Prime Minister urged to find immediate solution to Canadians without drug benefits in pandemic

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NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the federal government must take immediate steps to help Canadians who lost their drug benefits when they were laid off as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

In an interview Tuesday with The Globe and Mail, Mr. Singh said the government should explore any mechanism that can ensure Canadians access to medication.

Mr. Singh made his comments after labour leaders raised concerns on Monday about millions of jobless Canadians who no longer have the benefits once provided by their employers.

The Canadian Labour Congress is leading a campaign to get Ottawa to cover workplace medication benefits and says that struggling Canadians will not be able to afford drugs for themselves and their families.

To date, more than eight million Canadians have applied for the $2,000 a month Canada Emergency Response Benefit. Many automatically lost their workplace medical coverage the day their job ended, while others will lose their benefits a month after being laid off.

“People are struggling, even if they are getting $2,000 a month, but having to pay for their medication, which is expensive, puts you in even more difficulty,” CLC president Hassan Yussuff said Monday.

Mr. Singh said Tuesday his party is open to whatever mechanism is required to ensure that Canadians can get medications covered, whether that is through an existing provincial program or a federal one.

“But we know that more than ever, whatever immediate step we take … it should be the first step toward to implementing that universal, national pharmacare that should be a priority coming out of this emergency."

In 2019, Eric Hoskins, a former Ontario health minister, produced a government-commissioned report that called for a single-payer national pharmacare program at a cost of $15.3-billion if fully implemented in 2027.

At the time, Dr. Hoskins called for governments across the country to transform rather than tinker with a patchwork of prescription-drug plans to create a public plan for every Canadian.

In an interview on Monday, Dr. Hoskins said COVID-19 has underscored and exposed the need for pharmacare to an even greater extent, adding that approximately 20 per cent of Canadians struggled to afford prescription medications before the pandemic and this figure has ballooned because of the coronavirus.

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He said that as part of an immediate solution, the federal government could ask the provinces and territories to bring Canadians who do not have coverage into their formularies as an interim step toward national pharmacare.

When asked about Dr. Hoskins’s proposal on Tuesday at his daily news briefing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not say whether the government would consider such a move during the current crisis.

“We’re going to continue to work with all sorts of experts and … smart folks making recommendations from across the country in different ways,” Mr. Trudeau said.

“We are always looking for more things to do to and we will continue to do the things that need to be done in order to help Canadians.”

Mr. Singh said Tuesday that a whole new segment of the population cannot afford medication or no longer has coverage owing to the current crisis, adding that drug access is particularly crucial during a pandemic.

"It just seems to be something that should have been a very apparent part of our response,” he said.

With reports from Robert Fife

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