Keeping Canadians healthy continues to be a top priority for federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, as he discussed his plans for universal pharmacare and fixing the country’s faltering health care system during a campaign stop in Halifax on Monday.
Holding a town hall meeting in the lobby of the Nova Scotia Community College’s Leeds Street campus, the party leader and MP from Burnaby, B.C., spoke to a crowd of more than 200, who also voiced concerns about climate change, housing, child care and education.
But it was his plan to get health care back up to speed in Atlantic Canada, a region that saw his party left without a member of parliament in the so-called “red tide” of the Liberals’ 2015 federal victory, that dominated the conversation.
“There are a lot of challenges here, your premier doesn’t seem to think it’s a priority,” Singh told the crowd. “He made a lot of commitments when he got elected, and seems to be breaking those as well. Guess it seems to be a bit of a trend with Liberal governments.
“But there are serious concerns, people aren’t able to get the health care they need when they need it.”
Singh says getting universal access to medication would ensure a greater number of Canadians could stay healthier longer, and put less strain on clinics, emergency rooms and hospitals.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me that you can go and find out what’s going on with yourself, but you can’t actually get the treatment, the medication. So someone who can’t afford a pill that costs $5 a day winds up in a hospital room that costs $1,500 a day. It’s a horrible way to do things.”
Singh noted that Canada is unusual as the only country that has universal medicare, but not universal pharmacare, which is why the NDP based its idea for it on what’s already being done in other countries like the U.K., Germany, Sweden and New Zealand.
“We’ve used their costing, the parliamentary budget office costed it out and saw a savings of $4.2 billion if we put it in place, we just have to do it,” he said, predicting an NDP government could get the ball rolling on universal pharmacare by the end of 2020, if the individual provinces and the federal government could co-ordinate their combined purchasing power to ensure better prices.
This would enable patients to “use their health card, not their credit card” to get the medicine they need.
He also outlined a dentacare plan to provide dental treatment for families that earn less than $70,000, at a total cost of $856 million, which he considers a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars that the Trudeau government gave to corporations in the fall economic statement.
Fielding questions, Singh responded to a nurse from the South Shore who said she’s watched the decimation of the province’s health-care system through chronic underfunding over the past 30 years. “I want to know what the NDP is going to do to sign on to a health accord for fair funding and to stop hallway medicine and overcrowding,” she said.
The NDP leader described a slow erosion of federal support for health care over the past few decades, putting an increased burden on provincial governments and endangering the single-payer, single-tier system with increased privatization and additional fees for services.
“Then we get the two-tier system, and we will lose what we’ve built, and we will not let that happen,” said Singh.
The NDP leader also outlined plans to close corporate loopholes that see profits made in Canada sent overseas rather than being reinvested at home, and higher taxes for those with fortunes over $20 million that could raise over $70 billion in revenue to go toward health care, more affordable education, and environmental initiatives to combat climate change and harmful emissions.
“We know taxation is one consideration for where businesses set up, but based on an OECD report, it’s not the most important,” said Singh, referring to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
“The most important reasons, by far, are the stability of the government, the education of the workforce, the health care and other services that are provided, and the safety of the community.
“We’re confident that Canada is a place where people love to live, and business are going to want to continue to invest in, and we’re just going to ask them to pay a bit more, and we know we can do it.”
RELATED:
