Most Canadians who follow the news are familiar with some version of the above narrative, which is regularly repeated in mainstream media. A few examples from the last few years illustrate the pattern:

• A July 2023 Financial Post article claims “Canada’s standard of living is falling behind the rest of the developed world” because GDP per capita is underperforming.

• A September 2024 CBC article asserts that GDP per capita is “an important indicator of living standards” and quotes a former Bank of Canada official saying that Canada’s lower GDP per capita in comparison to the United States means “more and more Canadians have an incentive to move to the U.S. for … a higher standard of living.”

• A September 2025 report by the Fraser Institute examining GDP per capita growth of recent years claimed that the metric “is a key indicator of living standards”. Predictably, the right-wing institute places much of the blame for what it claims has been a decline in living standards on “increased regulation, higher taxes and increased deficit spending.”

There is just one problem: Canada’s GDP per capita—that is, total economic activity in the country divided by the population—is doing fine.

More importantly, GDP per capita is a terrible way to measure our living standards. It’s such a poor measure, in fact, that even the economist credited with its creation warned against its misuse. Simon Kuznets, a Nobel prize winning Russian-American economist who developed the GNP (now known as Gross National Income) and GDP measures, stated the following:

Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income...

In other words, while GDP measures the size of the economic pie, it says nothing about how big a slice any given person is getting. And it says nothing about how much effort went into making the pie. Both these shortcomings prevent GDP per capita from measuring actual well-being or the standard of living in a country.

Despite this, corporate economists routinely present GDP per capita as if it directly measures living standards. Take TD Bank’s 2023 report entitled Mind the Gap: Canada is Falling Behind the Standard-of-Living Curve. Its key highlight is that “Canada has lagged behind the U.S. and other advanced economies in terms of standard of living performance (or real GDP per capita),” and it concludes that “Canada’s standard-of-living challenges will persist well into the future.”

To be sure, GDP per capita holds some relevance when assessing living standards, but it certainly cannot be equated with them, as the TD Bank report so casually does. This is precisely why more comprehensive indicators exist. The Human Development Index (HDI), published annually by the United Nations, incorporates health and education in addition to national income in its global rankings. The UN also produces the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, which measures how evenly those achievements are distributed across a population.

The persistent focus on GDP per capita as the primary measure of living standards often serves a political purpose. Since Canada’s GDP per capita is lower than that of the United States, the argument goes, we should adopt more American-style economic policies—lower taxes, deregulation and privatization—to boost economic output.

But even if we were to assume such policies increase overall economic growth, they often fail to improve living standards for the majority. In practice, their effects tend to resemble trickle-down economics: concentrating wealth among a small number of families and corporations while weakening the social programs that directly improve quality of life for everyone else.

Canada’s living standards compare well internationally

Canada does relatively well among its peers when it comes to living standards, and this becomes clear when comparing it with Ireland and the United States.

In 2024, Canada’s GDP per capita stood at $54,340 USD, while Ireland’s was $112,895 USD (more than double Canada’s) and the United States registered at $84,534 USD (56% higher). Following the framing advanced by the authors of the TD report, we would expect living standards in Ireland and the U.S. to be dramatically higher than in Canada.

But this is not what the evidence shows.

Ireland scores only slightly higher than Canada on the UN’s HDI, while the United States scores slightly lower. On the inequality-adjusted HDI, Ireland again scores somewhat higher than Canada, while the United States—owing to severe wealth concentration and weaker social programs—scores substantially lower.

Even the HDI, however, remains only a rough approximation of living standards, as it does not capture factors such as housing costs, household debt, work-life balance, or subjective well-being.

Other international measures attempt to capture these additional dimensions, and Canada performs well on those too. On the OECD’s Better Life Index, which considers ten dimensions including work quality, safety and social connections, Ireland ranks only slightly higher than Canada while the United States ranks significantly lower. Meanwhile, Oxford University’s World Happiness Report places Ireland 15th, Canada 18th and the United States 24th.

Ireland’s case is particularly revealing. Despite having a GDP per capita more than twice that of Canada, average wages in Ireland are significantly lower. According to OECD purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted figures for 2024, average annual wages in Ireland were $60,431 USD while in Canada they were $69,417 USD—nearly 15% higher.

Ireland’s unusually high GDP per capita stems largely from its ultra-low corporate tax policies, which allow multinational corporations to book vast global revenues through the country. As Ireland’s former Central Bank governor, Patrick Honohan, has noted: “Ireland is a prosperous country, but not as prosperous as is often thought because of the inappropriate use of misleading, albeit conventional, statistics…”

The United States presents a different dynamic. Although it has substantially higher GDP per capita than Canada, it consistently ranks lower on many measures of living standards. The reason is straightforward: much of the country’s economic growth has accrued to a small minority, while social programs and other policies that reduce inequality remain limited.

One stark illustration is life expectancy. In Canada it stands at 81.7 years—above the OECD average—while in the United States it is 78.4 years, below average.

High social development does not require high GDP per capita

Examples from the global south show that countries can achieve strong social outcomes—even with modest GDP per capita.

Take Cuba. While its GDP per capita hovers around $9,000 USD, it has one of the highest literacy rates in the world and a life expectancy of 78 years—roughly equivalent to the United States. Notably, it has achieved this level of social development despite six decades of harsh U.S. economic sanctions.

China provides another example. Its PPP-adjusted GDP per capita is around $24,000 USD—less than a third of that of the United States. Yet its literacy rate is among the highest in the world (97% in 2020 and effectively universal among youth) and its life expectancy is also 78 years. As Cambridge University political economist Jostein Hauge notes, “China has lifted more people out of poverty than the rest of the world put together in the past 50 years.”

At the same time, China has become a global leader in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, green technologies, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Vietnam offers another striking case. Despite a devastating war with the United States that ended just over 50 years ago, Vietnam has achieved a literacy rate of 96% and a life expectancy of 75 years. It is also rapidly expanding its capabilities in advanced manufacturing, engineering and IT services.

All of this has been achieved while millions of Vietnamese citizens still suffer the long-term health consequences of Agent Orange sprayed during the war—and with a GDP per capita of roughly $14,415 USD (PPP), about a quarter of Canada’s.

The real issue: inequality and political choices

Canada is a profoundly wealthy country. It ranks as the world’s 10th largest economy despite being only 37th in population. That wealth has enabled a wide range of social programs that have supported high levels of social development and living standards.

Yet there is still much to improve.

Living conditions in some Indigenous communities remain unacceptably low. Many Canadians work full time yet remain trapped in poverty. Too many students graduate from post-secondary education burdened with heavy debt. And Canada still lacks a fully comprehensive public health system that guarantees timely medical care, dental care and pharmacare to everyone.

Contrary to what many corporate economists and pundits suggest, these challenges are not the result of insufficient national wealth. They are the result of political choices.

A key issue is inequality. Canada’s taxation policies have allowed staggering concentrations of wealth to accumulate among a small number of families. A recent analysis by Canadians For Tax Fairness found that “86 billionaire families held as much wealth as the 6.2 million least wealthy families in 2023.”

Such inequality is not just morally troubling—it undermines the fiscal capacity needed to fund strong social programs that improve living standards for everyone.

Moreover, many social investments are far more affordable than critics suggest. Free post-secondary tuition, for instance, could cost the federal government about $10 billion per year—roughly comparable to the more than $9 billion increase in military spending this year. Combined with other social programs, such policies could free young people from the burden of debt and health costs, allowing them to pursue innovative ideas and entrepreneurial ventures.

Indeed, strong social safety nets are seen as one reason Sweden has produced so many globally successful tech companies, including Skype, Spotify, Soundcloud, Minecraft and Klarna.

Canada could also improve living standards through policies that ensure workers are compensated fairly: higher minimum wages, easier unionization—particularly in low-wage service sectors—and reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which currently creates a large pool of vulnerable workers susceptible to exploitation.

Let’s focus on the real problem

The fixation on GDP per capita tells us more about ideology than about living standards.

Canada is already a wealthy country with strong social outcomes by international standards. The real question is not whether we can afford better living conditions—it is whether we are willing to distribute our wealth more fairly and invest in the programs that improve everyday life.

If countries with far lower GDP per capita—like Cuba, China and Vietnam—can achieve major gains in health, education and infrastructure, there is no reason Canada cannot keep making gains with far greater resources.

The problem is not our GDP per capita. The problem is what we choose to do with the wealth we already have.

These threats are not merely diplomatic oddities or bombastic theatrics. They strike at the heart of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO is built on the premise that its members respect one another’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. When the alliance’s dominant power casually undermines those principles, NATO ceases to be a defensive pact.

Much of the Western commentary has framed this moment as an existential crisis for NATO—one demanding fear, panic, and immediate rallying around the alliance. But there is another perspective, one that is conspicuously absent from mainstream discourse: if NATO were to fracture or collapse as a result of these actions, it would be a fitting fate for a military alliance that has spent the last quarter-century violating the very norms it claims to uphold.

The myth of the ‘defensive, rules-based alliance’

NATO presents itself as a defensive organization, a stabilizing force committed to peace, democracy, and human rights. Yet its post–Cold War record tells a different story.

In Afghanistan, NATO waged its longest war—two decades of occupation, counterinsurgency, and nation-building rhetoric that ended not in stability or democracy, but in collapse. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed, upwards of a trillion dollars was spent (not including the staggering long term cost for veterans), and when NATO forces withdrew, the country was left poor, more traumatized, and back under Taliban rule. Whatever justifications were offered in 2001, the outcome is indisputable: plenty of suffering and no lasting benefit to the Afghan people.

Libya is an even starker indictment. NATO’s 2011 intervention, framed as humanitarian, culminated in the violent overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi without any viable plan for what would follow. The result was not liberation, but state collapse—civil war, slave markets, the proliferation of militias, and a dramatic fall in Libya’s human development indicators. A country that in 2010 ranked 54th on the UN HDI—which measures education, health, and income—was shattered in the name of Western moral authority, and finds itself in 117th place today.

Disturbingly, credible investigations later raised the possibility that the war itself may have been driven in part by personal political calculations at the highest levels—most notably allegations that French President Nicolas Sarkozy sought to eliminate Gaddafi to suppress evidence of Libyan financing of his election campaign. While the full truth hasn’t been conclusively established, the fact that such allegations were plausible at all underscores how little democratic accountability governed a war sold to the public as a moral necessity.

These violent interventions were not aberrations. They were the logical outcomes of an alliance that has long substituted military force for diplomacy, accountability, and restraint.

Nowhere, however, has NATO members’ moral bankruptcy been more clearly exposed than in Gaza.

Gaza and the collapse of moral pretence

As Israel carried out a campaign against Palestinians in Gaza that leading human rights organizations, legal scholars, and UN officials warned bore the hallmarks of genocide, most NATO states—including Canada—responded with a now-familiar script.

They claimed they wanted restraint. They claimed concern for civilians. They claimed commitment to international law.

And then they did the opposite. Weapons continued to flow to Israel. Diplomatic support intensified. UN resolutions calling for ceasefires were blocked, diluted, or ignored. Even the word genocide—a legal term with clear meaning under international law—was treated as taboo. Western leaders refused to name what millions around the world could plainly see. This included Prime Minister Mark Carney, who distanced himself from the term following an election campaign event in which someone in the crowd shouted “there's a genocide in Palestine!”

All this was not neutrality. It was participation in the gravest crime known to humanity.

What’s more, across NATO countries, citizens who protested Israel’s actions—often peacefully, often invoking international law—were surveilled, vilified, suspended from universities, fired from jobs, or criminalized. In Canada, the gap between official rhetoric about democracy and the repression of dissent became impossible to ignore.

An alliance of states that claim to defend freedom abroad cannot tolerate it at home.

