As the October 21st Canadian Federal Election date approaches the Health Providers Against Poverty team has put together a report card to help voters digest how Canada’s four major parties’ plan to address poverty and poverty related health issues.

The full report can be found here:

https://healthprovidersagainstpoverty.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/federalelectionreportcard-2019-hpap.pdf

The report looks at six priority areas that significantly influence physical and mental health for low-income communities:

Income and Employment Security

Healthcare Access & Affordability

Affordable Housing

The Opioid Crisis

The Climate Crisis

Indigenous Sovereignty

As a diverse group of health providers we have seen how these priorities interact with the social determinants of health and play major roles in the health of our patients.

The parties were graded on these priorities based on their platforms for this federal election. The grading criteria used was generated by reviewing existing policy research from leading researchers, advocacy groups, and non-partisan government stakeholders, in addition to directly consulting with many of these groups.

Overall, the NDP scored the highest with 20/25 points and the Green Party was just slightly behind with a total score of 18.5/25. Both had substantial leads on the Liberal and Conservative parties which scored third and fourth overall, respectively.

To learn more about how and why the parties got their grades you can read our full report!

Please remember that this report card is not meant to tell you how to vote but meant to help break down the large volumes of information regarding important health related priorities in this election that will impact Canadians as whole and in-particular Canada’s most vulnerable populations.