On a mission to fix health care, Jane Philpott is open to a return to politics

More than five years after she was expelled from caucus in the fallout from the SNC-Lavalin affair, former Liberal health minister Jane Philpott is leaving the door open to a possible return to politics.

Philpott was asked about her future in an interview airing Saturday on CBC's .

«If a door ever opened that was the right one, that would allow me to go back into a political role, I would certainly consider it,» she told host Catherine Cullen.

In the interview — in which she discussed her new book, Health For All — Philpott said she will not seek another term as dean of health sciences at Queen's University when her current term expires next June. She also said she wants to remain involved in health policy.

«It's possible that might involve a role in government some day, but I'm still exploring what that might look like,» she said.

Philpott was elected MP for Markham-Stouffville in 2015 and was appointed health minister. She moved to the Indigenous services portfolio in a cabinet shuffle in 2017.

She later criticized the government's handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair and resigned her cabinet post in March 2019. A month later, she was expelled from the Liberal caucus, along with fellow minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Philpott was a close ally of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister and attorney general at the centre of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Testifying before a Commons committee in 2019, Wilson-Raybould said that 11 officials in the Prime Minister's Office and other government offices inappropriately pressured her to override a decision to prosecute SNC-Lavalin on bribery charges related to contracts in Libya.

Philpott ran as an independent candidate in the 2019 federal election but lost to new Liberal candidate