The Trudeau government may be listening, but not to Parliament
Last week’s surprise announcement of a national pharmacare study reveals a lot about the state of Liberal politics in Canada right now.
It tells us, for instance, that the federal Liberals are actively looking to steal policy thunder from the New Democratic Party — which made pharmacare a centrepiece of its big convention in Ottawa just a few weeks ago.
It also shows just how much the federal Liberals’ strategy is intertwined with Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals at Queen’s Park, who are in the midst of implementing their own, limited form of pharmacare — free drugs for Ontarians under 25 — in advance of the June election. The federal Liberals even plucked Eric Hoskins out of his health minister’s job in Ontario to head up the study into a national pharmacare program.
But the way in which this announcement has been rolled out also seems to be further evidence that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government just isn’t all that into Parliament — or at least some of the work that’s being done there.
The Commons health committee is on the brink of issuing a major report on pharmacare — the product of nearly two years of study. It is widely expected to call for a national program of some kind. Just before the holiday break, one of the Liberal MPs on the committee, Oakville’s John Oliver, told a lunchtime panel discussion in Ottawa that he was looking forward to campaigning in 2019 with a Liberal promise on pharmacare.
“The expectation, the hope, from those that have been championing this for some time is that 2020 is the year that we see the beginning,” Oliver said at a luncheon panel event (in which I was serving as a moderator), “It’s going to be gradual but that’s the year we begin to see national pharmacare being implemented.”
As well, the Parliamentary Budget Officer did a major study on the cost of pharmacare last year.
So if Oliver is right and the committee was headed to that conclusion anyway, why do we need yet more study? Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor was asked that very question when she appeared with Hoskins before reporters on Tuesday. “Well, we’re certainly looking forward to the health committee’s report, the health report to be tabled in the House of Commons,” she said. “The advisory council will certainly be looking at the report that’s been done. They’ve done tremendous work. They’ve heard from many witnesses.”
Nothing in that answer really explained why it was necessary to pre-empt the committee’s report, though — which is just weeks away.
Nor is it the first time the Trudeau government has given the back of the hand to parliamentary committee work. By my count, it’s at least the third high-profile example of the government either disregarding parliamentary committees or even going in an entirely different direction on a major policy issue.
We’ll remember, for instance, that the government essentially ignored most of the recommendations of the CommonsSenate committee studying new legislation for medical assistance in dying back in the spring of 2016.
Then, of course, came last year’s rejection of the Commons committee report into democratic reform. After months and months of study and cross-country travel throughout 2016, the MPs on that committee urged that the government hold a referendum leading to some form of proportional representation.
Then, abruptly, the prime minister pulled the plug on the whole idea of reform, telling his new Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould in early 2017, “changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate.”
So what we have here, it seems, is an emerging, annual event in committeeignoring by this government. In 2016, it was on the issue of medical assistance in dying. In 2017, it was democratic reform. This year, it’s pharmacare.
Is there a political price to be paid for turning a deaf ear to committees? Perhaps not. Clearly, the Trudeau government has calculated that what goes on in Parliament is inside-the-bubble stuff — that average Canadian voters don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to the daily churn of business in parliamentary politics.
One wonders, though, whether this could become a caucus-morale problem, if it isn’t already. How do you convince MPs to do all those hours of work and travel on committee duty when all this study on some huge societal issue has become a dead-end job? It’s hard enough for any prime minister to keep backbenchers in a majority government busy and occupied — ignoring or pre-empting their committee work can’t help.
Last week, a finance department official told me that Trudeau’s government has been getting better at listening. Perhaps, but judging from the pharmacare announcement, it seems that this skill doesn’t always stretch to the work of committees in Parliament.