Althea Raj

It would start off with free diabetes medicine and free contraception, and they would study the rollout and that with the aim of rolling out more medicines in the future.

Universal drug coverage was the goal behind it.

The Liberals were a little bit lukewarm, but Mark Holland, who was the health minister at the time, really was assured that they met well and they really did believe in this.

And they were really just, it was not like a little candy to the NDP to keep them happy.

They really wanted to study this and see if they could do it.

Some of the agreements took longer to negotiate, for example, with British Columbia, because they already had some provincial programs that offered contraception, for example.

But in the end, before Justin Trudeau left, they only signed deals with British Columbia, Manitoba, the Yukon.

And PI has a different pharmacare deal, which I think covers about 60% of medicines.

And it was kind of run as a pilot program, but it was looped to that.

And they had $1.5 billion for this, 900 of which has been spent.

After the election, Mark Carney's election, and some elections provincially, we had Newfoundland and Labrador say, hey, we would like to join this PharmaCare plan.

And Nova Scotia say, hey, we would like to join this PharmaCare plan.

But there was no movement over the summer.

And Prime Minister Carney was asked about this in September, and he said, we are going to offer basically the same deal.

In the election clap form, the Liberals promised to safeguard PharmaCare.

They would not cut it like they said Pierre Poiliev would cut it.

And he would offer the same deal to these provinces, but nothing has happened.

Now, the health minister's office, Masha Michelle's office says they are studying the rollout of the current deals and they're honoring current agreements.

So although there's $600 million left in the pot, they don't want to expand that.

There is no new money in the fiscal update or in last November's budget for PharmaCare.