Ukraine and the manufacturing of false confidence

Ukraine offers another sobering example of NATO’s reckless approach to security. For years, NATO powers insisted that the alliance’s enlargement posed no threat, that Russia’s security concerns were illegitimate, and that Ukraine’s path toward NATO membership was simply an expression of sovereign choice. At the same time, they armed, trained, financed, and politically emboldened Ukrainian leaders—sending a clear signal that the West stood behind them.

What NATO did not provide was a binding security guarantee. Ukraine was left in a strategic no-man’s land—too aligned with NATO to remain neutral, too exposed to be protected.

Western leaders spoke endlessly of deterrence while fostering the illusion that Ukraine could confront a nuclear-armed great power with conditional Western backing. Domestic Ukrainian actors were encouraged to believe they could prevail with NATO’s support, only to discover—once war came—that this support was carefully calibrated to avoid direct confrontation. Ukraine paid in blood for promises that were never fully made and never fully honoured.

This was not a tragic accident. It was the predictable result of NATO’s foolish expansionist logic: pushing military frontiers outward towards Russia while outsourcing the human cost of confrontation to a non-member state.

Canadian complicity and responsibility

Canada was not a bystander in these campaigns. We participated. We endorsed. We justified. From Kandahar to Tripoli, successive Canadian governments aligned themselves with NATO’s hubris, often silencing dissent by appealing to alliance loyalty rather than moral clarity.

That is precisely why Canadians should not respond to NATO’s potential unraveling with reflexive nostalgia or fear. Alliances are not sacred. They are tools—and when tools are used to perpetuate harm, they deserve scrutiny, not reverence.

If NATO collapses because the United States no longer even pretends to respect its allies’ sovereignty—because it treats Canada and Europe with the same imperial contempt it has long shown toward the Global South—that is not a betrayal of NATO’s values. It is the exposure of its reality.

Hubris turning inward

There is a grim irony in watching Western capitals panic at the possibility of coercion from Washington. For decades, NATO member states normalized the violation of other countries’ sovereignty in the name of “security.” Now, as similar logic is casually applied to Canada or Denmark, the shock is palpable.

But this is how empires behave when they sense decline. They stop pretending. They discard norms. They test how far power alone can carry them.

If NATO cannot survive without unquestioning submission to American dominance, then it was never a partnership of equals to begin with. And if its collapse forces Canada and Europe to confront uncomfortable truths—about militarism, complicity, and the limits of force—that reckoning may be long overdue.

Beyond NATO

None of this is an argument for isolationism or vulnerability. Canada still needs security arrangements, diplomacy, and international cooperation. But security rooted in coercion, hypocrisy, and unaccountable violence is not security—it is instability deferred.

If NATO falls apart under the weight of its own contradictions, history will not record it as a tragedy inflicted by one reckless US president alone. It will record it as the implosion of an alliance that mistook power for legitimacy, force for justice, and loyalty for morality.

And for Canada, that moment—unsettling as it may be—could finally open space to imagine a foreign policy guided not by fear of displeasing Washington, but by principles we claim to hold dear.

Sometimes collapse is not the end of order. Sometimes it is the end of illusion.

Facing widespread dissatisfaction over their failure to effectively address cost-of-living pressures and the housing crisis since 2015, the Liberals have reached for a familiar tactic: making the government’s own workers pay for crises they did not create.

To justify major job cuts, Prime Minister Mark Carney has framed recent public service growth as excessive, telling an Ottawa audience recently that it “can’t be sustained.” Yet instead of moderating the rate of growth, he’s shrinking the public service outright.

After promising to cap, not cut the public service during the 2025 election campaign as well as the Speech from the Throne, Carney’s first budget seeks to eliminate 28,000 federal jobs by 2028-29. The reversal—delivered by the MP for Nepean, home to thousands of federal workers—feels not only abrupt, but contemptuous.

Smaller than the rhetoric suggests

Canada’s federal public service employed 357,965 workers in 2025, representing 0.86% of the population. A decade earlier, that figure was 0.72%. Yes, it’s proportionally larger—but hardly unprecedented. In 1990 it was 0.91%. In 1983 it was 0.99%.

Comparisons with several EU countries that, like Canada, provide strong social programs to their citizens make the point even clearer. In 2023, central government employees as a share of population were:

• Norway: 3.2%

• France: 2.9%

• Sweden: 2.7%

• Austria: 1.6%

• Finland: 1.4%

• Canada: 0.9% (0.86% in 2025)

Canada’s federal workforce is on the smaller side relative to its peers.

(The high outlying figure for Norway is the result of the national government playing a bigger role in health care. And of course, each country has a different mix of functions assigned to the central, national-level administration—no comparison is perfect.)

A government that took on more, not less

The growth since 2015 reflects one simple fact: Ottawa has been doing more—much more. Here are just some of the new initiatives the federal public service delivered over the last few years:

• massive, multifaceted and unprecedented pandemic response (2020 onward)

• national child care plan (2021)

• national dental care plan (2022–23)

• pharmacare (2024, now partially stalled by Carney)

• national school food program (2024)

• national disability benefit (2025)

• processing of record-high immigration flows; this included large numbers of refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan while the overall total of newcomers peaked at 484,135 in 2024

• a range of climate-focused programs

• various new initiatives in support of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples

Any honest analysis must start with this reality. Yet right-wing commentators often simply ignore it. They suggest that the public service grew for no good reason—and that regardless of size, it’s inefficient and worthy of pruning.

The right-wing narrative (and its fumbles)

Some arguments are embarrassingly weak. Winnipeg Free Press columnist Kevin Klein claimed earlier this year that “[b]ureaucracy is breaking Canada,” and that “the CRA is nearly double the size of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.”

Except that it isn’t. The CRA has around 60,000 workers; the IRS had 103,000 at the beginning of 2025 and around 76,000 even after Elon Musk’s DOGE slashed it. Unlike the IRS, furthermore, the CRA administers both federal and provincial income taxes (except in Quebec), plus GST/HST. The United States does not have a federal sales tax at all.

Other critiques are seemingly more sophisticated, such as Stephen Tapp’s report for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), “The Growing Government Gap.” Released just days before Carney delivered his austerity budget, the report claims that “[g]overnment workers were less productive, on average, than business-sector employees.” Soon after, MLI hosted a panel discussion to promote the report that questioned whether Canada’s government is “too big”, while one of the organization’s directors noted that “government has gotten bigger…it doesn’t feel like the output of government has gotten bigger.”

This line of attack is premised on the idea that government productivity can be meaningfully measured. But how does one quantify in dollar terms the productivity of pandemic preparedness, disaster relief, food safety inspections, or diplomatic relationships?

Even more telling, however, is that Tapp’s own questionable figures show that federal productivity as a whole has been steady for a decade, sharply contradicting the framing advanced by MLI. The decline in the government sector he points to comes from provincial and municipal governments—not the federal government (see Table 3, p. 25)—though this doesn’t prevent MLI from using Tapp’s report to push the view that the federal public service ought to be trimmed.

Canada’s public service ranks among the world’s best

A more credible measure of government performance and effectiveness comes from Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. Its Index of Public Administration, covering 120 countries, ranked Canada third in the world in 2024—behind only Singapore and Norway.

This builds on the School’s earlier International Civil Service Effectiveness Index, where Canada placed first in 2017 and third in 2019.

These rankings were compiled during the very years when the public service expanded. Growth did not undermine performance; it supported it. But you won’t hear MLI or other right wing think tanks showing the public service any appreciation for this international recognition.

Taken as a whole, Canada’s federal public service benefits from key features of our governance model and society. These include: ministerial accountability, parliamentary oversight, stable financing, access-to-information, media scrutiny, rule of law, merit-based hiring, and strong union activism. Imperfect features, yes—and some under serious threat. But collectively, they still produce a public service that performs at the top of the global class.

None of this is to detract from the need for continuous improvement in the public service. This is especially the case with respect to Indigenous Services Canada, which, as the Auditor General reported recently, is making inadequate progress in improving critical First Nations programs despite increased funding and hiring. And, of course, the disastrous Phoenix pay system—initiated and primarily implemented under the Harper Conservatives—remains a major stain, though one that involved private-sector contractors from IBM at least as much as the federal bureaucracy. (Of note, some of the additional staffing triggered by the Phoenix pay disaster is still reflected in today’s public service numbers—not because the bureaucracy is “bloated”, but because the system that failed has never been fully fixed or replaced. Some of what critics call excess is in fact the ongoing human cost of a failed, privately-contracted payroll experiment that continues to haunt public service workers.)

The real reason for Carney’s cuts

The public service has not become unsustainable. It has delivered major national programs. It performs at a high level relative to international peers. So why shrink it? Especially with struggling call centres at the CRA, 50-year immigration wait times (yes, you read that right), lengthy approvals for new drugs, and a persistent Phoenix pay system backlog. Clearly, there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The answer lies in Carney’s hawkish turn. During the 2025 campaign, Carney pledged to reach NATO’s 2% military spending target by 2030. But within two months of forming government, he accelerated it dramatically: Canada would now hit 2% within a year, and then surge to 5% of GDP by 2035.

This year alone, military spending is up $9.3 billion. By 2035—under a conservative scenario in which GDP reaches $3.8 trillion—Canada would spend nearly $190 billion on the military. That’s six times the national defence budget in 2024–25.

This is not belt-tightening. It’s a radical pivot that won’t make us any safer.

Right-wing think tanks funded by private interests are delighted, of course. A future Canadian military-industrial complex—vast, lucrative, and taxpayer-funded—is their dream scenario. And public service layoffs, along with freezes to programs like pharmacare, are simply the collateral damage needed to make that sordid dream possible.

The public service is not the problem—Carney’s priorities are

Canada does not suffer from a bloated federal workforce. It suffers from an elite political class unwilling to defend and strengthen the programs the public most needs, and that form a core part of Canadian identity.

The public service grew because Canadians demanded action: on child care, on dental care, on pharmacare, on disability supports, on pandemic relief, on the climate crisis, and on Indigenous reconciliation. Public service workers delivered at a scale unmatched in recent Canadian history, even if much work remains. For this, they are now being punished.

What Carney calls “unsustainable” is not the size of the federal public service. What is unsustainable is a government that guts the workforce needed to run and improve the programs and services the public depends on; a government that replaces a civilian public administration with unprecedented military expansion; a government that embraces talking points generated by right wing corporate-funded think tanks.

Canadians should not pretend that firing public service workers will somehow strengthen the country. A high-performing public service is not a luxury. It is the backbone of a stable, functioning democracy. The real risk is not a public service that is too large, but one that is too weak and hollowed-out to meet the challenges ahead.

In October 2024 Canada took the first step in filling a longstanding void in the country’s universal healthcare system by passing the National Pharmacare Act. This milestone was historic as it culminated decades of advocacy by unions, medical associations, patient groups and various other civil society organizations in favour of pharmacare, and allowed Canada to finally drop the dubious distinction of being the only OECD country that didn’t include pharmaceutical coverage as part of its public healthcare system.

With passage of the legislation, the government could begin signing agreements with each province and territory to lock-in funding for diabetic and contraceptive drugs and devices, the first two areas targeted for universal coverage. Moreover, the law set a foundation for future comprehensive coverage by requiring a national formulary of essential medicines, mandating the Canadian Drug Agency to develop a bulk purchasing strategy, and establishing a committee of experts to advise on an expanded, universal, single-payer plan.

In February 2025, the Liberal government—then still led by Justin Trudeau—signed the first bilateral agreement with Manitoba. And in March, the government signed three more—with British Columbia, PEI, and Yukon—though by the time Yukon’s agreement was reached on March 20, Mark Carney had already been sworn in as Prime Minister following his Liberal leadership win. In a positive development, moreover, the Trudeau government excluded corporate representatives from the committee of experts called for in the legislation.

