Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister on investing in a new building for the UPEI Faculty of Medicine 

March 2, 2023 - Charlottetown, PEI

It’s really great to be here with Minister LeBlanc, with our wonderful PEI caucus, with our MPs Heath MacDonald, Sean Casey and Bobby Morrissey. Thank you very much to our partners in the provincial government, to Premier King, to Ministers Hudson, Deagle, and Jameson. And to our retired Senators—it is great to have you here, and the leadership from UPEI.

This is a great day for the Island and for Atlantic Canada. That is, ultimately, because of you, the work you’ve done, and the work you’re going to be doing in the future.

I myself come from a much more remote community than Charlottetown. I know how important it is to be able to have education here so your kids can stay home and get the training they need, and so you can have the professionals your community needs.

This is going to be a generational project. This is going to change the lives of a lot of families and a lot of people, and this is really about building for the future.

We are here at a time when Canada’s universal public health care system is under enormous strain, both here on the Island and across the country.

These have been longstanding issues, and the pandemic has only made them worse.

A strong, reliable, universal public health care system is central to who we are as Canadians — and it is what Canadians deserve.

That is why the announcement that Minister LeBlanc just made is so incredibly important.

Last month our government unveiled a historic plan to strengthen public health care across Canada. All told, our plan will deliver $198.6 billion in additional federal funding for health care over the next ten years.

Just think about that number. That’s almost $200 billion.

That’s a lot of money going into our health care system, and it’s a good investment, because we need our health care system.

I really do believe it’s something that Canadians are rightly proud of, and we need to invest in it to make it fit for purpose for today.

When I look at how this federal health care plan has been rolled out, at the unprecedented speed with which we now have agreements across the country, it really makes me proud to be Canadian.

It gives me confidence that our country does work, that we are able to work together, and we’re able to invest in something so precious — our health care system. And it makes me really grateful to my colleague, Minister LeBlanc.

And it also  makes me grateful to our provincial partners. You know, here on PEI, this agreement is going to mean over $1 billion.

One billion dollars in additional federal health care funding over the next ten years.

That’s going to mean better health care data and better health outcomes for Islanders. It’s going to mean better support for health care workers here on the Island and across Canada.

It will mean better access to quality, timely health care across PEI.

It is going to mean new health care funding, and on top of all of that, we have a new medical school here on Prince Edward Island.

That is $19.5 million from the federal government invested in this important effort. And this kind of work, this generational investment doing something really concrete and specific, is what PEI needs.

And I think everyone here understands the real benefit is going to be for our children and even our grandchildren, and that is what good, smart, responsible people do: they invest today for something that is going to help us in the future.

the federal government, the provincial government, people and communities, university leaders. So, I want to take a moment to thank Premier King and his colleagues.

One thing I think we all learned during COVID is Canada can be really strong and effective when we remember every single person who is elected in the country is elected by the same people. We’re elected by Canadians.

And you know, once we get past election night, our job is to forget about all that partisanship and just try to do a good job for the people who gave us the privilege of serving them for a while.

I just want to point out that, you know, we are not perfect. No one is perfect.

But we did, as a country, a remarkably good job during the pandemic. It was really hard. A lot of people made sacrifices.

There was a study published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal last summer, and I think it’s an important one, because what they calculated was that if Canada had had the mortality rates of the United States an additional 70,000 Canadians would have died.

Think about that. That is more than the entire population of Charlottetown.

Whenever I think about that number, I think about my dad and my aunts and all the older people in my life, because some of them wouldn’t be here today.

And so, I really want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made those sacrifices, and above all, to thank the health care workers, who made it possible for us as a country to save a lot of lives.

Now, it was expensive. During the pandemic, the federal government provided eight out of every ten dollars that was spent across the country to support Canadians and Canadian businesses. That was absolutely the right thing to do.

It helped us achieve some pretty remarkable health care outcomes, and it has also laid the groundwork for a strong recovery from the COVID recession.

Canada had the strongest growth in 2022 in the G7, and the IMF predicts we will have the strongest economic growth in the G7 by the fourth quarter of this year.

We have near record low unemployment. There are 800,000 more Canadians working today than before COVID hit. That is a 126 per cent jobs recovery, compared to 112 per cent in the United States.

Something else that we’ve done, also in partnership with Premier King and his team, is created a national system of early learning and child care.

I hear all the time from Canadians, and mostly, Canadian mothers, how that has changed their lives. As Finance Minister, I can tell you it is changing our economy, too.

Part of the reason that we have this strong economic recovery, part of the reason we have such strong labour force participation, is parents — in particular, mothers — can now go and work if they want to. And today, Canada’s labour force participation rate for women in their prime working years in January was 85.6 per cent. It’s never been that high.

And at a time when a lot of businesspeople talk to me about labour shortages, how that is holding them back, isn’t it great that mothers in our communities can get a job if they want one and be confident that their kids are being taken care of, and not just being taken care of — but learning in great environments?

I really do want to thank the government here in PEI for working with us on that. You have been real leaders in early learning and child care.

In conclusion, I am really glad to be here. I’m grateful for the cooperation, grateful for the hard work of Islanders getting through COVID and now positioning us for a really, really strong recovery.

Today’s announcement, I think, is another example of what we can achieve when we all work together, and I am very much looking forward to continuing to work with all of you, with the provincial government, with my PEI colleagues, to continue building an economy that works for all Canadians.

Thank you very much.