This election comes at a time of crisis. President Trump is trying to fundamentally reshape the international trading system and, in the process, he’s rupturing the global economy, says Liberal leader Mark Carney. With Canada, he has been even more direct and aggressive: he is trying to break us so America can own us. A Liberal government will protect and build a strong economy and strong Canadian institutions that are more important now than ever – including public health care.

One of Canada’s most important sources of national pride and identity is our public health care. For decades, we have proudly accessed health care with our health cards, not our credit cards. Canadians expect and deserve a strong public healthcare system that improves and modernizes over time, responds to changing needs, and is available wherever and whenever they need care.Today’s system is facing significant challenges in living up to those expectations.

Canada Strong, Carney’s plan to unite, secure, protect, and build Canada, includes comprehensive measures to build and protect our health care system in partnership with provinces, territories, and Indigenous peoples – expanding on his previous commitment to protect dental care and pharmacare.

“In America, health care is big business – but in Canada, it is a right,”said Carney, in a news release. “Canada will never be America. We must protect and build the institutions that make us strong. My new government will invest in our public health care system to add thousands of new doctors, build new hospitals, and deliver better mental health services. We will build a stronger Canadian health care system.”

In partnership with provinces, territories, and Indigenous peoples, a Mark Carney-led Liberal government will:

• Add thousands of new doctors to Canada's health care system, increase medical school spaces and build new medical schools, expand residency positions, recruit qualified doctors through a new global recruitment strategy and streamline credential recognition for internationally trained doctors and nurses;
• Build hospitals, clinics, and more, by investing $4 billion to construct and renovate community health care infrastructure including long-term care homes, and community clinics, and increase access to team-based care, mental health care services, and expensive machinery such as MRIs;
• Modernize Canada's public healthcare system, including cutting wait times in half for life-saving medications, launching a Task Force for Public Health Care Innovation, implementing a national license for physicians and nurses, reducing the administrative burden on doctors, and securing Canadians' access to their health care data;
• Improve mental health care and support to address the overdose crisis, including with an immediate $500 million investment in the Emergency Treatment Fund to confront the toxic drug and overdose crisis; and,
• Invest in women's health, including ensuring there will always be funding for abortion care in Canada by making the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund Program permanent and introducing a new in vitro fertilization (IVF) program to make it more affordable for Canadians who want to become parents.
• Protect reproductive rights, by always standing up for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.