Big business and Conservative opposition

Unsurprisingly, drug companies and insurers were none too pleased. A national pharmacare plan would give the government tremendous negotiating power and lead to much lower drug prices in Canada, eating into the excessive profits big pharma has become accustomed to. Under the guise of caring for the needs of patients, they have prematurely— and almost comically—called for “pharmacare reform” even though the new national plan just became law and is still rolling out. And they’ve lobbied hard to stall the program, warning that a universal drug plan could reduce coverage, prevent access to newer medicines and hurt innovation.

Never mind that the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board has shown that the most popular antidiabetic drugs in Canada sell for as much as twice the price they are sold for in comparator countries (including the UK, France, Germany and Japan). And that, as a result, buying those drugs in Canada costs an extra $703 million.

Initially, corporate profiteers found an ally in Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. His party voted against the pharmacare legislation and Poilievre stated, even months after the vote, that he would continue to “reject the radical plan”.

However, tantalized by the prospect of becoming Prime Minister and seeking the support of unionized workers, Poilievre changed his tune a few months later, during the run up to the April 2025 federal election. Despite his past hostility to the program—in fact, to virtually all new social programs—Poilievre said he would in fact keep the national pharmacare plan (along with the new dental care plan) were he to become prime minister.

Carney’s chicanery begins

After Carney announced his intention to enter the race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader in January 2025, he stayed largely silent on the future of dental care and pharmacare—both of which were still being fully rolled out. Of course, it was reasonable to assume that Carney would support both programs given that both had just been introduced by the preceding Liberal government itself, albeit with NDP pressure and support. Even so, his silence was curious and hard to ignore.

It was only on February 25, weeks after campaigning for the top job, that Carney clearly stated his support for pharmacare. At the English leaders’ debate that evening he unequivocally stated that he would “absolutely keep in place the progress that the government has made on crucial things such as on child care, on dental care and pharmacare because that helps those who are most vulnerable.”

He then mentioned pharmacare again in his victory speech on March 10, following the leadership vote. But this time, it was possible to detect a changing position:

So, when I am fighting for a strong economy, I am fighting for: Good Canadian health care for everyone; Strong support for our seniors, who built this country; Child care for young, hard-working families; Dental care and pharmacare for everyone who needs it. (emphases added)

Note the different way Carney spoke about health care versus pharmacare. Health care is “for everyone” as is of course the case with our universal system. But in Carney’s new formulation, pharmacare would perhaps not be for everyone. Instead, it would be “for everyone who needs it”—contrary to the clear language in the pharmacare law envisioning a universal, single payer system.

Not coincidentally, this fill-in-the-gaps approach Carney hinted at is precisely what pharmaceutical and insurance corporations want, as it helps avoid national, bulk purchasing of drugs that would dramatically drive prices down, as it has in other countries with national pharmacare plans. And it ensures insurance companies can continue selling plenty of profitable policies for private drug coverage.

In the words of Canada’s drug industry lobby, the government should “consider a pharmacare strategy that strengthens coverage for under-insured and uninsured Canadians” and “focus on filling coverage gaps, rather than making sweeping changes…”

This alternate approach is being pushed by a range of right wing pundits and think tanks. Clearly, big pharma and private insurers see Carney—who spent 13 years working at Goldman Sachs—as potentially receptive to their profit-centric pharmacare model.

Carney effectively signaled in that leadership victory speech that he would be willing to reopen the long debate on pharmacare that has prevented progress in Canada for decades. A debate that had just been democratically adjudicated through the passage of the National Pharmacare Act by parliament, following a comprehensive report and recommendations by the 2018-19 Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare. It bears noting again that both the legislation and the advisory council were proposed by the Liberals themselves, and the council was led by Dr. Eric Hoskins, a former Ontario Liberal health minister.

In the face of this changing language, Carney’s campaign nonetheless continued to dangle the notion that progress on pharmacare was safe throughout the federal election campaign. In an official release on April 21, for example, his campaign stated that “Carney’s plan to unite, secure, protect, and build Canada, includes comprehensive measures to build and protect our health care system …. expanding on his previous commitment to protect dental care and pharmacare.”

Summer of shenanigans

This set the stage for the following months of prevarication, obfuscation and inaction. Since the bilateral agreement with Yukon was announced on March 20, the government has to date reached no further agreements with the remaining seven provinces and two territories. This means that existing bilateral agreements only ensure coverage for about 17% of Canada’s population.

When questioned about the lack of progress on pharmacare in July, Liberal health minister Marjorie Michel was non-committal and retorted that the government is new and the context had changed—effectively abandoning Carney’s promise to defend pharmacare. Carney’s spokesperson later added “​​that we wouldn’t cut or abolish any of the existing deals”, cynically implying that Carney’s campaign pledge to defend pharmacare was somehow compatible with freezing the program’s national rollout. This message was reiterated in August, when Michel’s office told media outlets that the government “will continue to protect the four signed pharmacare agreements.”

All this raised alarm among healthcare advocates across the country and led the Canadian Health Coalition, unions and other advocacy organizations to crank up the pressure on the Carney government: when Liberal MPs and staffers arrived in Edmonton for the party’s retreat on September 8, they were greeted by several large billboard ads featuring Carney’s face, calling on the Liberals to follow through on national pharmacare.

Then, at a press conference on September 11, Carney was pressed about the fate of pharmacare and finally reaffirmed support, effectively contradicting Minister Michel’s statements from the summer: “We are committed to keeping the project, that process going—pharmacare for diabetes and for birth control—and achieving the agreements with the outstanding provinces, if I can put it that way, as quickly and as equitably as possible.”

Given the Carney government’s ambiguous, confusing and shifting positions on pharmacare over the last six months, however, it remains to be seen if his government will in fact negotiate in good faith and ensure new agreements share the spirit of the four existing ones.

Carney’s right wing values

Given Carney’s campaign pledges and the very real need of Canadians for drug coverage, he should have concluded all outstanding pharmacare agreements by now. More to the point, he does not have the electoral mandate to undermine the nascent pharmacare program.

And given that a central part of the current pharmacare plan is the provision of contraceptive coverage, Carney is doing women a massive disservice—all the more astonishing when considering that he rode to victory in April’s election by winning substantial support from women voters.

The foot dragging on pharmacare also stands in sharp contrast to the government’s plans for increased military spending. In his 2025 official platform, Carney promised to boost spending to the “2% NATO target by 2030 at the latest”, but in June, not even two months after becoming elected, Carney announced that military spending would in fact hit the 2% target by March 2026—just about nine months later. This would require an additional $9.3 billion in spending. Meanwhile, the 2024 budget allocated a mere $1.5 billion over five years for national pharmacare.

While Carney has spoken repeatedly about nation-building, it appears he’s perfectly comfortable with ditching a key Liberal nation-building initiative in the realm of health and social services. If the current pharmacare plan survives, it will have been saved through public outcry, and perhaps the pressure tactics of the opposition NDP.

The last few months provide an important lesson and reminder for Canada’s progressive movement: Carney is, at his core, a neoliberal.

As he boasted earlier this year, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper once tried to hire him as his Finance Minister. And although having spent years advocating for climate action from corporations and governments, Carney’s been quick to abandon green initiatives now that he’s leading the government.

Even so, he is constrained by his party’s minority status in parliament. This is critical and it means that despite having a shallow commitment to his (claimed) progressive values, he can still be successfully pressured to continue advancing initiatives like pharmacare.

Unfortunately, CBC’s recent article by David Common does the opposite. Rather than informing readers, it almost reads like something produced by the public affairs division at the Department of National Defence. It amplifies government talking points, paints China and Russia as looming threats, and leaves out critical context that Canadians need in order to make sense of the situation. The result is a lopsided narrative that distorts rather than informs.

Common begins by noting that “CBC News had exclusive access” to a military exercise in Canada’s north—meaning the reporting was effectively embedded with the armed forces, already a red flag for objectivity.

He explains that “the annual exercise is known as Operation Nanook,” which “took on particular significance this year with a collision of geopolitical changes: China’s growing ambition in the Arctic, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plans to substantially increase the capabilities of the military and the newly recognized value of minerals in the North.”

Somehow, in listing these “geopolitical changes,” he manages to omit any mention of the United States. Yet unlike China, the U.S. has actually threatened to annex Canada, with an eye toward our critical minerals. Even former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believed President Donald Trump’s annexation talk was serious—at a conference in Toronto in February, Trudeau was quoted as saying:

They’re very aware of our resources, of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those. But Mr. Trump has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country, and it is a real thing.

The omission of this crucial context by Common is staggering. In its place, he reiterates that “Canada’s traditional adversaries have shown growing interest in the North’s rich deposits of critical minerals.”

But is it only our “traditional adversaries” who have an interest in our minerals? The framing here once again ignores the explicitly stated U.S. threat to Canada’s sovereignty while toeing the official line about Russia and China.

While some might be tempted to dismiss Trump’s threats as harmless trolling, can we really let our guard down? Not only has Trump deployed National Guard soldiers to occupy U.S. cities, he has also mused about using America’s own cities as training grounds for the military. Given this, is it so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which the U.S. flexes its formidable military might to gain control of Canadian resources?

At the very least, any serious reporter should mention the oft-repeated threats to Canadian sovereignty by an increasingly unhinged president of the world’s most powerful country in an article about Canadian Arctic sovereignty.

Common also explains that “China and Russia are known to use ‘shadow’ or ‘ghost’ vessels, which appear to be merchant or other inoffensive vessels, but are actually used for espionage or other nefarious activities.” He quotes military analyst Rob Huebert saying these “are not warships per se, but they are capable of taking all sorts of ... information that of course then can ultimately be utilized by warships in the future.” Common gives the example of one such “dual purpose” vessel, the Chinese Xue Long 2, which this summer “returned to Arctic waters for the second year in a row,” insinuating the vessel is some kind of threat to Canada’s sovereignty in the north.

Yet, according to the CBC’s own July 2025 reporting on the Xue Long 2’s voyage to the Arctic, the Chinese vessel was nowhere near Canada. In fact, it was a Canadian spy plane and coast guard ship that tracked the Xue Long 2 from Japan to the Bering Strait—an area well away from Canadian waters. At no point did the Chinese vessel come close to Canada’s territorial waters, much less attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage.

Not only does Common make this problematic insinuation about the Xue Long 2, he omits another crucial piece of context: Canadian warships themselves have sailed through the Taiwan Strait—waters China claims as its own, much like Canada claims the Northwest Passage for itself. Earlier this year, in February, HMCS Ottawa did exactly that, prompting China’s military to say the actions “deliberately stir up trouble and undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

To be sure, Chinese ships haven’t done the equivalent to Canada by navigating the Northwest Passage. But the United States has. In 1985, the USCGC Polar Sea, an American Coast Guard vessel, entered the Northwest Passage without Canada’s approval, sparking a major diplomatic controversy. Although Canada and the U.S. eventually reached an arrangement over future coast guard voyages, Washington has never recognized Canada’s sovereignty over the passage. As Harvard’s Kennedy School puts it:

The United States has taken the position that it is an international strait, through which foreign vessels can transit freely without Canadian consent.

Russia’s position, in contrast, has historically been far more favourable to Canada than Washington’s. Yet Canadian media consistently casts Russia as an Arctic bogeyman. International Affairs scholars David Carment and Dani Belo, writing for the NATO Association of Canada, made the following observation about Canada’s relations with Russia during the Stephen Harper era:

Perhaps because of the media’s portrayal of Russia as a threat to Canada’s Arctic, the Harper government ignored the fact that Russia was the only Arctic state sympathetic to Canada’s characterization of the Northwest Passage and was, like Canada, unenthusiastic about expanding Arctic Council membership to non-Arctic states. Indeed, Russia acted more as a ‘team player’ in the Arctic than the United States.

