Canada’s 2021 federal election is a week and a half away and social policy, especially around childcare and public health, is dominating the talking points of all four major party leaders.

At campaign stops across the country, the leaders of the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Green Party are facing questions on how to address the ongoing lack of affordable childcare, what to do about the gaps in Canada’s social safety net, and whether or not to pass mandatory vaccination requirements. (We are not including the People’s Party of Canada due to their lack of any representation in the House of Commons). 

What is clear is that all parties believe Canada needs a stronger, more robust healthcare system that works for the benefit of all. The inadequacies of the COVID-19 pandemic response were not lost on any of them. Nor is the existence of climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, and Canada’s humanitarian assistance obligations.

Where they differ, of course, is in their approach to creating a more stable, secure, and prosperous Canada. Future of Good dove into all of the currently available policy proposals to get a sense of how each party views some of Canada’s most pressing social issues.

Under the radar promises

Bridging the digital divide got a mention in the NDP and Conservative platforms and is a longstanding promise of the Liberals. In his plan, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says his party will get rural broadband built in the next four years, slightly ahead of the previous government’s plan to connect 98 percent of Canadians to broadband internet by 2026. The Conservative platform also wants to streamline application processes for Indigenous communities interested in broadband programs, as well as “more flexible funding arrangements”. 

The NDP plan commits to making high speed internet an essential service, improving cell service across Canada, and launching a new Northern Infrastructure Fund to fast-track investment in rural infrastructure, including broadband. 

Meanwhile, the Liberal platform will require large national carriers who purchase broadband rights to accelerate the rollout of high speed internet over a series of deadlines between now and 2025. If those deadlines aren’t met, the government will re-sell those broadband rights to smaller providers.

As for the Greens — they’re promising to support the Universal Broadband Fund put in place by the Liberals, break up telecom monopolies, and request $150 million annually over the next four years “to reach communities at the lowest end of the eligibility spectrum”, according to a section in their party platform. 

Improving Indigenous food sovereignty — or the self-sufficiency of Indigenous food production — is on the NDP’s agenda with promises to reform the Nutrition North program to improve food security and work with Indigenous communities in the North to expand food access, including traditional foods. The Liberals are promising to continue the Local Food Infrastructure Fund to help local organizations pay for community gardens or equipment, and top up the $50 million-a-year initiative with an additional $10 million in 2021-2022. 

Improving Nutrition North is also a priority for the Conservatives, although neither it nor the Liberals mention Indigenous food sovereignty specifically in their platforms. The Greens promise to protect food sovereignty and transition Canada’s agricultural model towards regionally based food systems, as well as consult with Arctic communities to build greenhouses and hydroponic towers. However, their platform doesn’t mention ‘Indigenous food sovereignty’ specifically. 

Supporting the 20 percent of Canadians who live with disabilities is a vital social policy area that rarely gets a lot of attention during election campaigns. The Liberals are promising to create a direct monthly payment program for low-income Canadians with disabilities, although its platform doesn’t say how much it would offer. This time around, the Conservatives are promising to double the Canada Workers Benefit’s disability supplement to $1500, overhaul Canada’s disability support and benefits system, and reduce the number of hours needed to qualify for the Disability Tax Credit. 

The NDP, by contrast, wants to expand income security programs to offer a guaranteed livable income to Canadians with a disability, as do the Greens. The Greens also want a Canada Disabilities Act to better articulate disability policy in this country, a move long championed by Canadian disability advocates, and support a national equipment fund to provide wheelchairs and other accessibility tools to those in need. 

Banning conversion therapy at the federal level is a longstanding demand of many in Canada’s LGBTQ community. The Liberals ultimately didn’t pass their proposed legislation into law, but vow to do so if re-elected. The Greens, NDP, and Conservatives are promising to pick up where Trudeau’s government left off — although the Conservatives’ ban would not criminalize what their platform called “non-coercive conversations.”

Addressing the intergenerational impacts of colonialism and residential schools is just as important to the reconciliation process as acknowledging Canada’s history of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples. The Conservative platform offers $1 billion over five years for Indigenous focused mental health and addictions treatment, but the NDP platform specifically calls for “community-driven solutions for healing” similar to the former Aboriginal Healing Foundation as a way to address ongoing trauma. And the Liberals are committing $1.4 billion for a mental health and wellness strategy for Indigenous communities.

Meanwhile, the Greens promise to support cultural revitalization and healing as a result of systemic oppression and intergenerational trauma, but don’t offer many specifics beyond that. 

The concept of a safe supply to replace toxic illicit drugs is growing more and more prominent, especially as opioid overdose deaths skyrocket. The Liberals were in talks with Vancouver officials about decriminalizing drugs at the local level before the election was called, but the party’s new platform doesn’t say anything about decriminalization or safe supply. 

