiz, host of the Council of the Federation's winter meeting, said the premiers want to send a message to the federal government on the two issues that dominated the morning session of the get-together.
"There are many different avenues where an aging population is affecting us in terms of our economic ability but also in terms of cost," Ghiz said at a news conference as his counterparts took a lunch break at a downtown Ottawa hotel.
Of infrastructure, Ghiz added: "We believe that there is a deficit there."
Canada spends just 3.5 per cent of its GDP on infrastructure, he noted, while other countries spend more. The premiers agreed during the meeting that all of their jurisdictions need new or updated bridges, roads and public buildings, Ghiz said.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has proposed a multi-billion-dollar national infrastructure partnership between the feds and the provinces.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver, on the other hand, expressed dismay on Friday that the premiers are demanding major spending initiatives as plummeting oil prices are threatening Ottawa's bottom line.
In an email earlier Friday, he said opposition parties and some premiers "appear oblivious."
"This is precisely the wrong time to launch a massive deficit program that would undermine investor confidence, erode our credit standing, weaken our ability to withstand further international shocks, add to our debt burden, reduce our ability to support social programs and burden our children with our expenditures," he said.
Ghiz, in response, pointed out that a lower Canadian dollar provides economic opportunities for the federal government.
There was a broad consensus around the table on seniors' health care, according to those on the sidelines of the meeting.
David Granovsky, head of government relations for the Canadian Nurses Association, said his organization had urged Ghiz to include a national seniors' health care strategy on the agenda and called it a significant development that the premiers gave the issue such close attention.
Climate and energy were also on the agenda of the premier's meeting.
The provinces are discussing TransCanada's proposed Energy East pipeline, Ghiz said. That $12 billion project would carry oil from the western provinces to the Bay of Fundy.
Last year, Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard -- who have become close allies on climate, in particular -- laid out a list of requirements that would determine whether they'd throw their support behind Energy East.
Couillard is scheduled to update his counterparts about the so-called Canadian Energy Strategy today. It's an initiative involving all 13 provinces and territories focused on climate change and clean energy.
The premiers -- all but Alberta's Jim Prentice and Saskatchewan's Brad Wall -- are meeting in a hotel just a few blocks from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office.
Wynne invited the prime minister to the meeting, but he declined to attend. Harper has not met with the premiers as a group for several years.
Ghiz ribbed Harper for meeting with Wynne on the sidelines of a hockey tournament earlier this month, the first time the two had met in a year.
"If I had planned it a little bit better, maybe I would have planned this meeting around the World Junior Hockey championships and he would have been here, but, you know, hindsight is 20-20," he said.
