Provincial Expenditures for Healthcare
The graph below reports the percent of all expenditures that each province directed towards health care over the last decade according to data reported to Statistics Canada. There are some differences across provinces with Ontario consistently being at the high end, in 2009 devoting 38% of its expenditures to health care, and Quebec having the lowest percentage in 2009, 28%.
The general trend is up – over the decade most provinces show an increase in the per cent of provincial expenditures going to healthcare. The data from Newfoundland, which show the big dip were in the Statistics Canada CANSIM report, but may not be accurate. For Newfoundland, the actual expenditures on health increased at a relatively steady rate, but other expenditures changed which produced the dip. For some reason, in 2006, there was a 193% increase in Education (2005 expenditure on elementary and secondary education was reported as $708 million while 2006 expenditure was reported as $2.634 billion). This big increase in educational expenditures produced the drop in health expenditures for that province. However, this change isn’t consistent with the Newfoundland Education annual report hence may be an error in the CANSIM report.
