NDP Eyes Sweeping Healthcare Coverage And Universal Pharmacare For 2019 Federal Election

Signalling a determination not to be outflanked on the left yet again, the federal NDP has unveiled its platform months ahead of the fall election, including commitments to dramatically expand health care and to impose a tax on the very wealthy, with a plan to run deficits for the foreseeable future.

In a speech delivered to a room full of supporters during an Ontario NDP policy convention in Hamilton on Sunday morning, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Canadians must have the “courage to dream.”

“People had such high hopes when they elected the Trudeau Liberals,” Singh said. “What they got was a government that can pull off a great symbolic gesture, but it’s not there for people when it counts.”

The party released a 109-page platform on Sunday, titled “A New Deal for People” (note the acronym, Singh said), an unusual move with several months still to go before the fall election. Speaking to reporters after his speech, flanked by a number of NDP candidates and a few sitting MPs, Singh said he wanted to get people talking about his party’s vision. “We want Canadians to know what we stand for well in advance of the election, so we can talk about this over the summer,” he said.

The commitments aren’t fully costed, nor are there firm timelines on many of the more ambitious promises, but the party plans to use revenue from increasing taxes on the wealthy and by closing tax loopholes to pay for massive commitments in health care, affordable housing and fighting climate change.

On the heels of a new report prepared for the Liberal government that recommends Ottawa implement a universal, single-payer pharmacare plan to cover the costs of prescription drugs for all Canadians, the NDP is promising to enact universal pharmacare in 2020 and to go several steps further. The party aims to publicly fund dental care, vision care, mental health care and hearing care within 10 years, according to officials who briefed reporters on Sunday, although it has no estimates of how much that might cost.

“It is a kind of vision that no government in Ottawa has ever proposed to Canadians, and it is for all people,” Singh said in his speech, to a cheering audience. Several times, he invoked Tommy Douglas, the first federal NDP leader and the father of public health care in Canada, and received a number of standing ovations as he promised a “historic expansion” toward “head-to-toe” health care coverage.

The NDP pharmacare plan differs somewhat from the report released by former Ontario health minister Dr. Eric Hoskins last week, which recommends that a full pharmacare program be in place by 2027, at an additional cost to the federal government of $15 billion annually. The Liberals have promised some form of national pharmacare, but have not committed to a universal, single-payer model.

The NDP is promising a “late 2020 start date” for its universal pharmacare program, with annual federal funding of $10 billion. Singh told reporters that Hoskins’ plan, with its gradual, eight-year rollout, is “overly cautious.”

The platform doesn’t explain exactly how an NDP government would pay for such a dramatic expansion to public health care, but it does propose several ways to raise revenue, including a three per cent increase to the corporate tax rate, from 15 to 18 per cent. The party also plans to raise taxes on those making more than $210,000 by two points, to 35 per cent.

The NDP is also planning to impose a new wealth tax on those net worth is more than $20 million — an idea recently proposed in the United States by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. The NDP would levy a one per cent tax on Canadians’ net worth above $20 million, which it estimates would generate “several billion dollars annually.”

The platform also reiterates previous commitments to close tax loopholes, including the CEO stock option deduction, and to tax 75 per cent of profits on investments, up from the current rate of 50 per cent.- Canada.com