Roundup: Stop ignoring the premiers’ role in pharmacare

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Over the weekend, the Star ran a brief interview with Dr. Eric Hoskins, former Ontario health minister and the person that Justin Trudeau initially tasked with writing a report on getting to pharmacare, about the current situation between the government and the NDP over getting to just that. Hoskins says he’s trying to have high-level engagements with both parties, because this could be the last opportunity to get this to work in a long time, but some of that means getting the NDP to back down on their arbitrary timelines (which is more than reasonable considering how much their stupid timeline demands has meant a poor rollout of dental care, because proper implementation can take time).

This having been said, I was struck by the fact that the story completely left out the role of the premiers in this, and I cannot stress this enough, because healthcare delivery is a provincial responsibility, you cannot in any way, shape or form, get to national, universal pharacare without the provinces on board. And no, this isn’t something that they can just opt-in to over time, like the NDP seem to think—they need to be in on it from the ground floor, so that they can shape the direction of the Canada Drug Agency, and negotiate a national formulary rather than just the federal government pulling it out of their asses and, again, expecting the provinces to sign onto it (again, like the NDP seem to think). Hoskin’s whole report premised on the provinces being active participants in the process, because this affects them fundamentally. And it’s the provinces who have been the biggest hold-up for moving forward with this—only PEI has moved ahead, and thanks to the gradual build-up they’ve implemented with the federal government, they have a low-cost co-pay system running in the province, which is a wild step-up from the virtually nothing they at the provincial government level before.

The way that media keep talking about pharmacare is that this is something the federal government will do on high, and will somehow pay for entirely themselves, which again, is not how this would work. The PBO’s report cites a figure that the federal and provincial governments together would be paying (using whatever a methodology that may or may not survive reality), but doesn’t have any breakdown about what the cost-share would be, because of course that would need to be negotiated. It would be great if the national conversation, particularly that is happening in media, could actually include the crucial role of the provinces, but we all know that legacy media is allergic to the issues around jurisdiction, and it means a much worse discourse as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces intensified their push toward Avdiivka in the east, and Kherson in the south, while six people were killed in a Russian missile strike on a postal distribution centre in Kharkiv. Russian forces claim that they foiled several attempts by Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnipro river near Kherson over the past day. Meanwhile, here is a look at Ukrainians preparing for another winter of attacks on the electricity grid, as they prepare firewood and candles.

Good reads:

  • Late Saturday night, Bill Blair put out a statement saying that the Canadian Forces Intelligence reviewed the Al-Ahli hospital explosion and decided Israel didn’t hit it.
  • Mélanie Joly and Ahmed Hussen attended a peace conference in Cairo and increased Canadian aid to Gaza and Israel to $50 million.
  • Joly also said that government flights leaving Tel Aviv will end today for lack of demand, but could ramp up if the situation changes.
  • Randy Boissonnault says that if Alberta leaves the CPP, that it’s a one-way ticket with no chance to be able to re-join it in the future.
  • Sean Fraser has been calling out Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri for taking credit for housing projects funded by the government, which she voted against.
  • Documents show that officials warned the government that changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement would exacerbate smuggling and remote crossings.
  • Some allied countries are anxious because Canada is ready to implement a digital services tax on web giants if they can’t get their act together as a collective.
  • Canadians trapped in Gaza say that the twenty trucks of aid allowed in so far haven’t made a dent in the crisis there (unsurprisingly).
  • The NDP are slowly starting to get election-ready, starting candidate nominations and testing campaign messaging.
  • Jennifer Robson completely dismantles Poilieve’s housing bill, and how he plans to achieve is targets in utterly unconstitutional ways.
  • Paul Wells has some additional thoughts about the situation in Quebec with tuition increases and how it played out in the US.
  • Susan Delacourt is disgusted by the display of contempt for Speaker Fergus as he attempted to make his speech on enforcing decorum in the Chamber.

Odds and ends:

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