NDP offers familiar policies to expand health care, tax the rich in new election-ready list of promises

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This article was published 11/08/2021 (1233 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA—The NDP is drawing from a familiar policy playbook as the party prepares for the next federal election, promising to expand universal health care to cover mental health treatment, medicine and more — expensive programs it will pay for by hiking taxes on big business and the “super” rich.

Appearing Thursday in St. John’s, Nfld., federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh laid out his party’s vision in a 115-page document called “Ready for Better.”

While sparse on details like costs and revenues of the plan, the document includes a wide range of policies the NDP says it would implement if it won power in Ottawa. The party is promising to spend billions of dollars to create a universal pharmacare program, and would implement dental and mental health care programs for Canadians without private insurance coverage during the first mandate of an NDP government. The NDP would also create a basic livable income for all Canadians, starting “immediately” with a program for seniors and people with disabilities.

To try and pay for it all, the NDP says it would increase income taxes for corporations and high-earners, and would also expand its definition of “super rich” so that its proposed one-per-cent wealth tax is applied to all households with assets exceeding $10 million.

A version of the commitment — like many of the promises the NDP laid out on Thursday — appeared in the party’s platform for the 2019 election. The NDP lost 15 of the 39 seats it had going into that campaign. But Singh said Thursday that he’s confident Canadians will give his party’s policies another chance, because he believes the problems the NDP is trying to address — inequality, climate change, and more — have only gotten worse since the last election.

“Sometimes you look at items on the menu and you say, ‘You know what, maybe I should have bought that last time.’ And that is what we’re hoping people realize — that all the things we talked about are the things that people need,” Singh told reporters Thursday morning.

He did not say whether the NDP’s proposed tax increases will pay for all the programs they are proposing, but claimed that only his party is willing to state unequivocally that it will raise government revenues by increasing taxes on the rich. Along with the wealth tax and higher taxes on corporate income and people who make more than $210,000 per year, the NDP wants to create a special “excess profits” levy that would double the income tax for corporations that profited beyond expectations during the pandemic and made more than $10 million in 2020.

Singh said the NDP’s targeting of the rich is central to what it will offer Canadians in the next election.

“We are the only party stating clearly and unequivocally: the burden shouldn’t fall on you and your families; it shouldn’t fall on small businesses that have already struggled so much. We are going to ask the ultra-rich to finally start paying their fair share and invest that into people, ” Singh said.

Yet even while Singh laid out the NDP’s policy priorities for the next election, he once again denounced how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is widely expected to call an election in the coming days. With COVID-19 cases rising in a fourth wave of the pandemic, Singh argued now is not the time for what he called Trudeau’s “selfish summer election.”

Here are some of the key election pledges the NDP made on Thursday:

Pandemic recovery

The party promises to create “more than a million good jobs” within the first mandate of an NDP government by spending money to retrofit buildings, build more renewable energy sources, public transit and affordable housing units, and create $10-per-day child-care programs across the country.

The party would aim to boost the Canadian economy by making sure all steel, wood and aluminum used in public infrastructure projects comes from domestic sources.

Party officials said Thursday that the NDP would also extend emergency benefits created under the Liberal minority government until a post-pandemic recovery is complete. And they would increase unemployment payouts so that all recipients get at least $2,000 per month — the same level paid out to millions of people who received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the pandemic.

The NDP would also bring in a guaranteed livable income for seniors and people with disabilities, with a long-term plan to extend it so its available for all Canadians.

And with an eye to preparing the country for future pandemics, the NDP would create a Crown corporation to produce vaccines in Canada, and vows to ensure the government’s emergency stockpile has enough personal protective equipment.

Affordability

Alongside promises to bring free dental care, mental health care, and pharmacare, the NDP is matching the Liberal government’s pledge to work with provinces to implement $10-a-day child care. The party is also pledging a $15-an-hour minimum wage that will climb to $20-an-hour in federally-regulated sectors.

Like in 2019, the party is vowing to impose a “price cap” on cellphone and internet bills. It is also once again pledging to create 500,000 new affordable housing units over the next decade.

The NDP would also create a “Fair Gasoline Prices Watchdog” to investigate complaints of price gouging at the pump.

The party is also vowing to work with provinces to bring post-secondary education into their public school systems, to permanently stop collecting federal interest on student loans and cancel up to $20,000 in current student debt for 350,000 graduates.

Climate change

An NDP government would aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change by 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — exceeding the Liberal government’s new target of at least 40 per cent that year.

To get there, the NDP says it would improve the Liberals’ “climate accountability” law, which mandates transparency around how Canada is progressing toward eliminating net emissions by 2050. The NDP would add multi-year “carbon budgets” that would cap emissions for certain sectors.

The party would also mandate steeper reductions in methane emissions — a particularly potent greenhouse gas — and start a program to renovate all buildings in Canada so they are energy-efficient by 2050.

And, while the NDP would maintain the Liberal government’s national minimum carbon price — which is scheduled to increase from $40-per-tonne to $170-per-tonne in 2030 — the party vows to dismantle the special pricing system designed for certain heavy industries like steel and cement production. The NDP says that system amounts to an “exemption” for big polluters and one official said the party would instead apply the basic carbon price to all industrial emissions.

Reconciliation and racial justice

Like the Liberals have promised since before they took power in 2015, the NDP would implement all 94 recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that studied the horrors of Canada’s residential school system for Indigenous children, as well as the calls for action from the 2019 report on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The party would replace requirements to consult with Indigenous communities impacted by government policies and development proposals with a “standard of free, prior and informed consent” — a key aspect of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The party also pledges to ensure all First Nations have clean drinking water, and that the NDP would “fully fund” the search for graves at former residential schools, after hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered this year.

The NDP is also pledging to tackle racism in Canada, promising to “dismantle far-right extremist organizations” that promote white supremacy, ban carding for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and create a national task force to address the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in Canadian prisons.

Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @aballinga