This is the deeper failure of Common’s piece. It isn’t just about leaving out Trump’s annexation threats or ignoring the U.S. refusal to recognize Canada’s claim over the Northwest Passage. It’s about the way Canadian media casts China and Russia as villains while giving the U.S. a pass—even as its president explicitly and repeatedly threatens our sovereignty.

That imbalance in reporting makes rational foreign policy discussion nearly impossible. The public deserves journalism that informs. CBC could have helped Canadians understand the complexities. Instead, it offered a cartoonish story of “good guys vs. bad guys,” obscuring the far more uncomfortable reality: the greatest threat to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty may not be in Beijing or Moscow, but in Washington.

It may not have made splashy headlines like child care, dental care, or pharmacare, but in 2025 Canada finally joined the ranks of countries with a nationwide school food program. And it’s about time.

Canada finally joins the club

Unlike most wealthy countries, Canada had no nationwide school food program until now. Kids in Finland, Brazil, the UK, France, and Japan have long had access to free or highly subsidized meals at school. Canadian children, by contrast, have typically relied on packed lunches from home—sometimes supplemented by patchwork programs varying wildly in quality and scope.

In recent times, the Green Party first floated the idea in its 2015 federal campaign, promising “federally funded, community-guided school lunch programs across Canada.” The NDP joined in ahead of the 2019 election, pledging to “work towards a national school nutrition program.” The Liberals under Justin Trudeau finally committed to it in their 2021 platform.

Notably, the NSFP wasn’t part of the Liberal–NDP supply-and-confidence deal of 2022. Even so, Trudeau’s government committed $1 billion over five years in Budget 2024, introduced a national policy framework, and began signing bilateral agreements with all 13 provinces and territories. Mark Carney’s new Liberal government completed the process this past March, inking the final deal with Alberta.

The program is now rolling out coast to coast. In Nova Scotia, lunches will expand this fall to 104,000 students at 334 schools. In northeastern Ontario, nutrition programs are being extended through the end of the school year instead of being cut off prematurely. And in northern Quebec, Cree and Nunavik school boards are providing breakfast for every child who wants it.

The National School Food Program isn’t just a patch job. It envisions a universal, stigma-free program that eventually makes healthy meals available to all children, regardless of income. The guiding framework emphasizes that food must be culturally and regionally appropriate, locally sourced, and environmentally sustainable.

Just as importantly, the program doesn’t stop at food purchases. Federal funding is also geared towards building kitchens, purchasing equipment, and modernizing logistics—signs that this is a long-term investment, not a token gesture. Monitoring and evaluation are also emphasized, recognizing that nothing undermines a school food program faster than unhealthy or unappealing meals.

The payoffs: Health, learning, jobs, and more

The global evidence is clear: school food programs work. Children who participate enjoy better nutrition, sharper concentration, and improved academic outcomes. Over time, they also develop healthier eating habits that carry into adulthood. Families save both time and money—one U.S. study estimated that grocery bills could drop by as much as a fifth when schools provide meals.

The benefits ripple outward. If domestic farmers and suppliers are prioritized, they can gain stable demand for their products, which in turn allows them to invest in more sustainable production. Jobs multiply: one estimate from 2019 suggested that a universal program could generate as many as 62,000 new food preparation jobs in schools, and another 200,000 positions across supply chains. And there’s even a consumer upside—U.S. research found that grocery prices dropped by 2.5 percent in areas with robust school food programs, as retailers adjusted to shifting household demand.

With U.S.–Canada relations in the dumps, Ottawa pushing for more self-reliance, and cost of living concerns at the forefront, the NSFP hits all the right notes. Healthier kids who do better in school, families spending less on food, more support for local farmers and Canadian jobs—it’s a win-win-win. A fully funded, universal school food program is a no-brainer.

What it would cost

So what does universal school food actually cost? Less than you might think. Feeding all 5.3 million public school students in Canada two meals a day for 190 instructional days—at roughly $12 for both breakfast and lunch each day—would amount to about $12 billion annually. But because the NSFP is designed as a cost-share program with provinces and territories, which bear responsibility for education under the Constitution, Ottawa wouldn’t bear the full amount.

For instance, in Nova Scotia, currently a leader in school food, federal funding covers only about six percent of the province’s $80 million school food program for 2025–26. That means even relatively small amounts of federal money can have an outsized impact.

Now imagine Ottawa got really ambitious and dramatically increased its current commitment to $3 billion each year. Even that big jump would represent just 0.56 percent of federal expenditures (based on the last $538 billion federal budget) or 0.1 percent of GDP. Compare that with military spending plans: the Carney government is boosting spending by $9 billion this year alone on the path to 2 percent of GDP by 2026 and 5 percent by 2035.

Even if Ottawa picked up the full bill for a universal NSFP, the cost would represent about 0.4 percent of GDP. In other words, universal school food is easily within reach for a country as wealthy as Canada.

A boost from sugary drinks?

There’s also a compelling way to fund a good chunk of the program: a national levy on sugary drinks. The UK introduced such a levy in 2018 and raised the equivalent of more than CAD $600 million in 2023–24, even after many companies reformulated their products to dodge the tax.

In Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that a 10 percent levy could bring in $400 million—nearly triple what Ottawa has allocated to the NSFP this year. (While Ottawa has committed $1 billion for the NSFP between 2024 and 2029, the allocation for 2025-26 is $140 million.)

The government could frame such a sugary drinks levy as not only a way to generate government revenue, discourage unhealthy consumption and incentivize firms to produce healthier products, but also to fund food for school children—capturing broad public support. Carney’s government hasn’t shown any interest in such a levy yet, but it’s an option too smart to ignore.

Is Carney serious about school food?

Carney’s government is preparing an austerity budget. That casts doubt on the future of nascent social initiatives such as the NSFP, despite its clear benefits. At present, moreover, funding is flowing, but the program is not protected by law—unlike child care, dental care, and pharmacare. This makes it even more vulnerable to shifting political priorities.

Still, there are reasons for optimism. The sum committed so far is modest—$1 billion spread over five years. Furthermore, Carney himself is publicly promoting the program, including in a June tweet from his hometown of Fort Smith highlighting the NSFP’s rollout in the Northwest Territories. Additionally, in August the Liberals proudly declared that “all 13 provinces and territories are participating in our National School Food Program.” And just this month, Secretary of State for Children and Youth Anna Gainey promised to make the NSFP permanent—presumably through legislation. She added that the government will also “prioritize Canada-made food as much as possible.”

Limited attention for a big achievement

Curiously, while child care, dental care, and pharmacare have all received substantial media coverage, the NSFP has received far less attention. So far this year, the Globe & Mail has mentioned it only six times, with just three articles offering substantial discussion (including an editorial arguing against the program).

Even within the labour movement, which is generally quick to show support for social program expansions, the NSFP has received minimal attention. In fact, the Coalition for Healthy School Food, a national advocacy organization with over 375 members and 151 endorsers from civil society, counts almost no labour groups among its supporters.

Yet, a universal NSFP has the potential to generate tens of thousands of new jobs. Along with the Canada Child Benefit, the Early Learning and Child Care Plan, the Canada Dental Care Plan, and National Pharmacare, the NSFP could help reshape the lives of millions of families for the better while contributing to the country’s economic strength and resilience. The program’s launch is another major achievement for Canada’s progressive movement.

Sometimes the payoff is as simple as it is profound. That full banana in a child’s hand isn’t just a fruit—it’s proof that federal money can make an immediate and much-needed difference in children’s lives. Indeed, given the program’s many benefits, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion: it’s bananas that Ottawa hasn’t already committed funds to making the NSFP universal.

First, it is part of a rare cluster of major social programs—alongside the Early Learning and Child Care Plan (2021) and the National Pharmacare Plan (2024)—introduced in the last five years, breaking a nearly six-decade drought in transformative social program expansions. Second, the dental care plan’s journey from a relatively little-discussed idea to a flagship government program was remarkably swift, propelled by opposition advocacy. Third, despite its significance, this victory for Canada’s left is, surprisingly, sometimes underappreciated by progressives themselves.

Breaking the stagnation

Before the recent wave of social programs, Canada’s last comprehensive social initiative was medicare in 1966. The Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) followed in 1967, and while important, it is a cash transfer program for low-income seniors, not a robust social service. Similarly, the Trudeau government’s 2016 Canada Child Benefit (CCB) provides direct financial support to families and has been credited with reducing child poverty. However, cash transfer programs like the GIS and CCB are vulnerable. 

For instance, in 2021, GIS payments were clawed back for some seniors when COVID emergency support was counted as income, plunging many into financial distress. And the CCB was a replacement for the Harper Conservative’s Universal Child Care Benefit of 2006, which itself was a replacement for the Chrétien Liberals’ Canada Child Tax Benefit of 1993.  

In contrast, the Canadian Dental Care Plan is a true social program, covering full or partial costs of dental procedures for enrolled individuals. Unlike cash transfers or tax credits, it provides direct payments to participating dental service providers, eliminating the need for patients to pay insured expenses upfront and file a claim for reimbursement. 

Despite initial resistance from the Canadian Dental Association, by March 2025, 98% of oral health providers—dentists, denturists, and dental hygienists—are participating, ensuring broad access for the estimated nine million people in Canada with household incomes below $90,000 and no private dental insurance. 

The dental care plan is poised to become a cornerstone of health and well-being for a large segment of the population. By removing financial barriers to dental care, it addresses a critical gap in Canada’s health system, promising to improve oral health and reduce related health complications.

The pre-2022 patchwork: A public health failure

The Royal Commission on Health Services (also known as the Hall Commission), whose work in the early 1960s helped pave the way for universal healthcare in Canada, also recognized that dental health was a significant concern. However, its report noted that “the shortage of dentists in Canada is so acute that … it is impossible to think at the present time in terms of a programme of dental services for the entire population.” Consequently, the Commission recommended an initial focus on dental services for children but added that “it may be possible to consider in the nineteen eighties a general dental programme for the adult population…”

This guidance resulted in Canada developing a patchwork system of public dental care that failed to reach the broad coverage envisioned by the Commission. Provinces and territories offer limited dental programs, primarily for children and some seniors, but coverage varies widely and is often restrictive. And the federal government provides dental care for First Nations and Inuit peoples, as well as limited services for refugees.

Prior to the new national plan, all these public programs accounted for just 6% of dental spending in Canada, far below even the United States’ 7.9%. The remainder of spending was private—either out of pocket or through private insurance.

Dental care left off the national agenda

In 2011, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative (CCPA) published a major report pushing public dental care options. With the Canada Health Accord between federal, provincial and territorial governments up for renewal in 2014, the CCPA highlighted the forthcoming “opportunity to review and advance options that can save money and improve health.” Yet, instead of negotiating a new accord, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper let it expire, effectively denying advocates an important chance to press for the inclusion of dental services in health care funding. 

A Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) report published in 2014 noted that those without dental insurance often avoid care due to costs, leading to serious health impacts. Children miss school and adults are unable to work due to pain in their mouths. In more serious cases, poor oral health leads to other health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and certain cancers. Despite these findings, the CAHS stopped short of advocating for a robust national program, instead recommending “public options for oral health care in alternative service settings,” such as community health centres.

Indeed, just a few years ago, the prospect of a national dental care plan seemed like a pipe dream. Reflective of this outlook, dental care did not figure at all in the NDP’s 2006, 2011 or 2015 election platforms. In 2015, the only major federal party advocating for it was the Green Party of Canada, which promised to introduce “basic preventive dental care”, though this was far from a key policy plank.  

As recently as 2017, Owen Adams, the Canadian Medical Association’s Chief Policy Advisor, observed that “attention to the importance of oral health is growing, and yet access to dental care is simply not on the policy agenda.” 

The political awakening of dental care

The tide began to turn that same year, however, during the NDP’s leadership race to replace Tom Mulcair. Candidate and Manitoba MP Niki Ashton championed a national dental care plan as part of her democratic socialist platform, pitching it to party members across Canada. 

