Pharmacare, taxes, health care featured in NDP platform
Howarth said plan aims to make life more affordable
TORONTO Accelerated pharmacare, a freeze on income tax for certain residents and hiring tens of thousands of health-care and education workers were among the key promises in the election platform unveiled by Ontario’s New Democrats on Monday.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the platform is packed with practical steps to make life more affordable and fix what’s “broken” in health care and other systems.
“Government just hasn’t been working for people and COVID really exposed that. Now, folks aren’t asking for the moon and the stars. They just want someone who really gets what they’re going through, and they haven’t had that in a while,” Horwath said at the platform launch event in Toronto, flanked by candidates and union representatives, some of them wearing health-worker scrubs.
“The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. We can fix what matters most to people.”
Horwath framed her rival Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties as ineffective at improving things and accused them of making life more expensive under their governments.
That’s also how she explained similarities between her party’s platform and promises made by the Liberals, who like the NDP are pledging to raise the minimum wage, pilot a four-day work week, offer electric vehicle rebates and cover HIV medication.
“They had 15 years,” Horwath said, referring to previous Liberal governments. “They’ll say something that they think sounds good during a campaign, but when they’re in office, they just don’t focus on the things that matter most to people. We’ll fix that.”
Horwath and NDP party officials said full costing details for the platform would come later in the campaign, after the Progressive Conservative government introduces a budget on Thursday ahead of an expected election call.
The NDP decided residents deserve to know what the party’s plans are in the absence of budget figures, Horwath said. She also declined to say whether her party would aim to balance the budget within four years, citing the need to know what’s in the upcoming Tory budget.
If elected in June, the New Democrats promise to move ahead with providing drug coverage for Ontarians before the federal Liberal government moves on its plan, starting by covering a baseline of 125 medications.
The pharmacare plan, which the NDP also promised in the 2018 election, includes pledges to cover birth control and HIV treatment and prevention medication.
The party said it will also work to “accelerate” the proposed federal dental coverage plan and expand it to cover more people. Horwath didn’t give a timeline for when the drug and dental coverage would be available but said the aim is to do that “as soon as possible.”