OTTAWA - The federal budget signals there is no room for the premiers to negotiate for more health-care funding in coming years, one economist says, as the Ontario government calls for that to change.

The Canada Health Transfer is projected to be $54.7 billion in 2025-26 and is set to grow by five per cent per year until 2028.

After that, the budget sets out a plan for the increases, known as the escalator, to be a minimum of three per cent annually, based on a rolling three-year average of nominal GDP growth.

"It looks like the signal from the budget is that health transfers, social transfers, equalizations — those things are not going to change. There's no room for negotiation," said Mostafa Askari, chief economist at the University of Ottawa's Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democrac

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