Jagmeet Singh, who would go on to win the leadership, did not include dental care in his platform, focusing instead on job insecurity, discrimination, and the climate crisis. However, he signaled openness to the idea, agreeing with Ashton’s vision during debates and telling the media days before the vote that he believed in expanding “into more universal services like pharmacare and dental care.”

After becoming leader on October 1, 2017, Singh continued to mention dental care on occasion but it wasn’t until the party’s policy convention in February 2018 that he made it clear that he was serious, stating to the enthusiastic applause of party members in attendance:

I ask you to ask any health professional you know, and I’m sure they’ll tell you that people live longer, healthier, better lives when they have good teeth. So why aren’t we looking beyond expanding to pharmacare and look to including dental care as a part of our universal health care system?

Two federal parties were now on board with the idea of a national dental care program and, in the months leading up to the 2018 Ontario provincial election, the Ontario NDP also included comprehensive public dental care in its platform. 

Steady momentum

Despite growing political support, national public discussion remained limited. Progressives pinned far greater hopes on the creation of a national pharmacare plan, given that the Trudeau Liberals’ 2015 platform committed to making prescription drugs more affordable.

By the time the October 2019 federal election came around, the NDP and Green Party were still the only two parties that included dental care in their platforms. However, after the Liberals won a new minority government, the Speech from the Throne stated: “The government is open to new ideas … ideas like universal dental care are worth exploring, and I encourage Parliament to look into this.”

The COVID-19 pandemic, beginning a couple of months later, further shifted the landscape. The Canadian Labour Congress’s Forward Together campaign, launched on Labour Day 2020, called for massive investments in social programs to “disaster-proof” Canada, including child care, pharmacare, and housing—but notably omitted dental care. Still, the call for major new social spending helped create a conducive atmosphere.

When Justin Trudeau called an early election for September 2021, the NDP and Greens continued as the only parties calling for public dental care. Despite the overture made in the 2019 Throne Speech, the Liberals stated in their platform that they would only expand access to dental professionals in rural communities.

The Liberal-NDP deal: A turning point

Following the 2021 election, which returned another Liberal minority government, negotiations between the Liberals and NDP culminated in the March 22, 2022, “Delivering for Canadians Now” agreement. Catalyzed by the 2022 Canada Convoy protests and the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the deal saw the NDP prop up the government in exchange for progressive policy commitments, the first of which was a national dental care program. The agreement outlined an ambitious timeline with full program implementation by 2025.

Though Jagmeet Singh ended the Liberal-NDP agreement in September 2024, the dental care program’s implementation continues under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new Liberal government. The final phase of the rollout is set to be complete by June 1, ensuring access for millions.

A rapid policy triumph 

From Niki Ashton’s 2017 leadership campaign to the Liberal commitment in 2022, the dental care plan took just five years to go from an opposition proposal to government policy—an extraordinarily short timeline for a major social program. 

In contrast, consider that the labour movement and other organizations have advocated for a national child care plan for decades—effectively achieving a national plan in 2005 only to have it reversed by the Harper Conservatives the following year.

Or, look at the new National Pharmacare plan, which the Liberals have been slowly working towards since 2015, following many years of advocacy by civil society. The program, though promising, is currently only serving PEI’s 180,000 residents and will begin in Manitoba in June 2025, in Yukon by January 2026, and in BC by March 2026. Bilateral implementing agreements with other territories and provinces—including Ontario and Quebec, which account for the vast majority of Canada’s population— are still being negotiated.

While the dental care plan marks a major breakthrough and policy success, discussions on the left often centre on its shortcomings, obscuring its positive impact and broader significance. University of Manitoba Labour Studies professor Adam King called it “a means-tested cash benefit in place of a dental program,” though this mischaracterizes the program’s direct payment model. Anti-capitalist blogger Scott Martin criticized it as “means testing to hell and back.” Left-wing writer Nora Loreto, reacting to the 2022 Liberal-NDP deal, lamented that “the agreement starts by cementing the fact that we will never see a universal social program again in Canada…”

Of course, universal social programs are preferable to means-tested ones. And the dental care program might have had greater scope (e.g., better coverage) and employed a public administration model (the government contracted Sun Life to process dental claims) if the NDP could have gone it alone. But building social programs takes time and follows a variety of paths.

It bears remembering that Canada’s path to universal health care was both gradual and uneven. Starting in Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas’ CCF government implemented public hospital care in 1947 and then public medical care (outside of hospitals) in 1962. The latter led to a doctor’s strike but also created a blueprint for a national system. Talks for universal hospital coverage happened between 1955 and 1958. And negotiations for universal medical coverage that overcame the resistance of several provinces took place between 1965 and 1968. Even then, it wasn’t until the early 1970s that the whole country was covered. While the Medical Care Act was passed in 1966, building Canada’s universal health care system actually took a quarter century. 

Carney has so far only spoken of protecting existing social programs, but in a minority parliament, opportunities for progressive gains can arise. The dental care plan, alongside child care and pharmacare, represents a profound achievement for Canada’s left. Progressives should celebrate this milestone while continuing to push for a robust and publicly administered universal system. Social programs are built step by step, and the current dental care plan is a foundation we can build upon.

More than a decade ago, in 2013, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and other progressive organizations proposed a bold idea: diversify Canada Post’s revenue streams by offering financial services. Postal banking, they argued, could be a lifeline—both financially and socially.

Postal banking means using post office branches to provide everyday financial services: checking and savings accounts, bill payments, small loans, and money transfers (which Canada Post has been doing for many years via its partnership with MoneyGram).

Through its Delivering Community Power campaign, CUPW has long maintained that postal banking wouldn’t just improve the crown corporation’s bottom line—it could also be mandated to serve the public good.

A Need Hiding in Plain Sight

Canada has a financial inclusion problem. Around two percent—or roughly 600,000 adults—do not have a bank account. These unbanked individuals tend to come from lower-income or otherwise financially vulnerable groups. Many more are underbanked, meaning they may have an account but still face barriers like high fees, poor credit access, or lack of nearby branches.

These groups often turn to payday lenders and fringe financial services, which charge exorbitant interest rates that can spiral into long-term debt traps.

Low-income, rural, and Indigenous communities are especially underserved by Canada's major banks. Post offices, by contrast, are widespread and trusted. Repurposing them into financial access points could dramatically improve equity in the banking system.

Instead of embracing this opportunity, Canada Post’s leadership chose a narrower path. In response to the decline in letter mail revenue, it cut core services—most infamously, by announcing an end to door-to-door delivery in 2013.

That same year, the crown corporation endorsed a Conference Board of Canada report that dismissed postal banking as unnecessary because “Canada has a highly developed financial services sector.”

This rationale rings hollow, however, when viewed in an international context.

Other Countries Made It Work

Postal banking is not some wild socialist experiment—it’s a mainstream practice in numerous developed nations:

• Switzerland, synonymous with elite private banking, operates PostFinance, a state-owned bank that earned the equivalent of nearly $340 million CAD in operating profit in 2024. Its parent, Swiss Post, reported nearly $543 million CAD in profit.
  

• In New Zealand, the national postal service once earned 70 percent of its profits through its postal bank, KiwiBank, which is now an independent state-owned financial institution.
  

• Italy’s Poste Italiane offers not only banking but insurance services. In 2024, it reported €12.6 billion in revenue and €2 billion in net profit—more than $3 billion CAD.

By contrast, Canada Post lost $748 million in 2023 and says it will require an additional $1 billion annually from the federal government starting in 2026 to survive.

A Forgotten Legacy

Ironically, Canada used to have a postal bank.

Created in 1868—just one year after Confederation—the Post Office Savings Bank served Canadians for a century. By 1908, its deposits reached the equivalent of $1.3 billion today. But as commercial banks grew more competitive in the postwar decades, the postal bank was allowed to stagnate. It was shuttered in 1969 under the Pierre Trudeau government, forcing 256,000 accounts to close.

So, when Canada Post dismissed postal banking in 2013, it wasn’t rejecting a novel idea—it was burying its own past.

The Secret Studies Canada Post Buried

The mystery of Canada Post’s refusal deepens when you consider what it kept hidden.

In 2014, Blacklock’s Reporter revealed—through an Access to Information request—that Canada Post had in fact quietly studied postal banking. Of the 811 pages disclosed, 701 were redacted, but what remained was telling.

Managers had conducted years of internal polling, focus groups, and feasibility studies. One report, titled Banking: A Proven Strategy, concluded that postal banking “would be a win-win strategy,” and that Canada Post could “profitably launch the largest banking network in the country.”

Yet publicly, Canada Post acted as if postal banking was outlandish—a posture backed by the Harper Conservatives, who oversaw the 2014 delivery cuts and were eyeing privatizing the crown corporation.

The Liberal Flip-Flop

Hope for postal banking briefly returned to the spotlight during the 2015 election, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals promised to reverse the Harper-era cuts. After winning, moreover, the Liberals initiated a review of Canada Post through the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

The committee was chaired by Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski, known for partisan filibusters and past controversies involving homophobic and misogynistic remarks. Unsurprisingly, the committee found—without sharing substantiating evidence with the public—that Canada Post’s decision to “focus on its core competencies” rather than expand into banking “was a reasonable decision.”

Postal banking seemed dead yet again.

An Unforced Crisis

Canada Post’s refusal to innovate set it up for the difficulties of the last few years.

The fallout included the 2018 strike, back-to-work legislation, and a deepening labour crisis. Throughout it all, the corporation remained stuck in a reactive posture, warring with its workers rather than investing in public value.

But recently, faced with unsustainable losses, it has begun to change course. Just not very well.

In 2022, Canada Post quietly launched a loan program with TD Bank. The rates were higher than traditional lines of credit, drawing public criticism. The program was suspended within weeks.

Then in November 2024, it partnered with fintech startup Koho to offer a digital spending and savings account. The service, dubbed MyMoney, officially launched in March 2025.

But MyMoney quickly came under criticism as well. “This was pitched as no-frills banking,” said Geoff White of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. “But there are frills, and the frills come with the monthly fees.”

Indeed, some account fees are as high as $22 per month, making it an unappealing option for the low-income Canadians it could have served. To make matters worse, MyMoney accounts are not automatically covered by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC), unlike traditional bank accounts. Even determining what services are included and what fees apply can be confusing.

After wasting the 2010s—a period during which it still managed to turn modest profits—Canada Post has stumbled into banking services. But its efforts so far have felt more like a panicked pivot than a visionary plan.

The Path Forward

Canada Post is more than a logistics company—it's a public institution with deep roots and national reach. That reach could be used for something more than just delivering letters and parcels. It could bring basic financial services to millions who are excluded by or unsatisfied with Canada's predominantly private banking system.

Postal banking is not just about generating revenue. It’s a tool for economic justice, financial inclusion, and community resilience. 

We deserve a Canada Post that delivers more—not just packages, but progress. 

It’s time for Canada Post to become Canada’s next bank.

Unfortunately, history suggests otherwise. The province’s mismanagement of its oil and gas revenues—best illustrated by the dismal state of the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund—exposes a deeper problem. The decades-long failure to convert Alberta’s natural riches into lasting financial security is a cautionary tale. 

The Heritage Fund was created in 1976 by Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservative government to ensure that non-renewable resource revenue would be used to invest in projects aimed at improving the lives of Albertans, strengthen and diversify the economy, and save money for a future where oil and gas reserves become depleted.  

Almost 50 years later, the Fund’s value sits at $25 billion. While that figure might seem large at first, it pales in comparison to the current value of resource wealth funds set up by other jurisdictions. The most striking comparison is with Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), created in 1990. 

Norway’s two trillion dollar nest egg

Despite starting 14 years after Alberta’s Fund, Norway’s Fund ended 2024 with a staggering value of over $2.4 trillion (CAD)—nearly 100 times Alberta’s Fund. Norway and Alberta have similar populations—5.6 million versus 5 million—meaning the GPFG saves close to 90 times more per person than the Heritage Fund.

