Health minister noncommittal on pharmacare, says expert report isn’t binding

OTTAWA — The federal health minister is not committing to following the road map set out by an expert committee to launch a national pharmacare system.

Marjorie Michel said her government is reviewing the recommendations it received early last month.

“As you know, we have a lot of independent expert panels and they have their views, but it is non-binding for the government,” she told a press conference in Montreal on Monday.

The report from the expert advisory committee on pharmacare was released publicly on Friday.

It calls on Ottawa to draft a list of essential medications and provide funding to ensure all Canadians can get those prescriptions at no cost with their health cards.

The committee said such a model “avoids the drawbacks of bilateral agreements.”

When asked about that approach on Monday, Michel shook her head, telling reporters that health services are the responsibility of the provinces and territories.

“My job is to work with my partners,” she said, adding that the federal government will keep negotiating with provinces and territories.

“At this time, we need to make sure that we build the strongest partnership possible with the provinces and territories to improve the health of Canadians,” Michel said.

The expert committee was formed last fall, after the previous minority Liberal government passed the Pharmacare Act as part of its supply-and-confidence agreement with the NDP.

The law directed the government to appoint a committee to determine the best way to create and fund a national, universal, single-payer pharmacare system.

In its report, the committee called on Ottawa to provide sustainable funding to all provinces and territories to fully cover the cost of drugs on the essential medicines list — a system that also would allow private insurers to offer complementary coverage.

The committee said new legislation should be passed to formally recognize access to essential medicines as a human right and set out how the policy would work.

It said Ottawa should meet with the provinces and territories to agree on plans to put any savings from existing drug plans into improving access to primary health care.

Dr. Eric Hoskins, who authored a 2019 report on pharmacare for the previous federal government, said the new report gives the government “a very clear path toward implementing pharmacare.”

Hoskins, a former Ontario health minister, said he believes it would be fairly straightforward to negotiate bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories while also achieving the report’s aims.

To do that, he said, each jurisdiction could be asked to agree to a set of principles similar to the Canada Health Act and to participate in the management of the essential medicines list.

Hoskins said the Liberal government has a lot on its plate, with a focus on national defence and nation-building projects, but he argued pharmacare is also a national project.

“(Liberal governments) showed the political will to bring it this far, so I’m hoping that they can show additional resolve and courage to take it to the next step,” he said.

The expert committee said the cost of an essential medicines list would be between $6 and $10 billion a year, a sum that would be offset in part by savings from cheaper drugs.

The committee’s chair, Dr. Navindra Persaud, said he expects the additional cost to the government to be around $3 billion a year.

The most recent federal budget included no new funding for pharmacare and there have been doubts about the government’s commitment to the program since the April election.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Michel have not publicly pledged to expand to a full national, universal pharmacare program. Both have spoken about “protecting” pharmacare.

The Pharmacare Act stated that the federal government should negotiate deals with the provinces and territories to cover the cost of contraceptives and diabetes medications.

In just over a year since the law came into effect, the Liberals have signed bilateral pharmacare deals with three provinces and one territory.

The previous government budgeted $1.5 billion over five years to implement the program, but more than 60 per cent of the funding is already allocated to the four existing deals.

Linda Silas, a committee member and the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, said bilateral deals have not worked well in the past. She said the committee is recommending a partnership with provinces, territories and stakeholders like pharmacists.

“The eight recommendations are clear. The minister and government could start a national pharmacare program today if they wanted, without any new legislation, without any new bilaterals,” she said.

Silas said she’s been lobbying for pharmacare for close to three decades and she was hoping that no political party would need to promise pharmacare in the next election.

“I think we’re going to have to go there. We’re going have to convince, again, a politician to say, ‘You have all the work, you have frameworks, you just need to bite the bullet and do it,'” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 24, 2025.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press