NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he wants people to be able to stay healthy by using their health card and not their credit card.

Singh shared his plan for pharmacare and dentacare during a stop in Essex on Friday.

“Everywhere I go, I hear how worried people are about affording their medications. People are making impossible choices between paying for prescription drugs or covering their rent. They need help right now,” said Singh. “The Liberals have given Canadians false hope on pharmacare for more than twenty years. They promise Canadians help during elections, and then side with big pharma and don’t deliver.”

The NDP plan would start in 2020, and would look to examples from around the world and base coverage on the broadest formulary possible.

Singh also spoke about racism and inequality, following revelations this week that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has donned blackface and brownface on multiple occasions.

Singh says he wants to put the focus on people who are hurting because of those incidents, telling them they do belong, and are valued.

Meanwhile, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer was also campaigning on the health care theme, pledging $1.5 billion to buy new medical imaging equipment for facilities across the country. He said buying  MRI and CT machines to replace aging ones will reduce wait times.

Scheer's party was behind the release of video documenting a third time Trudeau wore blackface, this one shot in the early 1990s. His campaign received the clip and turned it over to Global TV. Trudeau said Friday that video was from a costume day for river guides at the white-water rafting company he worked for in the early 1990s.

Scheer said Friday he's not aware of the existence of any more photos or videos. Trudeau has said he won't say definitively there aren't, as he doesn't necessarily remember everything.

While Trudeau talked of a gun ban, Green Leader Elizabeth May promised a ban of her own -- on the kinds of cars the vast majority of people drive. A ban on internal combustion engine passenger vehicles by 2030 is part of her party's broader transportation strategy unveiled Friday which seeks to get to zero-carbon transportation in Canada.

People's Party Leader Maxime Bernier is trying to hold onto his own seat in Quebec and is spending today campaigning there, though he has a swing to Western Canada next week.

With files from The Canadian Press, in a report that was first published Sept. 20, 2019.