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Singh defends election timing
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, speaking from Toronto in the final week of the election campaign, says there were two main reasons he didn’t push for an earlier election, which included him wanting Canadians to benefit from dental care and pharmacare and that he did not want Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party form a majority government.
Singh says he stands behind his decision to not trigger a federal election sooner by allowing the Liberal minority government to stay in power until this spring.
“I could not stomach the idea of Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives forming a majority government. I knew that was going to be bad,” Singh said in response to questions Friday morning in Toronto.
“I knew that it was going to be bad because of their cuts, because of the division, because of the things they wanted.”
Singh said the other reason for his decision not to vote non-confidence against the Liberals was to ensure Canadians actually started to receive dental and pharmacare coverage.
“We wanted more time,” he said. ”We wanted people to actually benefit from the dental care and the pharmacare. We wanted people to actually get those benefits.”
“We wanted to improve people’s lives.”
Singh said he thought if people were actually receiving the benefits by the time an election was called, it would make it harder for any future government to take them away.
The NDP pushed the Liberals to bring in the major health programs as part of the confidence and supply agreement between the two parties.
Right now, three million Canadians qualify for the Canadian Dental Care Plan. Before the election was called, the Liberal government promised to expand it to the remaining six million eligible Canadians in May.
And so far, the government has signed pharmacare deals with three provinces — B.C., Manitoba and P.E.I.