Prime Minister Jean Chretien says the federal government won't levy a dedicated tax to upgrade the nation's health-care system -- at least not in the immediate future.

CTV News Staff

Prime Minister Jean Chretien says the federal government won't levy a dedicated tax to upgrade the nation's health-care system -- at least not in the immediate future.

Last month, a special Senate committee recommended providing the health system with an additional $5 billion a year in the Kirby report. But Chretien says a dedicated tax is not the way to raise revenue for the upgrades.

"It isn't needed at this moment, in my view. It might be needed eventually," Chretien said during an interview with the Toronto Star in Montreal.

Instead, the prime minister says the premiers need to work together when they meet to discuss health care issues early next year. He says the recommendations of a royal commission headed by Roy Romanow could serve as a starting point.

"Canadians want us to do something collectively on health care and they hate us when we try to score brownie points," he said.

The prime minister isn't the only one opposed to a dedicated tax to help raise revenue for Canada's health care system. A new survey found that most Canadians are cool to the idea as well.

The Goldfarb Report survey examined how Canadians feel about recommendation included in the Kirby report.

While many said they were eager to see improvements to Canada's health care system, most did not appear ready to pay for expanded services.

The survey found there is widespread opposition to increasing the GST, instituting user fees or health care premiums, or increasing the role of private sector companies to pay for the reforms.

A full 62 per cent of Canadians strongly oppose the Kirby Senate report's suggestion of raising the GST to 8.5 per cent, with those in the West the most likely to strongly oppose the idea (70 per cent).

At the same time, there appears to be little support for user fees. About 44 per cent of all Canadians strongly oppose the idea and just 17 per cent strongly support it. Respondents also didn't like the Senate report idea of the introduction of health care premiums.

The Goldfarb survey concludes that, with such widespread opposition to taxes or premiums, "the challenge for governments will be to raise money from other sources or reallocate current expenditures to meet the needs of the health care system."

This Goldfarb Report survey of 1,000 Canadians was conducted between Nov. 1 and 6, 2002. Results are considered statistically accurate within 3.2 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

As for his part, Chretien says health-care renewal and ratification of the Kyoto protocol are his two main domestic concerns.

"We're moving. Kyoto is coming. Health care is coming. The budget is coming. We have tabled the legislation on the ethics package; we will soon follow on the financing of political parties.

"We will deal in the budget with child poverty. We have doubled in principle the number of national parks in Canada.

"It's important for me and I have a lot of letters of applause for that," Chretien said.