NDP, Liberals duke it out for progressives
At Queen’s Park, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath unveiled details of an ambitious pharmacare program to provide major prescription drugs for Ontarians Monday.
Simultaneously in Hamilton, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced details of her Liberal government’s basic income pilot program to provide a stronger safety net — not least for those between jobs who might fall between the cracks in our social programs.
A pre-election battle has broken out between the NDP and Liberals for the hearts and votes of progressives — with the Progressive Conservatives out of mind.
The rival NDP and Liberal plans are still in the early stages, but each has great long-term potential. In an era of precarious work, where people can no longer count on jobs for life with workplace benefits — or workplace income — government has an even greater role to play as a force for good.
Unless you believe government is a bad influence best reined in. Which is why PC Leader Patrick Brown — ahead in the polls, coasting as premier-in-waiting — had nothing good to say Monday morning about either proposal. Lacking any proposals of his own, he had nothing at all to say about the challenges of life in tomorrow’s workplace.
On Thursday, the Liberals will roll out and restate more of their precampaign agenda in the spring budget. Which explains Horwath’s attempt to steal a march on the budget.
At a weekend convention, she gave party supporters a sneak peek of the campaign trail ahead with a 40-page “New Democrat Vision for Ontario.” It’s not an election platform, merely a precursor, but it points in a progressive direction.
In the 2014 provincial election and the 2015 federal vote, New Democrats deluded themselves into thinking they were a governmentin-waiting, stressing prudent stewardship over progressive action. Fearful of being labelled the party of the free lunch, they were outflanked by Liberal leaders who ate their lunch.
Case in point: Pension reform, which Horwath had once proposed for Ontario, but churlishly abandoned in the last campaign merely because Wynne had made it her own. The provincial Liberals teamed up with the union movement to advance an Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, which pushed the federal government into a reformed Canada Pension Plan.
Now, Horwath has finally grasped that if you can’t beat them, beat them to it.
That’s how the NDP leader brought party delegates to their feet with her pharmacare promise: “This is what the next election is all about,” she exhorted, before the sound system cued up Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care Of Our Own.”
When medicare came into being 50 years ago, prescription drugs were unconscionably left out of the equation, an afterthought to be redressed in the future. Now, Canada remains the only industrialized nation to offer medicare without medicine — outlier status that puts the lie to our prideful pretensions about our health care system.
All these years later, the gap has grown: modern pharmaceuticals play an even more essential role in treating illness and workers won’t be able to rely on private workplace drug plans as companies scale back full-time jobs and benefits.
With a 40-per-cent share of the population and the economy, Ontario has the purchasing power and critical mass to lead the way. Federalism can take forever, but it allows for progress by progressive provinces launching experiments that can be expanded nationwide. Just as Queen’s Park plotted its own path on pensions, other provinces moved on carbon pricing and Saskatchewan led the way on medicare in the 1960s.
Horwath’s plan is embryonic. The NDP has budgeted $475 million to launch the program with an initial list of 125 of the most-common and effective medicines.
There would be inevitable criticism that more drugs should be covered (as the NDP always demands in opposition). Horwath concedes that any comprehensive expansion would only come after Ottawa and the other provinces join.
Liberal Health Minister Eric Hoskins, who has campaigned for a national pharmacare plan without success, knows enough about the proven benefits and savings — medical and economical — to have graciously and sagaciously welcomed the rival NDP idea Monday.
Brown, by contrast, claimed his Tories had heard from their “friends” in the insurance industry that the costs would be far higher than claimed.
Yet expert research, from all sides of the ideological spectrum, has shown pharmacare saves far more money than it costs, reducing the overall health-care bill while preserving life. Not only because an ounce of medication is worth a pound of cure, but because a streamlined, single-payer system is far more cost-effective than the costly duplication of private insurance plans that skim profits by short changing patients. That’s the attraction of medicare, and the equal appeal of pharmacare.
Would an NDP government follow through on its pledge, or might Horwath acquiesce to pressure from private companies as Bob Rae’s NDP government did with its broken promise of public auto insurance in the 1990s?
Will Hoskins persuade his fellow Liberals to act at the provincial level to spur a national pharmacare program?
The diagnosis has been known for decades. Perhaps now we have a prescription for political will. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.