While Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott was high-fiving colleagues in the House of Commons after announcing health-care funding deals with Quebec and Ontario, a new study shows why Quebec was nowhere close to being as excited.
After months of holding out, the province agreed to $2.5 billion deal over 10 years.
Health Minister Gaétan Barrette called it a bad deal, saying the payments were significantly less than what Quebec needed to maintain health services.
On Tuesday, the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy released a non-partisan study of all the provincial deals. The study backs up Barrette's claims.
"The federal contribution to health spending will fall through 2026, forcing Quebec to disproportionately bear the burden of the additional health care costs beyond the increases in federal health transfers," the think-tank concluded.
While the accord calls for transfer payments to rise to 27.3 per cent by 2019, the federal share drops to 25.5 per cent by the end of the deal.
The current federal funding share is 26.6 per cent.
This drop, according to the institute will not be enough to cover the projected rising health care costs that will hit the province, mainly due to an aging population and inflation.
Quebec though, isn't the only loser.
The group found over the course of its 10 years, the deal will hand out about $33.5 billion less than what all the provinces were asking for.
So why did Quebec agree to a deal that does it no good?
Barrette told Radio-Canada they had no choice, the deal was imposed.
He said there was no money left on the table, because there was no money on it to begin with.