Of course, no comparison is perfect. For one, Alberta’s heavy bitumen blend fetches a lower price on markets than Norway’s higher quality, light, sweet crude oil. And, unlike Norway, Alberta has no direct access to tidewater, meaning shipping oil is relatively more expensive. These two factors combined mean that although Alberta produces more barrels of oil than Norway, Norway’s oil production is valued higher in dollar terms.

This explains some of the difference in the size of the two funds, but there’s far more to the story. Though provincial governments at first contributed annually to the Heritage Fund—30% of oil and gas revenues until 1983 and then 15% until 1987— subsequent governments stopped doing so. Between 1987 and 2005, a lengthy period spanning the successive conservative governments of Don Getty and Ralph Klein, the province made zero transfers. Since then, contributions have been minimal and sporadic. And governments regularly raided interest income to pay for general government expenses. Consequently, from the time the Heritage Fund’s per capita value peaked in 1983, it has declined in real terms by more than half.

In short, Alberta’s governments since the mid-1980s have so thoroughly lacked a culture of savings and responsible resource wealth management that, whether in boom times or bust, the Heritage Fund was left to wither away.

Alaska’s oil dividends

While the Norway example is striking, a comparison closer to home offers another stark contrast. Alaska created its Permanent Fund in 1976, the same year as Alberta, to save the state’s oil wealth for future generations. Today, it’s valued at $113 billion (CAD), over four times the Heritage Fund. Given Alaska’s small population of about 740,000, however, the Permanent Fund saves thirty times more per person than Alberta’s fund. 

Uniquely, Alaska’s Fund pays an annual dividend to every resident, including children. This has been characterized as the only long term universal basic income program in the world. In 2024, the dividend was set at $1,702 (USD), meaning that a family of four received a $9,531 (CAD) direct cash transfer.

It goes without saying that Albertans receive no such annual payout. The closest they’ve come is the Prosperity Bonus, more commonly known as Ralph bucks—a one-time payment of $400 from the government back in 2006, when the provincial coffer was overflowing with resource revenues driven by high oil prices.

Critically, Alaska’s Fund divides investment income among dividends to residents, funding for government services (like healthcare and education), and reinvestment. In other words, unlike Alberta, Alaska’s current approach preserves the Permanent Fund’s principal for future growth while still providing substantial annual support to both residents and government programs.

What Alberta lost

Given these comparisons, the Heritage Fund looks like a lost opportunity of massive proportions. While Norway sends 100% of its net oil revenues to its fund and Alaska sends 25% of resource royalties, Alberta’s governments have contributed next to nothing for decades. Even the current plan by Danielle Smith’s UCP government to increase the Heritage Fund to $250 billion by 2050 does not commit the province to annual contributions.

According to an estimate by University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe produced in 2020, the Heritage Fund could have been worth as much as $575 billion if Alberta managed it similarly to how Norway manages the GPFG. Now, let’s say Tombe’s calculations are off by a wide margin or, better yet, let’s reject Tombe’s assumption that Alberta could have saved at the same rate as Norway. Instead, let’s settle on a more conservative hypothetical estimate—that Alberta could have saved and invested well enough to have $150 billion in its fund, about a quarter of Tombe’s figure.

Based on a cautious ~3.3% annual draw (the Heritage Fund’s current 10-year annualized return is 7.6%) this would have nonetheless provided Albertans with around $5 billion in recurrent income. Meaning that if every one of the province’s residents were to receive an annual dividend of $800—twice the Ralph bucks—for a total of $4 billion, there would still remain $1 billion to spend on other initiatives, like new hospitals, schools and transportation infrastructure, each and every year.  

Instead, Albertans are stuck with a fund worth a fraction, and continue to suffer with under resourced public services. In 2024, the Alberta Medical Association called on the province to declare a health care crisis due to growing surgery, emergency room and ambulance wait times. On the education front, the government’s own figures reveal that hundreds of schools are chronically overcrowded. And affordable social housing has remained scarce and underfunded. None of these problems should exist in a resource rich province exploiting oil for decades.

The way forward

It’s never too late to start saving. Alberta should reinstate regular, legislated contributions to the Heritage Fund — a fixed portion of non-renewable resource revenues, as was done in the Lougheed years. The $2 billion infusion pledged by the current government is a start, but contributions must be reliable and annual.

Alberta must also break its habit of using Heritage Fund investment income as a substitute for tax revenue to pay for general expenses. For the foreseeable future, the priority must be to allow the Fund to benefit from compound growth. To ensure this happens, the province needs to generate more revenue, whether through increasing personal income taxes, corporate tax hikes, raising resource royalties, or instituting a windfall tax on oil companies during boom times.

While some in Alberta have argued for a sales tax, a more compelling and politically astute first step would be to increase income taxes as well as corporate taxes. Though sales taxes are widely accepted outside Alberta, they are a regressive form of taxation, hitting those with lower incomes relatively harder. They can also become a serious liability for Alberta politicians, as Premier Jim Prentice found out in 2015. 

In contrast, personal income tax increases could be targeted to high earners. And a general corporate tax increase would target big businesses—those with annual profits above $500,000, meaning the mom-and-pop shop down the street would not have to pay more. 

Who would certainly have to pay more are the corporations that rake in hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in revenues, including the companies actively exploiting Alberta’s oil sands. In 2022, Canada’s five largest oil sands producers reported profits of over $35 billion. Let that sink in: in just one year, these oil sands producers made $10 billion more in profits than the total current value of the Heritage Fund. Put another way, these five companies made more money in one year than the total cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

To be sure, excessive profits continue to the present, with Imperial Oil reporting its best ever quarter in 2025.

Alberta’s conservative governments remain hostile to the idea of tax increases. Its politicians as well as those fanning the flames of western alienation seem to prefer pointing fingers at the federal government. But the facts speak for themselves.

Had the province spent the last four decades soundly managing its resource wealth and steered clear of the temptation to use resource revenues to keep taxes artificially low, Alberta could have been currently providing residents substantial annual cash transfers and adequately funding its public services, while also being far better financially prepared for a future where oil revenues are expected to decline.

But as these programs took centre stage, something else quietly slipped off it: the idea of post-secondary education as a universal, fully-funded public good. (That’s “public good” in the everyday sense, not the economics textbook one.) 

Not so long ago, the idea seemed to have real traction. In 2012, more than 200,000 students in Quebec walked out in protest against tuition hikes during the Maple Spring strike, demanding free education instead. In 2017, Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government in Ontario introduced the Ontario Student Grant, promising tuition coverage for low-income students. By 2019, the Green Party of Canada featured free tuition nationally as a key plank of its platform, while the NDP pledged steps toward free tuition. And all through the 2010s, the Canadian Federation of Students staged National Days of Action to press the issue.

Then—relative quiet. Students haven’t stopped organizing, but the volume is noticeably lower. In their 2025 federal election platform, the Greens have emphasized a phased-in approach in contrast to their more ambitious call six years back. And curiously, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative (CCPA), appears to have ommitted free post-secondary education as an explicit goal in its 2025 Alternative Federal Budget. In contrast, its 2024 document called for “a nation-wide transition to a universal and tuition-free post-secondary system.” 

Yet, introducing free post-secondary education in Canada is still a worthwhile—in fact, necessary—political project. For one, even if calls for free tuition are somewhat harder to hear today, surveys show that students continue to struggle with financial costs associated with higher education. It’s also surprisingly cheap to implement. Especially so when considering the current political mood pushing for far greater public funds to go towards a dubious military expansion. Add to all this the fact that dozens of countries around the world—many of them so-called “like-minded” peers—have already pulled it off. 

Free tuition isn’t radical. It’s doable. It’s overdue. The moment might not feel ripe. But the case is as strong as ever. It’s time we started turning up the pressure once again.

Canada promised free post-secondary education

When the federal government introduced the Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) program in 2021, it plugged a long-standing hole in Canada’s education system. The promise of $10-a-day child care is a big deal—and will likely go down as one of Justin Trudeau’s most significant legacies. In fact, one of the many benefits of high quality child care is that it increases the likelihood children will eventually pursue post-secondary education.

But while the gap at the early end of the education system is finally getting the attention it deserves, the gap at the other end has been neglected. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Almost 50 years ago, Canada signed the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, committing to higher education that is “equally accessible to all” and “in particular by the progressive introduction of free education.”

Today, yes, we have government subsidies for colleges and universities. Yes, there are grants and loans aimed at students from low-income families. But half a century later, isn’t it time Canada fully lived up to that commitment?

Countries like Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden treat post-secondary education as a fully-funded public good for their own citizens as well as those from the European Union. Germany goes even further, offering it free of charge to all students—including ones from outside the EU (though some administrative fees apply). Latin American nations like Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Uruguay have made university free at public institutions. Even Argentina’s current right wing president, Javier Milei—who’s been slashing a range of public services —hasn’t yet revoked free tuition, a point of civic pride in the country.

Many other countries, such as France, heavily subsidize higher education, with annual fees in the low hundreds of euros. The idea is simple: access to education shouldn’t depend on your bank account. 

A public service with a private price tag

In Canada, most post-secondary institutions are public, heavily funded through taxes. But students still pay tuition—effectively, a flat user fee that hits lower-income families harder. That’s the definition of regressive: everyone pays the same, but it costs some people more, relatively speaking.

To offset this inherent unfairness, governments offer grants, bursaries, and loans. But the support is patchy and inconsistent. Applications can be burdensome. Funding can disappear from one year to the next. And in some cases, it gets clawed back—like in the case of Samuel Bonne, who lost a $15,000 grant while attending the University of Toronto when he couldn’t provide proof of income documents for his father, who worked in Kenya.

And then there’s debt. A lot of it. Roughly a third of college students and nearly half of university undergraduates leave school owing the government money—an average of $32,000 in student loans. Factor in credit cards and private loans, and that number goes up by about ten percentage points. 

And if you want to become a doctor? Expect to graduate with an average of $84,000 in education-related debt—and another $80,000 in personal expenses. Meanwhile, your Swedish and German counterparts would pay next to nothing in terms of tuition.

This kind of debt isn’t just a personal burden, affecting individual credit scores. It also drags down the entire economy. It delays home ownership. It discourages entrepreneurship. It even distorts the job market: new doctors might choose lucrative specialties over lower-paying but critically needed roles in family medicine, simply to keep up with their loan repayments.

A better path forward

Rather than patching holes with a mix of grants and loans, we should treat post-secondary education as a fully-funded public good. Yes, it would cost money. But Canada is a very wealthy country, ranked among the world’s ten largest economies. Canada’s GDP per capita is comparable to that of Sweden and Germany—both of whom offer virtually free tuition. We can afford it. 

So what would it cost? In 2019, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) assessed the Green Party’s plan to eliminate tuition, forgive some federal student debt and get rid of obsolete education-related tax credits. The net cost for 2020–21 was estimated at $16.5 billion, with the bulk—$10.6 billion—covering tuition. By 2025–26, the annual tuition coverage would fall to $9.5 billion, and climb to around $10 billion by 2028–29.

Of course, this PBO estimate is a few years old now, and any such calculation comes with various caveats and shortcomings. For example, some provincial and territorial governments might decide to cut funding to post-secondary institutions further in response to increased federal funding. And those governments that already more heavily subsidize tuition would likely object to receiving less federal support than their less-subsidizing counterparts. Obviously, federal-provincial discussions could easily become complicated, but that is the nature of all bilateral funding agreements on health and social programs that Ottawa signs with provinces and territories.

Now, consider that the federal government has recently proposed doubling the military’s annual budget from $40 billion to nearly $80 billion over the next few years. Even if the PBO estimate of $9.5 billion for 2025-26 were increased by more than a quarter to $12 billion to account for various uncertainties, free tuition would only cost about 30% of just the planned increase to the military’s budget.

