Face of Nation : HAMILTON — 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.
During the 2015 election campaign, former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair promised to balance the budget, a move that was widely seen as helping the Liberals to outflank the New Democrats on the left when they said they would run deficits. This time around, the NDP has no plan to balance the budget, promising instead that Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio will fall over the next decade. “I’m a different leader,” Singh told reporters when asked about the shift in focus.
In a statement, Liberal MP Marc Miller said he hopes “the NDP will soon provide the details that Canadians expect from any national party about how it will pay for its promises.”
The NDP platform includes a number of promises the party has rolled out in recent months, including commitments to build 500,000 units of affordable housing in the next 10 years, to create 300,000 green jobs as part of a $15-billion climate plan and to retrofit all housing stock in Canada by 2050. The party will also spend $1 billion on child care in 2020 and increase the funding annually, and will cap cell phone and internet bills. It further promises to decriminalize drug possession.
The platform also includes a number of ideas that officials termed “aspirational,” including a plan to work with provinces and territories to cap and reduce post-secondary tuition, with a goal of making it free. The party would eliminate interest rates on federal student loans.
In his speech, Singh said the government must have “the courage to call the systemic failure that led to the killing of Indigenous women and girls a genocide,” endorsing a recent finding of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. The NDP is committing to work with Indigenous communities to implement the national inquiry’s 231 calls for justice. The party has also promised to “replace mere consultation with a standard of free, prior and informed consent” for projects that affect Indigenous communities, though officials said this would not be tantamount to a veto over resource development.
Addressing the influx of asylum seekers who have come to Canada in recent years, the NDP is promising to end the backlog of refugee claims, and to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement Canada shares with the U.S., which would allow asylum seekers to enter Canada at regular ports of entry instead of doing so illegally at unofficial border crossings.
The platform also seeks to keep the SNC-Lavalin affair in the public eye, promising to launch a public inquiry into allegations of political interference in the company’s ongoing criminal case, and to prohibit corporations facing criminal charges from lobbying elected officials.
The NDP says its platform will be reviewed by the parliamentary budget officer, who has launched a new service this year to cost out election platform promises.
