Health care unlikely to topple PM

Two large figures in the New Democratic Party have raised the spectre of a looming healthcare election in 2023.

It’s Christmas, not Halloween. Does either NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh or ex-leader Thomas Mulcair really want to scare Canadians as they head toward the holidays and a new year?

Here is a spoiler alert: No, Canada is not likely to plunge into an election over health care next year. It may well be that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governing deal with the New Democrats will become more fragile in 2023 — and maybe even fall apart — but health care is probably not the breaking point.

This isn’t to say health care is unimportant to citizens or political types as this dreadful year draws to a close. In fact, it’s fair to say the current crisis in emergency rooms and the faltering health-care system is as serious a threat to Canadians’ well-being as the COVID-19 pandemic was.

Singh raised the election threat earlier this week, saying a lack of progress on health care could imperil his party’s deal with the Liberals. Mulcair, in a column written for CTV, got behind Singh’s gambit, such as it was: “Casting himself as the true defender of Canada’s health-care system is the safest port in the gathering electoral storm. He’ll play the healthcare card from now until the election.”

Health care is the No. 1 issue in the Liberal-NDP governing pact, but the pact is vague on what exactly either the Liberals or NDP can do, given provinces, not the federal government, administer health care.

There’s the crux of the issue. Trudeau has only so much power to wrestle the provinces into improvements to the healthcare system. On Wednesday, federal Health Minister JeanYves Duclos told a news conference that Ottawa and the provinces have the makings of a deal, but premiers are holding out. Would Singh provoke an election because premiers are not working with Trudeau? Probably not.

Health care may be foremost on the minds of Canadians, especially because of COVID-19, but note that Canada already went to the polls in the midst of the pandemic — in late 2021 — and health care never did turn into a ballot-box question. Health care is one of those issues that can’t be easily polarized into a ballot-box question, it seems, even in the shadow of a global pandemic.

Everyone is in favour of better health care and every political party says it’s going to work cooperatively with the provinces. What’s more, no party is going to risk wading into the one debate that would be polarizing — whether Canada should embrace more private health care to ease the burden on the public system.

So on the final sitting day of the Commons, we saw all the political parties lining up to deliver their Christmas wish lists for better health care, different only in which aspects they emphasized for improvement.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wants more progress on getting credentials for foreign-trained health professionals who live in Canada, but aren’t working in their chosen fields. Poilievre has been pushing this idea for a while and has some worthy suggestions around the idea of deadlines and incentives to get credentials for these much-needed workers.

Bloc Québécois Leader YvesFrançois Blanchet mocked Trudeau as the guy who is afraid to attend the holiday gathering with the family, and urged the prime minister to sit down with the provinces.

Singh, for his part, asked why Trudeau wasn’t doing more to pay health-care workers and deliver on other promises in the last Liberal election platform.

These are all important ideas, but they all hinge on provincial co-operation and they aren’t the kind of issues that would fuel a great Canadian showdown over health care. The new year may see some serious conversations about health care — let’s hope so, anyway. It’s too important an issue to be polarized or politicized, and that’s why it’s unlikely to be waged on any campaign trail. For that maybe we should be grateful.