Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh took his election campaign to Windsor-Essex Friday with big promises about health care to drum up support for three local incumbents the party needs to see returned to the House of Commons.
Accompanied by Brian Masse (Windsor West) and Cheryl Hardcastle (Windsor-Tecumseh), Singh first paid a visit to Essex candidate Tracey Ramsey’s office to tout the party’s plans for pharmacare. Then, in a bus sporting his beaming face on the side, Singh journeyed to Windsor, where he met with Mayor Drew Dilkens at his city hall office.
He wrapped up his day with a packed audience of about 300 people at Windsor’s Fogolar Furlan in the city where he lived from age 7 to 23.
“They make sure I don’t forget my hometown, where I grew up,” said Singh about the local NDP candidates in the spotlight with him. “They ensure I remember the issues that matter here. They fight hard for you.”
Masse told the Fogolar audience he sees a lot of the characteristics late NDP leader Jack Layton possessed in Singh. His handshake, the “extra bounce in his step,” his smile, and his “willingness to engage people at all economic levels, at all opportunities,” all remind Masse of his friend Layton, who he misses “every single day.”
“Here we are, working people taking care of each other and making sure the profound knowledge that we have from living real lives matters and is reflected in our policy decisions,” Hardcastle said. “We’re capable of doing that as a country.”
Singh kicked off the town hall discussion with the same message he touted in Essex.
“If you and your loved ones need life-saving medications or devices, you should go and use your health card, not your credit card.”
The plan would involve matching the prices of pharmaceuticals in Canada to the prices charged in other countries, he said, bringing costs for Canadians down. He claimed the current Liberal government had hundreds of times been lobbied by “big pharma” against making such a move over the past four years.
“They’ve made decisions that make life easier for the very wealthiest, the people at the top — governments in Ottawa have been working for the rich,” Singh said. “I don’t work for the rich.”
“We can expand our health care system to include pharmacare, but only if we have the courage to take on the powerful lobbyists at the very top,” Singh said.
In an attack on the Conservative Party’s pledge to lower taxes, Singh pointed to Ontario’s provincial government under Doug Ford, and issued a buyer-beware message.
“He (Ford) brought in cuts that hurt the most marginalized, the most vulnerable—that’s not the solution,” Singh said. “That’s going to make things worse.”
Singh then used the town hall to field questions from members of the audience. In response to a woman concerned about environmental protection, he said the NDP would end fossil-fuel subsidies to big corporations on its first day in office, and reinvest those funds in renewable energy. To questions about protecting Canadian manufacturing jobs in and out of the automotive industry from moving to Mexico, he said the NDP would create a much-needed national manufacturing and automotive strategy and negotiate “fair” trade agreements that level the playing field for Canadian workers.
He vowed to cover dental care for Canadians without insurance who earn less than $70,000 per year. A social worker in the audience said some of her clients go without dental visits and end up in the emergency room for health issues.
“We can get open-heart surgery, but for some reason, our health care system doesn’t consider our teeth part of our health,” Singh said. “It really makes no sense.”
That plan would be “government, publicly owned insurance,” and would cost $856-million and cover the 4.3 million Canadians without dental coverage, he said.
Related
The NDP would lower the voting age to 16, he told one girl worried about not having a say in Canadian elections. It would also implement a price cap on cell phone plans—“Canadians pay the highest prices in the world.”
“We don’t have to choose between the red door or the blue door. We can choose a beautiful, shiny orange door.”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
