Heading into the new year, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he’s confident in the state of his party’s confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals, as the deal nears its first anniversary.
The agreement, struck in March, would see the NDP prop up the minority Liberal government until 2025 in exchange for advancement on certain policy priorities. In the last nine months, they’ve made progress on a few big-ticket items, including a dental care program for children under 12 in lower-income families, which rolled out earlier this month, and a one-time $500 top-up to the Canada Housing Benefit, with applications opening up this week.
The Liberals also tabled legislation aimed at protecting the Canada-wide early learning and child-care system and its funding. Tabling the bill before the end of the year was a requirement under the supply-and-confidence agreement.
Yet to be seen are plans to expand the dental benefit next year to under 18-year-olds, seniors, and people living with disabilities, plus a national pharmacare program, and a handful of other promises.
“I think it has been an opportunity for us to fight for people, to use our power to get things done,” Singh told Joyce Napier on CTV’s Question Period, in an interview airing Sunday. “We know there is more to do, but we're proud that we've been able to be helpful.”
Singh said the NDP has the ability to pull its support of the Liberals if there are signs of “any element of the agreement being breached by the government,” but that he has no plans to do so anytime soon.
Rather, he said, he plans to “keep on fighting” for more progress on the NDP-backed initiatives, and he’s optimistic his 2023 set of priorities — namely the national pharmacare program — will come through.
“We’re very confident that'll be delivered as a part of what we forced the government to agree to,” he said.
“We forced them to agree to do this and it should be tabled by the end of next year,” he also said. “We're very confident that will happen.”
Asked whether he has a hard line that would cause him to scrap the deal, Singh said he’s waiting to see how 2023 goes, but he’s otherwise steadfast the agreement is having positive results.
“Broadly speaking, I've said the other kind of major way that we look at this is that there may come a moment when the government just completely fails to deliver on what people need, and just does no longer shows an interest in working to get things done,” he said. “We'll make that decision at that time if that's what it comes to, but for now our focus is on fighting for people, not giving up because it's tough, and not backing down from the fight because we're not getting the results that we want right now.”
With files from CTVNews.ca’s Rachel Aiello
