Office of the Parlimentary Budget Officer. (2012). Renewing the Canada Health Transfer: Implications for Federal and Provincial-Territorial Fiscal Sustainability. Matier, C.: Ottawa, ON. Available from www.parl.gc.ca/PBO-DPB/documents/Renewing_CHT.pdf.

“The mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) is to provide independent analysis to Parliament on the state of the nation’s finances, the government’s estimates and trends in the Canadian economy; and upon request from a committee or parliamentarian, to estimate the financial cost of any proposal for matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction.

This note provides an update of PBO’s baseline long-term fiscal projections and fiscal gap estimates (published in its Fiscal Sustainability Report 2011) that incorporates the recent Canada Health Transfer (CHT) renewal. On December 19, 2011 the Government of Canada announced that: the CHT would continue to grow at 6 per cent annually until 2016-17; starting in 2017-18 the CHT would then grow in line with a 3-year moving average of nominal GDP growth (with a minimum increase of 3 per cent per year guaranteed); and, the CHT will be reviewed again in 2024.”