Who needs free tuition?

Critics argue that free tuition is regressive because it benefits higher income groups—who are heavily represented in post-secondary institutions and don’t really need the help—along with lower income groups. But so does the status quo. As noted, tuition is charged at a flat rate, meaning it consumes a larger share of income for low-income families, though this is clumsily mitigated through the grants and loans patchwork.

Some of these critics propose limiting free tuition to students in lower income groups. That sounds reasonable in theory. But in practice, many middle- and even upper-middle-income families also struggle with the cost of post-secondary education. Between tuition, books, housing, and other living expenses, total annual university costs can easily reach $25,000–$30,000 per child—and multiples of that for families with more than one child seeking higher education. 

For a large share of Canadian families—many of whom are already stretched thin by high housing costs and incomes that haven't kept pace with the rising cost of living—this represents a major financial burden. Even with support from the federal Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG), families need to contribute the full $50,000 lifetime maximum to an RESP and achieve strong investment returns—essentially doubling their principal—to cover university costs for each child. While this might be feasible for some, it’s far from guaranteed for the average household, especially given recent market volatility, varying levels of financial literacy, and unequal abilities to save.

This is reflected in government data, which shows that the top 20% of families by income hold nearly seven times more in RESPs than the bottom 20%. But even when compared to families in the fourth quintile, meaning those who fall between the 60th and 80th percentiles of the the national income distribution—what we might colloquially refer to as the upper middle class—the top 20% still held twice as much in their respective RESPs.

The effects of undersaving for post-secondary education are captured in student surveys. A 2024 TD Bank commissioned survey found that 65% of post-secondary students in Canada were “financially unstable”. In the prairies region, this figure jumped to 71%. And some 45% across the country said they were falling short on food and housing costs. Another survey revealed that three quarters of post-secondary students find it “very hard” to afford their education. And over two-fifths are of the view that financial struggles affect their academic performance.

The financial burden of post-secondary education extends well beyond the lowest income brackets to account for a large majority of Canadian families. Consequently, any free tuition initiative shouldn’t be restricted only to those towards the bottom of the income scale.

Universality matters

Fully-funded universal programs have staying power. They build broad public support and become politically untouchable, making them much harder to erode or dismantle. They draw a firm red line that governments hesitate to cross. 

Canadian public health care is a case in point, largely withstanding Conservative governments that are hostile to public services—precisely because the system serves everyone and is deeply embedded in our national identity. We’re already seeing a similar dynamic emerge with the nascent universal pharmacare program: after voting against its creation and pledging to dismantle it, Conservative leader Pierre Poilevre did an about-face just ahead of the federal election campaign, saying he would actually maintain it.

Targeted programs, by contrast, lack the same resilience. Without universal access, there’s no clear line in the sand. And when people are excluded from a benefit, they’re far less likely to rally in its defence. This explains, at least partly, how Wynne’s targeted free tuition program in Ontario was so easily dismantled by Doug Ford.

More broadly, as we've seen with post-secondary education in Canada, treating it as a public service with a private price tag has allowed governments in most provinces to get away with gradually reducing funding and allowing tuition to creep up. 

Between 1980 and 1998, public funding for universities dropped from 74% of revenues to just 55%, while tuition fees rose steadily. In most provinces, undergraduate fees more than doubled through the 1990s; in Alberta, they tripled. Even in Ontario, which was governed by the nominally socialist NDP government under Bob Rae between 1990 and 1995, tuition fees increased drastically. 

Making post-secondary education free and universal would lock it in as a public good—protected by law, popular support, and long-term political viability.

Free tuition isn’t a silver bullet—it’s a smart investment in Canada’s future

Free tuition alone won’t fix every big issue confronting post-secondary education. Students will still face significant housing, food, and other living costs. Universities might still require additional funding to offset the decrease in international student fees, expand enrollment, support research, and improve working conditions for precarious, underpaid sessional instructors. 

Moreover, free tuition won’t automatically close participation gaps. Norway’s experience shows that despite free tuition, students whose parents lack post-secondary credentials are much less likely to pursue higher education themselves. Were this pattern to emerge in Canada under free tuition, it would mean that other interventions—like mentorship, tailored academic support in K-12 and strong early childhood education (already well underway in Canada)—are also needed to level the playing field in the years leading up to post-secondary studies.

Universal free tuition is an investment in people—and in Canada’s future. Like child care, pharmacare, and dental care, it may once have seemed unrealistic. But times are changing. With students and institutions alike facing mounting pressures, and with international examples showing what’s possible, it’s time for Canada to take the next step and make post-secondary education truly public—free, universal, and accessible to all.

Surprisingly, some prominent progressive politicians in Canada also support increasing military spending. Manitoba’s NDP Premier Wab Kinew stated in July 2024 that “if we don’t hit that two per cent target within the next four years … it’s going to become a trade issue,” while British Columbia’s NDP Premier David Eby has urged the federal government to spend more on the military. Even the federal NDP under Jagmeet Singh agreed not to criticize military budget increases as part of its 2022 supply and confidence agreement with the Trudeau Liberals. (Curiously, while Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre predictably support growing the military, Poilievre has so far resisted promising to meet the 2% target should he lead the next government.)

What will it cost?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) provided a comprehensive estimate in October 2024, concluding that Canada would need to nearly double military spending from 2024-25 levels to reach 2% of GDP by 2032. In dollar terms, this means an additional $40 billion per year within seven years.

To put this in perspective, that’s more than the federal government’s annual cost for the national child care plan. It also exceeds the projected costs of a universal national pharmacare plan or the dental care plan currently being rolled out. And it far surpasses the federal share of a hypothetical universal free-tuition program for post-secondary education, as the Green Party of Canada proposed in its 2019 and 2021 federal election platforms.

By any reasonable comparison, boosting military spending to this degree represents a profound opportunity cost. For years to come, it will likely prevent the expansion of social programs that make Canada a more equitable society—or even lead to their reduction.

Is Canada a low spender in NATO?

Canada currently spends about 1.37% of GDP, or $41 billion, on the military. Advocates for increased military budgets argue that Canada is a laggard because, measured as a percentage of GDP, only four NATO countries—Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Spain—spend less than us.

Yet there’s another way to look at it. Measured in actual dollars, Canada ranks seventh out of NATO’s 32 member states, trailing only the U.S., Germany, the U.K., France, Poland, and Italy. In other words, Canada spends more on its military than 24 other NATO members. (Iceland, a founding NATO member, does not have a standing military.)

With the substantial public funds our government devotes to the military, Canada has made significant contributions to numerous overseas military missions since the beginning of the millennium. For better or worse, Canada was among the first countries to join the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the attacks of September 11. A few years later, Canada took on a lengthy leadership role in the volatile Kandahar province of Afghanistan as part of NATO’s ISAF “nation-building” mission. This intervention is conservatively estimated to have cost $18 billion and led to the deaths of 158 soldiers and one diplomat. 

Even before withdrawing from Afghanistan, Canada deployed CF-18s to drop nearly 700 bombs on Libya in 2011 as part of a NATO mission. Then in 2014, Canada sent CF-18s to bomb targets in Iraq and Syria, this time as part of a new U.S.-led coalition of the willing. That same year, Canada deployed fighter jets to Europe following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. And in 2017, Canada began leading a multinational battle group under NATO in Latvia. By 2026, plans call for the expanded deployment of up to 2,200 Canadian military personnel as part of this mission.  

Christian Leuprecht and Joel Sokolsky, political scientists at the Royal Military College, argue that Canada’s military “capacity … is popular, robust, competent, and well-equipped.” They add: “Canada is one of only five NATO member countries that maintains a full-spectrum military … Canada’s mantra has always been not to get hung up on expenditure, and to focus on capability and commitment instead, since Canada consistently outperforms on both.”

Whatever one thinks of the various missions mentioned above, and there are plenty of reasons for concern, Canada has a lengthy record of contributing to international military operations.

NATO already outspends everyone else

The near-universal support for increasing NATO budgets ignores the glaring reality that NATO already vastly outspends other countries. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2023 NATO members collectively spent USD $1.34 trillion—yes, trillion—on their militaries, accounting for 55% of global expenditures. In contrast, Russia spent $109 billion, and China spent $296 billion. In other words, NATO’s total military budget is ten times that of Russia’s and three times that of Russia and China combined. Even if we exclude the U.S., all other NATO countries still spend more—$425 billion—than Russia and China combined.

On a per capita basis, the disparity is also striking. NATO’s collective population of 960 million means it spends $1,395 per person on the military. By contrast, Russia, with a population of 146 million, spends $746 per person, and China, with a population of 1.41 billion, spends only $210 per person.

Following the logic of those who claim bigger military budgets will make us safer, this enormous gap in spending should have deterred Russia. Yet, it did not. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and has since been effectively engaged in an expensive proxy war with NATO. Collectively, NATO and its allies have provided Ukraine with $137 billion in military support so far. Yet, Russia is in no rush to end the war.

If outspending Russia 10-to-1 didn’t prevent war, how can anyone credibly argue that increasing NATO’s spending advantage even higher will make us safer? Why should Canada contribute to such a military buildup?

The burden of proof lies with those advocating for increased military spending, but so far, the evidence is overwhelmingly against bigger budgets. In upcoming posts, we’ll take a deeper, critical look at the assumptions underlying the push for increased military spending—namely, the perceived threats from Russia and China and the pressure from the U.S. We’ll also look at the societal opportunity costs of embarking on this ambitious spending spree in the coming years.

However, at the February 25, 2025, English debate, Carney made a significant shift. He publicly voiced support for the national child care plan, as well as the emerging public dental and pharmacare programs—possibly for the first time in a televised event. This moment matters, not only because these programs are vital for millions of Canadians, but because the political climate is increasingly pressuring federal leaders to redirect public funds toward expanding military spending.

Regardless of what happens with military budgets—and there are strong arguments against ramping them up—Canada’s next government must protect and expand our social programs. Child care, dental care, and pharmacare must not only be maintained but strengthened to ensure they become truly universal public goods. Other recent initiatives, like the National School Food Program, also need long-term stability.

After six decades without major national social programs, Canada made remarkable progress in just a few years. Child care was introduced in 2021, followed by dental care in 2023, and pharmacare in 2024 (though bilateral implementing agreements with provinces are still rolling out). This historic expansion was made possible by two unusual factors: the federal government’s willingness to spend during the COVID crisis and the political leverage of the NDP in a minority Parliament. Such a unique alignment of conditions may not come again soon, especially as military spending is pushed toward the NATO target of 2% of GDP.

Even if these new social programs don’t immediately expand to full universality, losing them altogether would be a tragedy. Yet that’s precisely what Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has hinted he may do—at least insofar as dental care and pharmacare are concerned—if he becomes Prime Minister. The stakes for Canada’s social safety net have rarely been higher. The next government will decide whether these hard-won gains endure—or are dismantled entirely.

In the chaotic aftermath of the coup, thousands of Chileans sought to flee. Some desperate individuals arrived at Canada’s embassy in Santiago, hoping for sanctuary. A few were allowed in by Marc Dolgin and David Adam, young diplomats in charge of the embassy while the ambassador was travelling. However, Canada had no formal refugee policy. Worse still, those escaping Pinochet’s repression were often viewed with suspicion in Ottawa due to their leftist affiliations—a concern partly framed by Cold War thinking. The Trudeau government—already aligned with Washington’s hostility toward Allende—was reluctant to open Canada’s doors to those it perceived as socialist dissidents.

Canada’s ambassador to Chile, Andrew Ross, played a key role in shaping this policy. In a series of confidential cables sent to Ottawa in the days following the coup, he dismissed those being persecuted as “the riff-raff of the Latin American left.” He minimized the military’s abuses, describing killings as “abhorrent but understandable” and said he saw no reason for Canada to delay recognizing the new dictatorship.

