September 4, 2024 – Ottawa
The Liberal-NDP deal is dead
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has pulled the plug on his governing pact with Justin Trudeau, which saw the New Democrats support the minority Liberals in exchange for progress on a number of shared priorities.
The original deal — which morphed over the two-and-a-half years of its lifespan to include other commitments and deadlines — laid out 24 pledges spread across seven policy pillars.
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Here’s what got done, and what didn’t.
Health care
The centerpiece of the agreement was a pair of policy goals long-desired by the New Democrats: launching a new dental coverage program and passing legislation that would lay the groundwork for implementing a universal, national pharmacare program.
The first of those promises came to life in the form of a temporary dental benefit for children from eligible low-income families in 2022. That benefit has now been replaced with the Canadian Dental Care Plan, a dental insurance program that covers, partially or in full, a range of services for eligible seniors, youth under the age of 18 and adults with a valid Disability Tax Credit. More than two million Canadians have enrolled in the plan with nearly 450,000 of them receiving services. All other eligible Canadians can apply for the program starting next year.
After negotiations stalled and deadlines were rehashed earlier this year, both parties also made progress on their drug coverage promises. Ottawa introduced the Canada Pharmacare Act in February, which outlined a plan to first cover diabetes and birth control drugs and devices, and laid out a framework for wider government-paid drug coverage. The bill, which has yet to clear the Senate, also promises (as required by the deal) to develop a national formulary of essential drugs and establish a bulk purchasing plan.
The deal also includes a vague promise to work with provinces and territories to invest in health-care systems battered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, the Liberals pledged to boost annual federal transfers and earmarked billions of dollars more to striking bilateral health deals with Canada’s premiers.
What the deal has failed to secure on the health-care front is tabling the Safe Long-Term Care Act to improve seniors’ care; so far, Ottawa has only completed consultations for the planned legislation.
Affordability
Another issue central to the parliamentary pact was tackling issues like housing and child care for Canadians feeling squeezed by cost-of-living pressures.
The deal saw the launch of the Housing Accelerator Fund, the extension of the Rapid Housing Initiative, top ups to the Canada Housing Benefit, and the passage of the Early Learning and Child Care Act.
The NDP also pushed for other items outside the original deal, such as implementing a national school food program and the Canada Disability Benefit, but has expressed disappointment in the planned rollout of those initiatives.
Not achieved? Putting in place a homebuyers’ bill of rights, which was aimed at making the home-buying process more fair and transparent.
Climate
Both both the NDP and the Liberals have long claimed to be champions for climate action. Often, they have accused each other of not doing enough to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
The deal purported to make progress on this shared priority in a number of areas. Some of them were vague, like the commitment to advance unspecified measures to significantly drop emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. That’s the year in which, under the international Paris Agreement, Canada has promised emissions will be at least 40 per cent lower than they were in 2005.
More specific action that came out of the deal was the collaboration between the NDP and Liberals on the Sustainable Jobs Act, a bill that became law in June. The legislation is meant to help workers in the emerging greener economy through skills training and other programs. Under the new law, the government must release a plan every five years, starting in 2025, to show how it is supporting this transition.
The government also put up money in the 2022 budget to create a Sustainable Jobs Training Centre to help workers learn new skills for a cleaner economy.
The deal also committed the government to create a plan to “phase out public financing” for the fossil-fuel sector. The Liberals have promised to do so, including from Crown corporations that funded construction of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion and other fossil fuel projects. At the same time, some tax credits for exploration and development are still available for fossil-fuel companies. And the NDP has criticized some federal policies that direct public dollars to profitable oil and gas firms that invest in ways to reduce their emissions.
Workers’ rights
Both planks addressing workers’ rights that were enshrined in the original deal have been met.
The first was a pledge to ensure that federally-regulated workers would receive up to 10 days of paid sick leave a year, which came into effect for federal private sector workplaces at the end of 2022.
The second has been touted as one of the deal’s biggest victories: passing “anti-scab” legislation, which would ban the use of replacement workers in situations where employees in federally regulated industries get locked out from the job or go on strike. That bill became law earlier this year and received unanimous support in the House of Commons, but won’t come into effect until next year.
Reconciliation
The parties also agreed to work together on priorities for Indigenous Peoples. This resulted in a commitment to spend $4 billion by 2029 on housing in First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities.
The deal also committed the government to “providing the necessary supports” for Indigenous communities to conduct burial searches at the sites of former residential schools, where children were taken for decades to be indoctrinated into the settler Canadian culture. A fund created in 2021 has provided more than $216 million for initiatives that include searches of unmarked burial sites, according to the federal government. But in August, after criticism that these supports fell short in part because of a new $500,000 limit, the Liberals lifted the cap and pledged to “do better” to support communities searching for lost children in unmarked graves.
Other aspects of the deal billed under Indigenous reconciliation are still in progress, including the creation of a roundtable with different levels of government on missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+, and implementing the calls for justice from the 2019 inquiry that concluded the issue amounted to genocide.
Tax measures
As part of the alliance, both the NDP and the Liberals pledged to impose “tax changes on financial institutions which have made strong profits during the pandemic,” which was enshrined in the 2022 federal budget — the first spending blueprint to land after the deal’s forging just weeks earlier.
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The second commitment under this section of the deal promised to implement a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry to improve corporate transparency by the end of 2023. Legislation to create such a registry was passed in November of last year.
Electoral reform
The final pillar of the deal focused on advancing several proposed electoral reforms, pledging to work with Elections Canada to improve the way elections are conducted.
Earlier this year, the Liberals announced they were seeking to amend the Canada Elections Act to make a bevy of changes. That included adding two extra days of advanced voting (the deal originally called for election day itself to be expanded to three days), expanding where voters are able to cast a ballot and improving the process to submit ballots by mail. The bill was still winding its way though the House of Commons when the lower chamber rose for its summer recess.
Article originally posted by the Toronto Star.
