Our plan for a healthy society and a caring economy is about dignity. Ensuring dignity for people who face the impossible decision of choosing between groceries and medicine, for care workers through livable wages and benefits, and dignity for the people they look after each and every day.
Our universal healthcare system is under threat like it never has been before: from Conservative premiers selling it off piece by piece, and a Liberal federal government that lets them do it while starving the system of funding.
This is why we need an NDP that can stand up and fight to save and expand our healthcare system, including by fulfilling Tommy Douglas's dream and providing universal, comprehensive healthcare that covers you from head to toe.
We also need to fight for the people who work in healthcare and the broader care sector. More than three million people work in the care economy. These underpaid and undervalued essential workers provide the very connective tissue of society. And care work is low-carbon climate work: vastly expanding and improving these jobs is a key part of a Canadian Green New Deal.
As our population ages, we need to train and employ thousands more personal support workers to ensure quality long-term care, and available home care so that seniors can age in place and people with disabilities get the support they need to live their fullest lives. We also need thousands more early childhood educators, to end the long waitlists and expand $10-a-day childcare in communities large and small. In order to accomplish this, we must make care work a career. One that comes with a fair wage, benefits and a pension.
Our plan for a healthy society and a caring economy is about dignity. Ensuring dignity for people who face the impossible decision of choosing between groceries and medicine, for care workers through livable wages and benefits, and dignity for the people they look after each and every day.
That's why an Avi-led NDP will push for:
Head to toe healthcare
Introduce truly universal healthcare, bringing pharmacare, dental, vision, hearing, and mental health care under the public system. Ensure access to primary health care teams in every community. Defend reproductive healthcare and ensure equal access to abortion services across the country. Address the toxic drug crisis by guaranteeing and expanding access to life-saving harm reduction services.
Elder and long-term care that serves people, not profit
Remove profit-making from the sector and bring long-term care into the public and non-profit system, regulating it under the Canada Health Act. Establish and enforce national standards for high-quality care. Fund creative and local options for aging and care in communities across Canada.
Expanded and improved childcare
Double the number of high-quality spaces in the public and non-profit sectors. Improve access to culturally-appropriate childcare. Use Canada Post to send a free baby box containing essentials to new parents.
Making care work a valued career
Rapidly expand the number of people in Canada working as nurses, personal support workers, in childcare and other essential carework roles by streamlining recognition of foreign credentials, increasing wages and benefits, and making post-secondary education tuition-free.
Read Avi's full plan for Canada's health and care economy here .
