Liberal Party

• Promise a 10-year plan with a sustained boost in health transfers to the provinces.
• Demand new accountability measures from provinces, like published lists of waiting times for procedures.
• Support public funding for medically necessary care but have no policy against private-sector involvement in providing services.

New Democratic Party

• Immediately re-establish federal funding at 25 per cent of medicare costs.
  
• Reverse private delivery of services.
  
• Create national homecare and pharmacare programs and enforce national standards on access to care.

Bloc Québécois

• Call for substantial federal funding transfers to provinces with no conditions attached.

Green Party

• Reduce the long hours that Canadians are working
  
• for more time spent engaging in outdoor activities.
  
• Canadian consumers with stricter labelling requirements on packaged foods.
  
• the availability of less expensive generic prescription drugs.
  international trade agreements to ensure that they protect each nation’s ability to regulate health care systems, in accordance with national and regional health and environmental priorities.

Conservative Party

• Deliver almost $37 billion in new funding promised under the 2003 federal-provincial Health Accord.
  
• Support a new national drug plan to be negotiated with the provinces.
  
• Maintain the Canada Health Act’s guarantee of public funding for necessary services.
  
• Favours private delivery of some medicare services.

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SAME SEX MARRIAGE

see also - Party Platform: Equal Marriage

Liberal Party

• Claim support for same-sex marriage but have avoided moving forward with legislation before election.

New Democratic Party

• We’ll recognize the equality of loving adult partnerships by extending civil marriage equality to same-sex couples, while respecting each religion’s right to determine its own definition of marriage.

• We’ll abandon Paul Martin’s appeal of the court decision extending retroactive Canada Pension Plan survivor benefits for same-sex couples.
• Following the lead of the Northwest Territories, we’ll amend the Canada Human Rights Act to ensure that no one can be discriminated against because of gender identity.Claim support for same-sex marriage

Bloc Québécois

• Claim support for same-sex marriage

Green Party

• The Green Party supports the right of gay couples to choose a lifelong partnership and to achieve the full and equivalent legal status of any married couple.
  

Conservative Party

• Will withdraw the federal reference to the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage and allow a free vote in Parliament on the issue.

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SOCIAL/ENVIRONMENT

Liberal Party

• Re-establish a national housing plan.
  
• Improve aboriginals’ systems of education and accountable government, and ensure clean drinking water on native reserves.
  
• Create an international niche for Canada as a builder of democratic institutions
  
• Accelerate transfers from $1-billion Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund to five-year period instead of the anticipated 10 years.
• in failed states.
• $3.5 billion cleanup of polluted federal sites, with 60 per cent of the fund to be spent in the North.
• Create a national child-care system.

New Democratic Party

• Re-establish a national housing plan.
  
• Cut tuition by 10 per cent. Student loans interest free.
  
• Create national transportation strategy to provide long-term funding and incentives to promote public transit.
  
• Cap credit-card interest rates to five points above prime rates.
  
• Complete support for same-sex marriage.
• GST rebates for clean cars.
  
• Build 10,000 wind turbines and retrofit buildings with new windows and furnaces to make them more energy efficient.

Bloc Québécois

• Abolition of GST on books.
  
• Want $4.5 billion spent on affordable housing over three years.
  
• Demand an additional $2.4 billion annually for international aid.

Green Party

• Establish a special five-year tax break on energy efficiency retrofits in commercial and residential buildings.
  
• Push for the adoption of profit-linked efficiency initiatives (gas/electric).
  
• Increase fuel taxes by ten cents (to be phased in over three years).
  
• Introduce tax incentives to help homeowners reduce home heating and electricity bills.

Conservative Party

• Scrap the current Supreme Court reference on same-sex marriage and let Parliament vote on the issue.
  
• End existing firearms registry and work with provinces on another gun-control strategy.
  
• On June 3, Stephen Harper revealed he would allow a free vote on abortion if an MP introduced a private member's bill.
• Legislate caps on smog-causing pollutants and spend $4 billion over 10 years to clean contaminated sites.
  

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ECONOMY ...

Liberal Party

• Use budget surplus to pay down national debt with goal of reducing it to 25 per cent of GDP.
• Sell off government shares in Petro-Canada and invest proceeds in an eco-friendly technology fund.

