As was ever thus, the Twitter Machine erupted with fury and disingenuous outrage when health minister Patty Hajdu told reporters that she couldn’t guarantee that a national pharmacare programme would be in place at the end of the current parliament (for which we don’t know when that will be, as a hung parliament rarely lasts beyond two years.

“Some of that will be predicted by, predicated by, the responses of the provinces and territories,” said Hajdu, because *mind blown* healthcare is largely the domain of the provinces and any pharmacare system would have to be negotiated with them – in particular, a national formulary, which is going to be extremely complicated to ensure that existing plans don’t get left behind or that the new national plan isn’t worse off than any existing ones that it would replace.

What is especially irritating are all of the voices crying out that this just means the Liberals were lying on the campaign trail, which is false and ridiculous – Trudeau spent the campaign not overpromising on this file, but rather kept saying that it was contingent on negotiation with provinces, which is why their fiscal plan only called for a “down payment” on such a programme rather than the whole thing, but nevertheless, the promise was to go by the principles of the Hoskins Report, which they have bene doing thus far. The NDP, by contrast, insisted that this could be done by 2020, and whenever anyone brought up the fact that the provinces may object, the line was largely that why would anyone say no to federal dollars? It’s absurd, of course, because provinces are rightfully afraid that they would be stuck with an expensive programme to run if the federal government suddenly cut out transfers or funds to it because they suddenly had other priorities (which has happened in the past).

And to that end, we have a bunch of premiers who are balking at it, Quebec and Alberta want to be able to opt-out with compensation, and Ontario is instead insisting that the federal government pay for drugs to treat rare diseases – the most expensive kind, and the ones where costs are rapidly escalating. So of course they want the federal government to pay for them rather than to share the burden. It’s predictable, and for anyone to be shocked and appalled that the Liberals have to deal with this reality is really, really tiresome.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau says that the New NAFTA implementation will be the top priority when the Commons returns, but the Bloc plans to slow things down over aluminium.
• Trudeau also says that he has not had any conversations with the Queen about arrangements for Harry and Meghan, security or otherwise.
• The Correctional Investigator says that the percentage of inmates who are Indigenous has reached record highs.
• It looks increasingly like those “supporters” of Meng Wanzhou who were protesting outside of her extradition hearing were paid to be there.
• The federal government is providing $20 million over five years to help establish the arm’s length Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.
• Several former CSIS employees are suing the government for racial discrimination.
• Delays in export permits is causing problems for Canadian arms and technology exporters, even though most of the equipment goes to allied countries.
• Jean Charest is officially out of the Conservative leadership race.
• Pierre Poilievre has clarified that he would allow MPs to table anti-abortion private members’ bills, but would ensure they would not pass as Harper did.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column dissects the Canada-China Relations committee hearing for clues about what it augurs for our hung parliament.
• Paul Wells has a fascinating meditation on how the Chrétien and Trudeau II-era Liberal Parties have taken such striking differences in tone on dealing with China.
• Chris Selley explores the dilemmas facing the government around expanding access to medical assistance in dying.
• Selley also finds a certain amount of petulance in Jean Charest’s decision not to run for the Conservative leadership.
• My column looks at Samara’s report on the garbage Reform Act and how their credulous take on the legislation undermines their credibility.

Odds and ends:

A new monument for victims of the government’s purge of LGBT civil servants and military personnel will be established in Ottawa by 2024.

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