Mark our 150th with national pharmacare

Great public policy events are rare in any country’s political history. Much of what is public policy frequently entails simply tinkering with, and adjustment of, already existing policies. Budgets are usually massive records of statutory tinkering.

This year Canada marks the 100th anniversary of our first national income tax. The City of Montreal already had an income tax in place when the federal government decided Canada needed a wartime temporary income tax. No comment regarding its permanently temporary status.

Initiating income tax was a major or macro public policy change. Those types of basic policy change are relatively rare and often they are replete with controversy.

Historically, for example, the 1854 Reciprocity Treaty with the United States was controversial, but it hinted at a route, which would one day blossom as the North American Free Trade Agreement. By the way, the U.S. had much the same reaction to the 1854 treaty as it currently is having to NAFTA.

In 1927, pursuant to a 1919 election pledge, William Lyon MacKenzie King’s Liberal government launched Canada’s first old age pension, which was subject to myriad conditions. Nevertheless, in the 1950s when Windsor’s Paul Martin Sr. introduced a bill to create an old age pension for Canadians he was following a path initiated by King.

In later years, Martin Sr. opened the door a tad to Canada’s highly regarded medical system with a national hospital insurance program. Saskatchewan and Tommy Douglas later fought Canada’s medical fraternity in the 1962 confrontation with provincial doctors. Eventually we had a matrix national health care system.

Unemployment insurance entered Canada’s political tapestry as early as 1919, but it was R.B. Bennett in 1935 who tried to launch a national unemployment insurance scheme. Eventually it, like old age pensions, required constitutional amendments to permit the federal government to offer universal programs.

Notable among these benchmark public policies is that they are all part of the social security network that ensures Canadians maintain their collective status as one of the most desirable countries in the world within which to live.

Great public policy events in the economic area are somewhat more problematic but certainly a national railway (or two), a national broadcasting system, an unlamented National Energy Policy and a system of corporate taxation would qualify among great public policy events.

Therefore, much of what most governments do most of the time is tweak, amend and alter the direction of basic policy frameworks.

Governments, prime ministers and notable cabinet ministers have gained historical recognition for those policy initiatives which have significantly altered the direction of Canadian society. Herein lies potential for an incumbent government and prime minister to benchmark their presence.

There is overwhelming evidence that Canadians would benefit substantially from a fullfledged national public pharmaceutical drug plan.

Most provinces already have modest programs for seniors and disadvantaged Canadians. Yet the evidence mounts that not only do Canadians pay extortionist prices for most prescription drugs but large numbers frequently avoid filling prescriptions because they have neither prescription drug coverage nor do many — especially seniors and lower income Canadians — have the capacity to fully afford their prescribed medications.

In turn, failure to use physician-prescribed medication may result in much higher costs to the overall medical system, such as clinics and hospitals for persons being treated too late in their illness.

A suggestion to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet: If you really want to be remembered historically in Canada, then do something of such magnitude as to warrant more than a historical footnote. Canada endured small-minded public policy thinking for 10 years under Stephen Harper and his cowed ministers.

It is time again, perhaps, for a federal government to take a major public policy initiative and develop and launch a national prescription drug plan for Canadians in year 150.