FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ottawa – Pharmacare has been stopped in its tracks by a “massive lobbying offensive” from the insurance industry, according to the Council of Canadians. Lobbyists representing companies like Manulife, Canada Life and Sun Life multiplied their meetings in the leadup to the release of the 2025 federal budget, according to federal lobbying data collected by the Council of Canadians.
The Council of Canadians is deeply concerned that the federal government’s decision to put the new national drug plan on ice was influenced by this behind-the-scenes pressure campaign, which at its peak saw insurance industry lobbyists meeting with policymakers about pharmacare as many as three times per week.
“Insurance industry interests have taken full advantage of the ‘open door’ policy for corporate lobbyists adopted by the Liberal government – to the detriment of the millions of Canadians who are struggling to afford their medications,” says Barry-Shaw.
Led by the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA), the insurance industry has lobbied top government officials, MPs and Senators 53 times about pharmacare since the April 28 election. Advisors to Health Minister Marjorie Michel, who recently declared that no new pharmacare funding agreements are on the table, met with insurance industry lobbyists to discuss the topic a total of 29 times.
“The Liberal government is breaking clear promises they made in the election and dismissing the recommendations of their own experts on pharmacare,” says Nikolas Barry-Shaw, lead campaigner on pharmacare for the Council of Canadians. “They have caved in to corporate interests on pharmacare, it’s as simple as that. It’s becoming a disturbing pattern with this government, one that risks alienating many progressive voters who expected better.”
Filings indicate that pharmacare talks with provinces were frequently at issue. The CLHIA’s lobbying registration indicates that discussions with Health Canada officials “related to the implementation of national pharmacare including bilateral agreements with provinces and territories.”
Only four provinces and territories (Manitoba, BC, Yukon, and PEI) have signed funding agreements for pharmacare, and progress has stalled since Mark Carney and the Liberals were re-elected. The insurance industry decried these initial pharmacare funding deals as “disappointing” when they were announced and has called for the repeal of the legislation that created the program.
In total, insurance industry lobbyists met with Carney government officials to discuss pharmacare 36 times since the election on April 28. Many of the lobbying targets were key policymakers responsible for the pharmacare file at Health Canada, Finance Canada and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), federal records show.
The lobbying push intensified after the Liberal caucus meeting on September 9 in Edmonton, when Prime Minister Carney pledged to roll out pharmacare to the remaining provinces “as quickly and as equitably as possible.” Federal records show the majority of insurance industry lobbying contacts (29 of 53) came after this declaration – an average of three meetings per week with elected officials and policy makers in Ottawa.
This was also the period when the federal government was preparing its November 4 budget, which included no new funding for pharmacare. Extending pharmacare coverage to all Canadians was one of the key planks of the Liberals’ healthcare platform, but the federal government has not allocated enough funds to meet this goal.
“It’s not a lack of money that’s holding up pharmacare, it’s a lack of political will,” says the Council of Canadians’ Barry-Shaw. “In a budget that announced over $147 billion in new funding, it is hard to believe that the Liberals could not find the roughly $1.3 billion per year needed to make good on their promise to expand pharmacare to cover all Canadians.”
Information in the federal registry suggests that the largest insurance companies coordinated
their lobbying push. Canada Life’s lobbying registration, for instance, indicated that it was lobbying to share “concerns” about pharmacare “directly and as a participant in the Together for Better Health Coalition,” an industry coalition created by the CLHIA in 2021 to oppose single-payer pharmacare.
The danger of undue corporate influence over the policy-making process was recently flagged by the federal government’s own Committee of Experts on pharmacare. Pharmacare will “provoke opposition from corporations that profit off the unfair status quo,” warns Dr. Nav Persaud in the committee’s final report, specifically naming insurance companies as opponents of change. “What’s needed now is the political will to shrug off industry lobbying and take these long-promised steps [to implement pharmacare],” writes Dr. Persaud, who chaired the committee.
The Council of Canadians urges the Health Minister and the Carney government to correct course. The national organization calls on the federal government to allocate the funding necessary to complete the rollout of pharmacare’s first phase (universal coverage for diabetes drugs and contraceptives) and resume negotiations with the remaining provinces immediately.
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Contact:
Nik Barry-Shaw
Council of Canadians
Trade and Privatization Campaigner
514-825-2263
nbarryshaw@canadians.org
| Lobbyist | Lobbying contacts (Total) | Health Canada | Finance Canada | Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) | MPs, Senators, other officials |
| Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) | 22 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 7 |
| Manulife | 13 | 10 | – | – | 3 |
| Canada Life | 8 | 3 | 1 | – | 4 |
| Sun Life | 5 | 4 | – | – | 1 |
| Greenshield | 5 | 3 | – | – | 2 |
| Industry total | 53 | 29 | 5 | 2 | 17 |
Data compiled by the Council of Canadians, federal lobbying registry, communications reports from April 28 to November 25, 2025. Only lobbying contacts with the word “pharmacare” or related terms (e.g. “health policy related to … drug benefit plans”) in the “Subject Matter” of the federal registry’s lobbying records were counted.
