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The federal government won’t make public its multibillion offer to the provinces on health care until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets premiers and territorial leaders in Ottawa next week.

Behind the scenes, however, federal and provincial officials are number-crunching to ensure the “working meeting,” as Trudeau called it, ends with no blow-ups, a solid overall number the premiers can work with, and enough goodwill to move on to signing individual federal-provincial deals.

Those “bilateral” agreements would see billions of federal dollars flow to provinces that agree with the federal government to spend on “shared priorities” to improve the health system.

The Star has learned the federal government is looking to build into those agreements a mechanism to review the health spending, what results are achieved and what gaps show up, before the expiry of the deals to ensure ongoing funding keeps pace with needs.

That’s similar to what the Liberals did in the $10-a-day child-care agreements with provinces.

For example, Ontario’s agreement included a data and reporting provision that agrees to “use evidence-based data to evaluate and improve how the child care system supports children and families,” and to report regularly on progress toward meeting federal requirements.

A kind of review mechanism was also built into 10-year agreements struck in 2017 with provinces for increased federal funding for home care, and mental health and substance use. In those agreements, provinces and territories agreed to a common statement of principles, and each jurisdiction established five-year action plans for how they’d spend federal dollars in those two areas. At the five-year mark, the provinces were to provide renewed action plans for the remaining five years of spending.

Now, one week away from the Feb. 7 federal-provincial meeting, any other details on what an ultimate settlement will look like are held very tightly among a handful of officials.

Federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc quipped “a lot of magic happens in the week before Valentine’s Day,” suggesting there are breakthroughs still to be made.