I was responding to someone who seemed to want the NDP to matter at a federal level in order to have more things covered by medicare (medicare is the wrong term as well, we don't have medicare in Canada)
I like the NDP because I'm supportive of labour and want to see social programs expanded in general. Medicare seems like an ideal place to start, since no party is going to categorically reject expanding that, and since there's been support for revising our system through the Romanow Report. At any rate, I'm not an NDP die hard. I like the Liberals (Chretien is my favourite PM, to illustrate my point). Just find them hard to judge at the moment.
On that last point; medicare was the old name of the program, I believe. Either way, while it may not be the 'accurate' term, everyone knows what I was referring to.
The NDP could have a majority government and give a ton of money to the Provinces and that still might not happen: the Provincial government could use the money for something else (health care related)
The Government of Canada cannot tell the Provinces what they have to cover
The Feds can't unilaterally impose something on the provinces, but if they can get most of the provinces on board with expanding coverage, then suddenly the others are bound (or certainly pressured) by the principles in the Health Act to expand their coverage.
Moreover, the first point assumes the NDP is politically stupid. No federal government is going to gift money to the provinces without a strategy to ensure those provinces comply with the intergovernment regulations.