Economic interests also loomed large. Despite resisting close relations with Allende, Canada had a growing trade relationship with Chile, and shortly before the coup, de Havilland Aircraft of Canada had signed a $5 million agreement to sell six Twin Otter aircraft to Chile’s domestic airline. However, as loan guarantees to support the sale had not yet been finalized with the Export Development Corporation, de Havilland officials quickly lobbied the Department of External Affairs. They feared the sale would fall through unless Canada recognized the new regime.

The Globe and Mail reported at the time that Pierre Charpentier, head of the Latin America division at External Affairs, admitted that “trade considerations were the foremost factor” in Canada’s swift recognition of Pinochet. Though the department later denied the aircraft sale specifically was a major factor, it did not counter the broader assertion that trade and business concerns played a key role in its decision. Prior to Allende’s ascension, in fact, Canadian mining company Noranda partly owned the Chuquicamata copper mine, but the leftist government nationalized the operation. It was only during the Pinochet years that Noranda regained ownership of its Chilean subsidiary.

Canadians were critical of their government’s decision. Media outlets such as the Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star condemned the recognition, while, as UBC political scientist James Rochlin noted, “a plethora of interest groups, especially church organizations, staunchly criticized” the Trudeau government. Dissent also emerged within the federal public service.

Bob Thomson, a young worker at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Ottawa, was outraged by Ross’ characterizations and the government’s complicity. Determined to expose the truth, Thomson secretly leaked Ross’ cables to the New Democratic Party (NDP). The revelations ignited a political storm and increased public pressure on the government.

Initially, External Affairs Minister Mitchell Sharp reiterated the ambassador’s downplaying of the violence in Chile. However, growing outcry forced him to send Geoffrey Pearson, a senior official, to Santiago to assess the situation firsthand in November. Pearson returned a week later with troubling findings—confirming the extent of the repression and the legitimate fears of Chileans seeking refuge abroad.

Within weeks of Thomson’s leak, the first group of Chilean refugees arrived in Canada. Eventually, 7,000 Chileans found safety under Canada’s special Chile program. The leaks played a crucial role in forcing a shift in policy, and the public response helped drive long-term reform. This episode of reckoning directly influenced the creation of the Immigration Act of 1976, which formally established refugee status as an immigration category, bringing Canada in line with the UN Refugee Convention.

Despite his impact, Thomson paid a steep personal price. Following an internal investigation, he was caught, dismissed from his position, and had his security clearance revoked—forever barred from government work. Yet, he never stopped fighting for justice. He went on to work with Oxfam Canada, played a leading role in the early days of Bridgehead, the fair trade coffee company, and was instrumental in introducing Fairtrade labeling to Canada.

Reflecting on his role years later, Thomson remained humble. “I was the guy who threw some gas on a fire and got burnt, losing my job at CIDA in the process,” he said. “But there were many, many other actors: churches, unions, NGOs, human rights groups, and a few sympathetic diplomats… they worked hard to change Canadian refugee policies and successfully organized to bring thousands of Chileans to Canada.”

Thomson’s story is a testament to the power of moral courage. His actions helped shape Canada’s refugee policies and provided thousands of Chileans with a second chance at life. Though he sacrificed his career, his legacy endures in every life he helped to save—and in a Canada that, despite its flaws, became more open to those fleeing persecution.

Instagram »

Despite this success, UTDC was privatized in 1986. What followed was a series of ownership changes, highlighting failures in the logic of neoliberal privatization.

A Conservative Case for Public Ownership

In what would surely be dismissed by today’s conservatives as heresy, UTDC was founded by a conservative government—that of Ontario Premier Bill Davis. Davis rejected the highway expansion mindset of the era and instead prioritized mass transit, famously stating when cancelling Toronto’s proposed Spadina Expressway:

If we are building a transportation system to serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway would be a good way to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop.

Davis recognized that mass transit development was too risky and complex for the private sector to handle alone. A government-owned entity was best positioned to research, develop, and implement new transportation technologies and systems.

The Neoliberal Push to Privatize

Despite its success, UTDC became a casualty of the 1980s neoliberal wave, which saw widespread privatizations under Margaret Thatcher in the UK and other western countries. When David Peterson of the Ontario Liberals took office in 1985, his government quickly announced plans to sell UTDC. The reasoning was ideological: In the world of neoliberalism, governments should be small and stay away from business.

But as some media voices pointed out at the time, the sale made little economic sense. A 1985 Toronto Star editorial questioned:

We don't understand the rush to sell UTDC. It is a profitable firm (it made $14 million last year), a major employer in Ontario (accounting, directly or indirectly, for an estimated 6,800 jobs this year), and it has a rosy future (an estimated $10 billion market for transit sales around the world in the next five years). (Toronto Star, 07 Dec 1985, B2)

Another 1986 editorial echoed these concerns:

Before Peterson and cabinet take the final plunge and sell UTDC … they should consider what would be lost. UTDC is a profitable company, a worldwide standard-bearer of Ontario's industrial ability, and a major employer in the province. (Toronto Star, 1 Feb 1986, B2)

Selling UTDC for a Fraction of Its Value

The privatization process itself was counter-productive. Once the Ontario government signaled its intent to sell UTDC, new orders dried up. International customers were hesitant to commit to projects from a supplier with an uncertain future. Since transit systems require years-long (and sometimes decades-long) commitments, buyers needed assurance that UTDC would still be around to honour contracts. Government ownership offered the stability they sought, while privatization introduced the very risk they wanted to avoid.

This uncertainty depressed UTDC’s value, making it a bargain for private buyers. In 1986, Ontario sold UTDC to Lavalin Industries Inc. for just $30 million while assuming millions more in liabilities for projects that were already underway. An Ottawa Citizen editorial criticized the deal:

For a firm [Lavalin] in which taxpayers have invested $167 million since 1974, the province will receive precisely $10 million now and a further $20 million in 10 years. But neither the government nor Lavalin is willing to speculate about how much that might be, or even if profits will materialize at all. (Ottawa Citizen, 18 July 1986, A8)

Private Ownership Fails—Government Steps In Again

Despite acquiring a majority stake in UTDC at a bargain-basement price, Lavalin quickly realized that a private firm could not sustain the business alone. As David Pattenden, president of the privatized UTDC, admitted to the Globe and Mail in 1988, the company “cannot survive in the international marketplace unless we have very, very strong government support." He went on:

What we really want more from the provincial Government than simply a cheque is the Government’s support into the future. Governments always like to see another government involved. (Globe & Mail, 13 Aug 1988, B1)

Which makes sense—as mentioned above, customers for these massive infrastructure projects want the backing of governments to ensure completion. But this begs the question: what was the point of privatizing UTDC if it still needed government backing? 

In any case, Lavalin, despite all its generous public support and the sweet deal it received for the train maker, filed for bankruptcy in 1991, forcing Ontario to take back control of UTDC.

A Second Privatization—With More Subsidies

By this time, Ontario was governed by the left-wing NDP under Bob Rae. Yet, even Rae’s government succumbed to neoliberal thinking, choosing to sell UTDC once again—this time to Bombardier in 1992. “There is no alternative,” apparently.

But privatization wasn’t quite “free enterprise”—it required even more taxpayer support. As part of the deal, Ontario paid Bombardier a $17 million subsidy to keep UTDC’s Thunder Bay and Kingston plants open—a condition that could have simply been mandated at no cost had UTDC remained government-owned.

Over the next three decades, Bombardier continued developing and marketing UCTD’s products. But it also continued to rely on government support, including direct grants, loans, and tax incentives. One estimate puts total Canadian government aid to Bombardier’s various units at over $4 billion. Others peg it much higher.

And fast forward: Despite the largesse of government support, in 2021, Bombardier, weighed down by—guess what?—financial struggles, sold its rail division to Alstom, a French multinational. This transferred UTDC’s legacy—developed with public funds—into foreign hands.

Lessons from UTDC’s Story

The UTDC saga highlights the failures of neoliberal privatization. A profitable, innovative public company was sold off, leading to the newly privatized firm demanding continual government support only to eventually turnover the national asset to foreign ownership.

At a time when Canada faces economic uncertainty, rising tariffs, and global supply chain challenges, government ownership of certain industries is more relevant than ever. Public ownership is not just about ideology—it’s a practical tool for safeguarding jobs, innovation, and national economic interests.

• 2021: A national early learning and child care program, promising $10-per-day child care within five years.

• 2023: A national dental care plan, currently rolling out with a goal of covering nine million people.

• 2024: A single-payer drug plan, paving the way for universal pharmacare.

(In 2023, the government also introduced the Canada Disability Benefit, a modest, means-tested cash transfer program set to begin payouts in the summer of 2025.)

Despite our reputation for having a strong social safety net, Canada has long lacked key national programs that could adequately support its citizens. While universal healthcare became law in 1966, both dental care and pharmacare have been glaring omissions. Canada has stood out globally, especially within the OECD, as the only country with national healthcare but no publicly-funded pharmacare.

The struggle to establish a national early learning and child care plan followed a similar path. Prior to 2021, the closest we reached to achieving a national plan was in 2005, when the minority Liberal government led by Paul Martin negotiated bilateral child care agreements with each province and funded the so-called “Foundations Program” with $5 billion in federal money. Unfortunately, Martin’s government fell soon after and the newly elected Conservative government of Stephen Harper quickly canned the initiative.  

While some provinces have introduced their own child care, dental care, and pharmacare programs, these have been limited and uneven. Quebec’s child care system, introduced in 1997, remains an exception. Despite challenges, it served as a powerful precedent and inspiration for the introduction of a national child care plan.

Canada’s reputation as a “socialist” northern neighbour to the United States has historically rested on social safety programs introduced 60 to 80 years ago:

• 1940: Unemployment Insurance

• 1952: Old Age Security

• 1966: Canada Pension Plan

• 1966: Medicare (universal healthcare)

• 1967: Guaranteed Income Supplement

To be sure, the above programs were revised and adjusted over the following decades. And a number of programs ostensibly aimed at partially covering child-related expenses were introduced over the last few decades, such the Canada Child Tax Benefit in 1993 and the Canada Child Benefit in 2016. Yet, these programs amounted to cash transfers that, while providing some financial relief to families, ultimately did not lay the foundations for long term social development. Moreover, future governments could easily scale them back or eliminate them altogether.

In this context, the rapid introduction of three new national social programs between 2021 and 2024 is significant. Such progress is rare, and history suggests it may not be repeated soon. 

Although the Liberals had floated ideas for new social programs in earlier years, it was the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the party’s minority government status from 2019 onwards that gave the initiatives momentum. The pandemic upended the lives of millions and highlighted the vulnerability of so many in Canada, while the government’s minority status in parliament ensured that the opposition NDP had leverage to push for progressive measures.   

That said, the new programs are still a work in progress:

• The child care plan is moving towards the $10 a day target, but more affordable spots and better wages for workers are needed.

• The national dental care plan has expanded access to dental services, with providers able to bill the federal government directly. However, it’s a means-tested program and may not cover all costs.

• The pharmacare plan, while promising, will initially cover only diabetic and contraceptive drugs and devices before expanding further. Moreover, the federal government must reach a bilateral agreement with each provincial government to implement the plan. Even so, there are some positive developments, including the recent establishment of a Committee of Experts charged with shaping the national program that excluded corporate representatives.

Of course, with federal elections that could be called any time until October 2025, there is a serious risk that a future Conservative government could scale back or cancel any of the new programs, particularly those that have not been fully rolled out yet. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been “noncommittal” when asked if he would keep the new programs should he become Prime Minister. We must remain on guard.

Canada is a wealthy country, ranked among the world’s ten largest economies. We can certainly afford continued expansion of our social safety net, so essential to creating a healthier, more vibrant society for all.