Only the NDP and Greens are calling for a safe supply of medically regulated drugs as alternatives to illicit drugs, with the latter party also calling for better funding for community-based organizations to support drug users. While the Conservatives say law enforcement should focus on drug dealers and drug traffickers, their policy doesn’t talk about safe supply or decriminalization, although O’Toole promised on August. 19 to ask Health Canada to review the ongoing ban on ‘poppers’, a blanket term for a type of recreational drug mainly used by men who have sex with men. 

Top of the agenda

When it comes to healthcare, all of the major parties are looking for similar improvements: more production of vaccines and PPE within Canada, better health intelligence to monitor the globe for pandemics, and a ramp-up of Canada’s biomedical research capacity. The Conservatives are promising a mental health action plan that includes millions in grants to non-profits and charities working on mental health and wellness, while the NDP and the Greens want drug plans, and dental care to all be free of charge. (The NDP wants universal mental health care, too.) 

Alongside billions in healthcare transfers, the Liberals promise $3.2 billion to help provinces and territories hire 7,500 new family doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners. They’ll also require provinces to provide accessible sexual and reproductive health services, or face deductions from federal health transfers. 

Indigenous affairs are recognized as a major issue by all Canadian federal parties. The Conservative policy focuses on documenting the horrors of residential schools, and boosting Indigenous economic development, while the NDP vow to implement all of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action as well as the recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The Greens promise to bring in all First Nations in the design of legislation around the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Carrying over from their past mandate, the Liberals want to make “any investments necessary” to eliminate all boil-water advisories in Indigenous communities, work on child and family service reform, and require all Cabinet ministers to implement UNDRIP principles regardless of their portfolios.

On climate change, the Liberals insist balancing climate resilience efforts and Canada’s fossil fuel dependent economy is possible. Its recent promises include investing $5 billion in the Net Zero Accelerator over the next seven years to help companies reduce emissions, train 1,000 new community based firefighters to combat wildfires, and make the oil and gas sector, Canada’s most polluting heavy industry, net zero by 2050. 

The Greens have a broad platform ranging from banning particularly harmful pesticides to ending all fossil fuel subsidies, banning fracking, and cancelling all new pipeline projects starting with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. They’d also promise to replace “every high paying fossil fuel sector job with a high paying green sector job” through a combination of wage insurance, retraining programs, and early retirement options. Included in their platform are promises to ban single-use plastics, invest in the cleantech sector, and create a ‘carbon budget’ for Canada. 

The NDP’s platform calls for Canada to work with Indigenous communities to protect cultural and biological diversity in their territories along with the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps of young workers to protect wetlands and plant trees. Meanwhile, the Conservatives want more electric vehicles (and charging infrastructure) on the road and a tax credit to encourage carbon capture technology – but promise not to phase out the oil and gas industry.

Plans to fight racism and hatred across Canada also vary widely among the three major parties. As pointed out recently in Maclean’s, the Conservatives don’t even mention the words “racism”, “race”, “Islamophobia”, and “Black” anywhere in their recently released platform, while the NDP are promising to fund dedicated hate crime units within local police forces and convene a national working group specifically to fight online hate. The Liberals would boost funding for Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy and introduce legislation within 100 days of forming government that would hold social media platforms accountable for any harmful content they host, including hate speech and content that incites violence. And the Greens would better fund research and advocacy groups who work on addressing hatred. 

Affordable childcare is perhaps the most important women’s issue in the election so far. More than 500,000 women in the Canadian economy never went back to work after losing their jobs during the pandemic, according to an RBC Economics report. The Liberals started laying the groundwork for a national childcare plan in their spring 2021 budget and the NDP and Greens have already promised their own childcare strategies if they win. Quebec already has a provincially funded childcare plan, leaving little need for the Bloc to advocate for it. The Conservatives, however, want to scrap the Liberal plan and replace it with a tax credit system — a move childcare advocates say will make it tougher for low-income women to access childcare in the first place.

Each party’s approach to international aid and development varies considerably. The Conservatives emphasize fighting slavery, human trafficking, and radicalization abroad, along with keeping Canadian assistance dollars away from China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In their platform, the NDP promise to boost Canada’s contribution to international aid to 0.7 percent of gross national income. The Liberals would increase Canada’s international development assistance (by how much isn’t clear) to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, as well as donate at least 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses through COVAX by the end of 2022. In what may be a first for a Canadian party, the Greens want to include ‘environmental refugee’ as a refugee category in Canada “and accept an appropriate share of the world’s environmental refugees into Canada.” 

More to come

In the coming days and weeks, all five major Canadian parties will sell their vision for the country to voters. Some may release full platforms like the NDP and Conservatives, while others may dribble out individual promises and policy points over the course of the 36-day campaign.

The English language leaders debate will be on Sept. 9 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. Most political parties don’t, as a rule, unveil new policy at these debates, but it will be worth seeing how each of the leaders respond to each other’s policy platforms — and which issues take centre stage.

Regardless of how the 2021 federal election campaign shapes out, Future of Good will closely follow all of the campaigns’ policy announcements that matter to the social impact world. Refer back to this story for regular updates. 

Last updated: Sept. 8 at 12:37 pm.

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