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Liberals’ promised review of health-care spending expected this spring
Published Mar 11, 2026 • Last updated 9 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Stephane Robichaud, CEO of the New Brunswick Health Council, says he’s looking forward to getting a clearer picture on health-care spending once the results of a budgetary review are released. SUBMITTEDArticle content
The head of a New Brunswick health-care accountability agency says it remains largely unclear how growing government spending on health care is being allocated across the province.
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Stéphane Robichaud, CEO of the New Brunswick Health Council, is hoping a clearer picture will emerge from an ongoing budgetary review of the province’s two regional health authorities and the agency responsible for ambulance and home health-care services.
New Brunswick was among Canada’s top public-sector spenders on health care on a per-capita basis in 2024. The province ranked third – spending $7,035 per person – just behind Nova Scotia ($7,252) and Newfoundland and Labrador ($8,026), according to Statistics Canada data.
These figures include provincial/territorial and local government spending, not any private-sector spending by patients or health insurance companies.
In 2023, the New Brunswick Health Council shared data that suggested the province had the lowest public-sector, per-capita spend on health care in Canada in 2020. This data, from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, factored in both federal and provincial spending.
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“Since then, we’ve seen increases in health-care spending, but at the end of the day, we do need to improve within the sector our understanding of that spending,” said Robichaud, who urged caution with reading too much into the available numbers comparing jurisdictions.
Last year, the Holt Liberal government announced an independent review of the base budgets for Horizon and Vitalité health networks, as well as Extra-Mural/Ambulance New Brunswick Inc.
All three organizations have seen their spending rise “steadily” over the past five years, the government noted at the time, to “address inflation, wage pressures, program expansions and other operational costs.”
“The review will evaluate those expenditures to determine whether they remain relevant and cost effective, and to identify areas where transformational change can be made,” the government noted in a press release.
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Results of this review are expected to be released by the spring.
The Holt government budgeted an additional $75 million for health-care spending in the 2025-26 fiscal year. In total, the province was expected to spend $4.1 billion on health care this fiscal year, but in February, the government indicated it was on track to spend $432.5 million more than it projected.
Nearly half of that projected overage is tied to a new contract with New Brunswick doctors, which contains incentives for them to work in the collaborative care clinic model championed by the Liberals.
The Holt government earmarked $30 million this fiscal year for its collaborative care clinic model. So far, it’s largely funded expansions of existing clinics to take more patients off the primary care waitlist.
As head of the health council, Robichaud said there isn’t a “strong understanding” yet of how new primary care resources are being distributed across the province.
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He pointed out the global budgeting process used in the health-care sector for decades makes it difficult to unpack the spending.
“If you look at the number of physicians currently, we’re above the national average in terms of number of positions per capita, same with nurses,” Robichaud said.
“It doesn’t mean we have too much, but we probably should be doing better on access, for example, that we currently are, and a better understanding of those resource levels and how they’re distributed is a huge part of understanding that puzzle and then how to be far more accountable to citizens.”
Auditor general’s report flagged concerns over data, spending
The Holt government has acknowledged there are shortcomings in measuring the performance of public health-care spending and has committed to making changes.
Last May, Health Minister John Dornan issued an accountability framework to the board chairs of each regional health authority, detailing reporting requirements for both networks.
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An auditor general’s report released in December concluded that the province’s health department didn’t have “effective oversight mechanisms in place to ensure timely access to, and adequate reporting on, emergency health services” between 2020 and 2024.
Auditor general Paul Martin recently flagged concerns over the government’s tracking of the performance of emergency health services in the province. Photo by Barbara Simpson/Brunswick News
In response to the findings, New Brunswick’s health department indicated that work is underway with “planning, monitoring, measurement and evaluation” of the performance of the health-care system.
The auditor general also flagged that the regional health authorities’ annual budgets aren’t based on current need but rather a 2008 formula that takes into an account an occupancy rate of 85 per cent.
New Brunswick’s regional hospitals are now regularly overcapacity, with both Horizon and Vitalité health networks regularly reporting operational deficits that are ultimately covered by the provincial government.
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In his report, auditor general Paul Martin recommended the health department conduct a base budget review “to ensure that sufficient resources are provided to the regional health authorities for the services delivered.”
Horizon currently has a total annual budget of around $1.6 billion, while Vitalité has roughly a $1-billion budget.
Last month, Margaret Melanson, president and CEO of Horizon Health Network, told a legislative committee that she’s looking forward to the release of the base budget review being conducted by EY (formerly Ernst & Young).
Based on data she’s seen, Melanson said New Brunswick isn’t funded per capita for health care “in the same way as other provinces are for sure.”
“We know just anecdotally and from some of our conversation here today that we do have an aging population, we do have newcomers and we do require more service availability than we have we today,” she told the committee.
Vitalité CEO Dr. France Desrosiers was more direct when asked by the committee about her organization’s budget. She said it simply wasn’t sufficient to meet demand.
“We’ve demonstrated every year for a number of years that we have an increase in needs and operational volumes, and we’re not funding for that increase,” Desrosiers said.
Brunswick News requested comment from the province’s health department. It did not hear back by deadline.
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