Charlie Pinkerton

Premier Doug Ford said on Friday that he's "very, very confident" the provincial and federal governments are going to reach a deal that'll see Ottawa cover a larger chunk of health-care costs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invited the premiers to the nation's capital on 

 for a long-awaited meeting on how health care is funded in Canada. The premiers, known collectively as the Council of Federation, were holding a meeting of their own on Friday afternoon to prepare, according to Ford.

"We'll sit down the prime minister, and I'm very, very confident that the time we sit down, we'll all come together and make sure it's a fair deal for the provinces, territories, and, most importantly, the people of our province and Canada," Ford said on Friday.

Trudeau, premiers expected to meet in February to move health-care talks along

Since early in the pandemic, Canada's premiers have persistently called on the federal government to shoulder a higher proportion of health-care expenses. They want Ottawa to cover 35 per cent of publicly funded health-care costs. In 2020, when the premiers dialed up their lobby effort, the Canada Health Transfer covered about 22 per cent of health-care expenses. The CHT is the main way the federal government contributes to the health-care system.

After a couple of years of tense back-and-forths between the premiers and the prime minister, as well as their 

, signs of progress in their negotiations began to show over the last few weeks.

Feds, provinces getting closer to health-care funding deal

Multiple premiers, including Ford, have said a meeting between them and Trudeau is key to landing a deal.

"We've worked very collaboratively with the federal government on so many projects and I just look forward to working with the Prime Minister and their team to come up with a program that ... will be transparent, will always be accountable, and make sure that we have funding in different areas, no matter if it's hiring new nurses or doctors (to work) with us on the backlog surgeries, just to name a few," Ford said on Friday.

In what he's said publicly over the last few weeks, Ford's come off as more amenable than some of his counterparts in other provinces to certain requirements for additional funding from the Trudeau government — like it coming with strings attached, for example.

Although reporters pressed him to unravel how flexible the Ontario government is in its negotiations, Ford insisted on Friday that he didn't want to "negotiate through the media."

"We'll work hard, and there's always a little give and take when you negotiate anything," he said.

"But getting into the weeds, I'm saying, we'll negotiate that with the federal government — and we'll negotiate hard," Ford added.

Signs have pointed in recent weeks to the provincial and federal governments nearing a health-care funding deal.

Ford 'very confident' a health-care funding deal is coming with premiers, Trudeau meeting soon

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