Health, Care and Recognition
We have long been known as the party of healthcare, but we have let Liberals own our successes as of late. It is time we reclaim that title, not just for our party but for all healthcare advocates who fought long and hard to build our public healthcare system. Liberals and Conservatives systematically dismantled public services through privatization and our healthcare system has not been spared.
Our health care professionals are stretched too thin, and too many people are languishing while waiting for the care they need. More than 6.5 million Canadians do not have access to a family doctor, that number is only growing. We must acknowledge that Canada’s healthcare crisis is fundamentally a health human resources (HHR) crisis. With one in three nurses considering leaving the profession and provinces competing for the same limited pool of physicians and nurse practitioners, this national emergency demands bold federal leadership focused on recruitment and retention.
We must double down on making healthcare truly universal and for the ‘whole’ person; that means head to toe coverage. Mental health, oral health, gender-affirming care, and prescription drugs, are all essential to inclusive whole-person health care.
There are three key parts to accomplishing this:
Address the Health Profession Crisis
Make Truly Universal Healthcare
Equitable Health Care for Rural, Remote, and Indigenous Communities
Address the Health Profession Crisis
-
Nurses are already stretched thin and forced to work in impossible conditions. Safe nurse-to-patient ratios are essential to protect both patients and healthcare workers.
Governments in BC, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia are already starting to implement nurse-to-patient ratios. That is why it is time to tie federal health transfers to the implementation of safe staffing ratios, with a recommended national benchmark of one nurse to four patients so that healthcare facilities in all of Canada are adequately staffed and nurses are not overworked.
-
Canadians looking to enter caring professions should not be steered away due to crushing tuition fees and practicums that come with a bill from their post-secondary institution. We need to do away with unpaid clinical training periods, like unpaid preceptorships for nurses, bring forward accessible pathways to health care workforce training and make sure healthcare professionals’ education is free.
-
It is unacceptable that internationally qualified healthcare professionals who want to contribute to our healthcare system can’t. We all know too many well educated health care professionals that are working gig jobs because of our government's inability to streamline bridging them into our healthcare system. We must establish a national credentialing program for nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners, and midwives. Let’s create a welcoming system that honours newcomers’ education and experience without sacrificing professional standards.
Make Truly Universal Healthcare
-
One in five Canadians do not have private insurance for dental care, prescription medicine, and essential health care supports like counselling and allied clinical care.
Liberals only got on board with the NDP’s universal pharmacare and dental care they were forced to, but they only enacted it halfway and ensured to add a layer of privatization as a nod to big pharma. Universal Health Care is Oral Care, Optical Care, Pharmacare, Gender Affirming Care, and Mental Health Care and they’re all essential to healthy Canadians. We cannot allow only those with the financial means to live healthy and well in Canada. We must champion universal public healthcare by tying federal health transfers to expanded coverage that includes mental health supports, eye care, and prescription drug care.
-
Universal healthcare should include everyone regardless of their status. We will work with the provinces and territories to ensure public health care is available to everyone in Canada, including temporary foreign workers, international students, and residents regardless of immigration status.
-
Being able to access the support you need to keep yourself healthy and well should never come down to whether you can afford the prescription or the appointment with the health care provider. For-profit long-term care homes and commercial delivery of care services should be phased out in favour of public and non-profit management and operation. A Tanille-led NDP federal government will never tolerate the privatization of essential services in Canada.
Equitable Health Care for Rural, Remote, and Indigenous Communities
-
Rural healthcare is being pushed online and written off as too expensive. Our Canada Health Act must provide equitable funding in order to enable comprehensive in person care in rural and isolated communities and compensation of providers at a rate that provides support for recruitment and considers the cost of living in rural and isolated areas in Canada. No one should have to drive for hours, or be airlifted from their community to access primary care.
We need to overhaul our rural healthcare infrastructure. That means tying provincial healthcare transfer payments to the building of new rural hospitals, and specialized care sites like treatment and long-term care.
It also means implementing a coordinated rural health workforce strategy, increasing investments in the National Advanced Skills and Training Program for Rural Practice programs, and partnering with post-secondary institutions to expand medical training opportunities in rural communities.
-
Canada’s healthcare crisis is a national emergency, but in many rural and isolated First Nations the situation has reached a critical breaking point.
Healthcare for First Nations people and Inuit is a federal responsibility, and the government is failing to meet that obligation. Indigenous Peoples experience higher rates of chronic illness, infectious disease, and mental health challenges, in large part because of inadequate access to healthcare. Across the country, there is a significant gap in health infrastructure and a critical shortage of healthcare professionals needed to provide consistent, accessible primary care in Indigenous communities.
The federal government must step up to close this gap by investing in community-based healthcare infrastructure and by establishing a national compensation, recruitment and retention framework for physicians and nurse practitioners working in Indigenous communities. This framework should recognize the unique challenges of rural and remote practice and support the integration of traditional medicines to ensure culturally appropriate, comprehensive care.
-
Until healthcare is truly universal and accessible across Canada, Jordan’s Principle must be fully funded. Indigenous children must be able to access medically necessary services — including healthcare, complex care, dental care, vision care, and social services — without jurisdictional disputes. Fully funding Jordan’s Principle is both a moral and legal obligation, and it will save lives.
-
Drinking water that is unsafe and dirty produces negative health outcomes for Indigenous people across Canada. In an era where we’re condoning the use of water to cool data centres, it’s a disgrace that we have Nations in our country living in third-world conditions without potable drinking water.
We must enshrine the right to clean water into law. It is time to introduce Indigenous Clean Water legislation, a piece of legislation that Carney's Liberals shamefully abandoned. A legal right to safe and clean drinking water must be grounded in the inherent and treaty rights of Indigenous Peoples and include protection for freshwater sources.
That also means investing in water treatment capabilities for in-community treatment and testing to lift all long-term boil water advisories and replacing aging and failing water infrastructure for all Indigenous communities across the country.
