Althea Raj

So PharmaCare is ending.

The government officials tell us that when a decision hasn't been made, you see dash, dash, dash in the budget.

There are no dash, dash, dashes.

Pharmacare, if you are one of the 17% of Canadians who have access to the federal Pharmacare program through your province,

get ready for it to end in 2029.

That being said, I think with the outcry that this piece has caused, the government might be looking at making some changes.

The big shocker I think for a lot of people was actually childcare, because this was a big program, lots of fanfare when it was announced.

And one of the things that they, so it's kind of funded in different parts, but there's provincial agreements, some of which are like Ontario's and Alberta's are going to end next March.

They need to be renegotiated.

The government is committed to putting more money.

to putting money in the pot but it's getting rid of an infrastructure fund and child care advocates tell me that basically there's not enough money they're not increasing the amount enough to keep this program uh going and we need more child care spaces and the operational funding cannot be used to cover capital expenses because there's not enough in that pot to even cover operational expenses so they're very worried that basically the program is going to die a slow death

And then the other thing is on health care.

The government is ending a bunch of these bilateral agreements that Justin Trudeau had negotiated with the provinces on home care, on long-term care, on mental health and addiction.

And so while the government will continue to increase payments on health care, it's not going to grow by the same escalator.

So now it grows 5% every year.

It will start growing by 3% every year.

And it's getting rid of these bilateral deals.

So now you have a lot of people in the medical community who are like, whoa, we need this money.

You know?

Seniors are they're not they're no fewer seniors.