Thank you to everyone who attended the Emergency Online Rally and Phone Blitz for Pharmacare to flood the Health Minister’s office with messages of support for public, universal pharmacare!
If you were unable to join us, you can still participate by making a call:
On October 5, 2023, news broke that the NDP has rejected the Trudeau government’s draft pharmacare bill, which fell far short of the public, universal drug coverage that had been promised. Health Minister Mark Holland will have to go back to the drawing board and quickly come up with another draft – this is a chance to make our voices heard.
Discussions over the pharmacare legislation between the Liberals and NDP are still “extremely fluid,” according to Holland. We have to make sure the government doesn’t cave in to Big Pharma and the insurance industry, which have been pushing hard for a band-aid program that would exclude most Canadians and let drug prices continue to soar. We have a window of opportunity to make this pharmacare bill what we need it to be. And people like you are already doing the work to make that happen.
In the past two weeks, tens of thousands of Canadians have written to urge the Liberal government to keep its promise to enact a universal pharmacare plan, including over 3,200 Council of Canadians supporters. Dr. Eric Hoskins and former health minister Dr. Jane Philpott have added their voices to the call for a public, universal drug plan. So have dozens of unions, public health care defenders and allied organizations.
To turn up the heat and push for the pharmacare we want and need, the Council of Canadians hosted an Emergency Online Rally and Phone Blitz for Pharmacare to flood the Health Minister’s office with messages of support for public, universal pharmacare on October 12, 2023.
Hosted by the Council’s Co-Executive Director Robin Tress and Trade and Privatization Campaigner Nikolas Barry-Shaw, the online event was an opportunity to provide a brief campaign update, to walk participants through the steps of calling the Health Minister’s office, and will feature a few special guests.
By dialing up the pressure for public pharmacare, we have a chance to reverse the trend of health care privatization in favour of a stronger, more complete public health care system. Dr. Eric Hoskins, who chaired the committee that wrote the definitive pharmacare report, said adopting a bill that covered everyone and lowered drug prices would be “an enormous victory for Canadians” with a “transformational impact.”
