Liberal NDP agreement is a win
Rising prices everywhere from the grocery store and gas stations to rent, affect hardest, those who can afford it the least. Low-income Canadians aren’t in a position to buy in bulk, drive energy efficient vehicles, and most likely don’t own their own homes, so they are caught at every turn.
So their reality is more and more one of compromises most of us are fortunate enough not to have to consider. And among those compromises are decisions that affect their health.
Photo Crederit: canindia.com
For this reason, the deal to keep the Liberals in power until 2025 is particularly good news.
Not that I am particularly enamoured with Trudeau, but the NDP were holding the aces and from what I am seeing, they have played them well, leveraging their support to the benefit of those who need it the most, but also for all of us as a society.
As a result there will be more progress than we could otherwise have expected on dental and pharmacare programs for low-income Canadians, affordable housing, and climate change.
Check, check, check and check.
As one small example of the positive step this represents, let’s look at the dental care program. The deal commits the government to, this year, provide dental care for children up to 8 years old, expanding to 18 next year, then full implementation by 2025. The program is for families making less than $90,000.
Photo Credit: The Guardian
People who work in health care can confirm that every day they see low-income adults with terrible teeth infections. Dentists can’t treat them until the infection is dealt with, but these folks often can’t afford the antibiotics needed to get rid of the infection, so they have no choice but to continue on, enduring the pain. It’s a vicious cycle. And it usually starts in the younger years where, as poor kids, professional dental care is an unaffordable luxury. This change should not be seen as an excessive expense, but as an investment that will save us money down the line. That’s just one example. Parallels can be made with pharmacare and affordable housing just as easily.
Being one to hold grudges, I have not forgiven Trudeau for breaking his promise of two elections ago to abandon our asinine first-past-the-post election system, something he was against until he found it served him.
Image Credit: Halifax Examiner
As a result, he formed government last time around with only 32.6 percent of the vote. The rest of the democratized world, save the United States and Britain, realize that’s nuts, but since whoever is in power benefits from this system it isn’t likely to change.
But now, propping up that minority position with NDP support means that a majority of Canadian voters will have their voices count, given that, mathematically, the Liberal and NDP vote combined accounts for the majority of Canadian voters.
Photo Credit: CTV
It’s not Proportional Representation, or for that matter even a coalition government, but it is representative of a majority of Canadian voters, and given that’s what Proportional Representation is designed to achieve, it may be a reasonable facsimile. Technically, it’s called a Confidence and Supply Agreement.
Conservatives are calling it something different. They call it a Trudeau power grab, and, apparently taking a page from the American Republican playbook call it socialism, and, leader Candice Bergen calls it the implementation of “harsh and extreme polices”.
To my mind, she’s dead wrong, but in taking that view the Conservatives are making it easier to differentiate between what they, and what the majority of voting Canadians, believe Canada should strive to be.
Cover Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk
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