New Democratic Party

• Committed to balanced budgets and slow debt-reduction.
  
• Targeted tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners.
  
• Eliminate GST for essential goods.

Bloc Québécois

• Demand federal transfers of about $8 billion each year to the provinces to eliminate so-called fiscal imbalance.
  
• Call for a more generous Employment Insurance program that would reach additional workers while scaling back existing EI surpluses.
  
• Eliminate gasoline surtax.

Green Party

• Lower taxes on income, profit and investment, to promote increased productivity and job creation.
  
• Raise taxes on harmful activities such as pollution, waste and inefficiency.
  
• Shift taxes onto land use and away from incomes.
  
• Maintain a balanced budget and reduce the national debt.
  
• Cancel planned cuts to corporate capital taxes.

Conservative Party

• Twenty-five per cent tax cut for middle-income earners, with the long-term goal of pulling Canadian tax rates lower than the U.S.
  
• Provide a $2,000 tax deduction per child for families.
  
• Redirect money from industrial subsidies to lower taxes and research and development.
  
• Hand provinces three to five cents from the 10-cent-a-litre gas tax for road repair.
  
• Lower business and capital-gains taxes and eliminate the capital tax.
  
• Introduce a legislated plan setting targets for national debt repayment.
  
• Eliminate annual surplus in Employment Insurance fund.

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CITIES ...

Liberal Party

• Transfer slice of federal gas tax or other revenue stream to municipalities for infrastructure improvements.

New Democratic Party

• Transfer five cents per litre from federal gas tax, or $2.5B, to provinces for municipal infrastructure repair.

Bloc Québécois - ?

Green Party

• Negotiate an agreement to give municipalities a fixed share of federal tax revenues.
  
• Support a grassroots movement to create municipal charters.

Conservative Party - ?

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Defence

Liberal Party

• $7 billion in capital projects promised, including $2.1 billion for joint support ships, $700 million for mobile-gun system, $1.3 billion for search-and-rescue aircraft, $3 billion for maritime helicopters.
• Create an integrated foreign policy where military interventions are tied to aid projects, trade initiatives and diplomatic missions.
• Add 5,000 new members to the regular forces and 3,000 more to the reserves, which currently have 15,500 part-time member.

New Democratic Party

• Improve salaries and job benefits for armed services personnel.
  
• Refuse to participate in proposed U.S. missile-defence program.

Bloc Québécois

• See peacekeeping as military priority, not combat missions.
• Forbid Canadian soldiers from participating in wars deemed to violate international law. Call for substantial federal funding transfers to provinces with no conditions attached.

Green Party - ?

Conservative Party

• Boost military funding by $1.2 billion immediately, and eventually increase that to $2 billion.

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More Analysis

Coalition for Women's Equality (CWE) Analysis of Party Platforms

Conservative Platform Will put Government in Deficit - CCPA Report
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Release dd June 11, 2004
Can the three major national parties pay for what they say? That's the question posed by a new study released today by CCPA. Can they pay for what they say? A pre-election comparison of the Conservative, Liberal, and New Democratic platforms, by economists Ellen Russell and Sheila Block, assesses the ability of the parties to balance their budgets and deliver on their promises.

Canadian Labour Congress (CLC)'s Analysis of Party Platforms
Comparing the Platforms - Which party is the Better Choice for working Canadians? For working families, the important issues for this election are clear. We want good jobs in a stronger economy and a health care system that is there when we need it. We want education and training opportunities that give working people and their children the skills to succeed. And we want secure pensions for every Canadian.

Conservative income tax proposals disproportionately benefit men, upper-income families - Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Report Media Release dd June 22, 2004 -- Families with incomes over $150,000 are the big winners in the Conservative Party's proposed income tax package, according to Who benefits? A gender and distributional impact analysis of election income tax promises. Furthermore, low-income and even middle-income Canadian families benefit very little from the Conservative income tax promises. The study, released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, also found that men received the lion's share--73%--of the value of the tax reductions under the Conservative's proposal.

Comparison of party platforms in relation to urban issues - Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)

 

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