44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 7, 2022 10:00AM
- Oct/7/22 11:24:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative opposition has a golden opportunity to provide a Thanksgiving gift to Canadians, and to the half a million Canadians who would benefit from the dental supports that we have put on the floor of the House. What is it that the Conservative opposition has against kids in Canada getting dental care? They can see the light. They can do the right thing. They can vote for the bill and support Canadians families.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about proposed Bill C-31, an act respecting cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing.
As announced by the Prime Minister on September 13, 2022, our government has committed to bringing forward measures that should make life more affordable for those who need it the most. As part of Bill C-31, and if the bill is passed without amendments, the government has committed to implementing a proposed benefit called the Canada dental benefit. The goal of this benefit is to help Canadians with the cost of dental care and to get more money into the pockets of Canadians who need it as quickly as possible.
The federal government believes that Canadians deserve access to dental care and excellent oral care, which is why I firmly support this proposed legislation. We all know that having access to quality dental care is an integral part of overall health, but it can be very expensive for Canadians who do not have dental insurance. Of course, this must change. Under the proposed legislation, and if the bill is passed as written, eligible Canadians with children under 12 years old would receive direct, upfront tax-free payments to cover dental expenses.
The Canada dental benefit would be in place while the government takes the necessary steps to build a comprehensive, longer-term national dental care program. Knowing that a national dental care program must be able to support approximately between seven million and nine million Canadians, people whose situations are completely different, the government is proceeding cautiously by establishing this program in a phased manner. This allows the government to undertake the necessary steps in building this comprehensive, long-term dental care program for all Canadians who need it the most.
An effective and comprehensive national dental program requires discussion with all key stakeholders, including the provinces and territories as well as industry, to ensure that the upcoming program meets all needs and expectations. We must insist on one point: Implementing the Canada dental benefit would allow the most vulnerable Canadians to access financial support as soon as possible in order to begin attending to some of their children's dental care needs.
Let us look at some of the detailed provisions contained in the proposed bill that we have on the table, provisions that are subject to the approval of Parliament.
Families with children under 12 years old who have a net annual family income of less than $90,000 for 2021 would be eligible to apply for the Canada dental benefit. The proposed benefit in Bill C-31 would provide eligible parents or guardians with direct, upfront tax-free payments to cover dental expenses for their eligible children. Per year, $650 would be provided if the family's adjusted net income is under $70,000; $390 would be provided if the family's adjusted net income is between $70,000 and $79,999; and, finally, $260 would be provided if the family's adjusted net income is between $80,000 and $89,999.
Applicants in 2022 would need to meet some eligibility criteria to apply. This would include, of course, having children or being the legal guardians of children under 12 years of age and receiving the Canada child benefit for these children, and needing to attest that the children do not have access to private insurance that covers dental care. If applicants are covered by other government programs, they would need to certify that it is only partial coverage and that they would have out-of-pocket dental expenses for the dental procedures. They would also need to have filed their most recent income tax benefit return. In other words, in order to be eligible in 2022, applicants would need to have filed in respect of taxation year 2021.
The Canada dental benefit would be used for any dental care provided by regulated oral health professionals who are licensed to practise in the applicant's province or territory. The exact care covered by the benefit would be decided between the patient and their oral health care provider.
Under the proposed legislation, and if the bill is passed, the Canada Revenue Agency would administer the payments and facilitate the application processes based on its experience with similar benefit programs and its ability to verify income.
The CRA has significant experience in delivering essential benefits to Canadians such as the Canada child benefit. This expertise will allow the CRA to effectively administer the proposed dental benefit on behalf of the Government of Canada. The CRA is valued for its reliable and innovative execution of tax and benefit transactions. In other words, the CRA is ready to deliver a secure and user-centric experience to make it as easy as possible for eligible Canadians to get the money they need for dental care, while protecting personal and tax information.
I can assure all members in the House that the CRA never stops enhancing the security of its digital services to protect Canadians from fraudulent activity. As an example, security features include multifactor authentication and making email addresses mandatory for those who use the CRA's My Account. Of course, if Bill C-31 is passed, the CRA would lean heavily on a range of existing tools from administering other government programs, as set out in the draft legislation, to conduct compliance, verification and collection activities. As an example, the CRA would ensure integrity and verify applicant eligibility, including applicant's income, child's age and family relationship. Applicants will be asked to save their dental care receipts for a period of six years and to show that the benefit was spent on dental care as intended, in case verification is required.
Finally, Canadians can also be assured that they would receive helpful, fair and trustworthy services thanks to the CRA's people-first philosophy. I encourage all Canadians who believe they could apply for this benefit to sign up for the CRA's My Account and direct deposit, if it has not already been done. I also invite Canadians to update all of their information, such as their address and marital status, on the CRA's online services. However, if a prospective applicant does not have Internet access, they can update their information and will be able to apply for this benefit, by calling the CRA contact centre.
In closing, I am pleased to support the proposed Canada dental benefit as it demonstrates the government's commitment to making life more affordable for Canadians. We must remember that in April of this year, through budget 2022, the Government of Canada committed $5.3 billion over five years and $1.7 billion, ongoing, to help with dental care for Canadians who are unable to access care because of the costs.
This proposed Canada dental benefit is the first stone in the building of our national plan for our fellow citizens who cannot afford the cost of dental care. There are millions of them and these Canadians deserve excellent oral health.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for her speech and the time she took to talk about the importance of especially dental care. I know in my riding, just over a year ago, I sent out a mailer talking about the need for dental care. I was shocked by how many people responded. What was most surprising was how many people actually came to the door. I remember walking into the office and having three seniors waiting outside the door, all of them there to talk about their really important need for dental care and bringing in person the mailer that I sent out, along with their responses.
I am just wondering if this member could indicate why her party, which just, over a year ago, voted against dental care is now in a position of voting for it.
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Mr. Speaker, I too heard the same things from constituents in my riding as I was meeting with them. Making life more affordable for families across the country includes making oral health care accessible for all. Dental care, I am sure my colleague will agree, is an important part of overall health, yet in Canada one-third of the population cannot afford it. That is why our government is tabling this bill.
The Canada dental benefit would provide dental care for uninsured Canadians. It is important because every Canadian deserves good oral health care. We will continue working with all our partners.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sudbury for her speech.
When we talk about this legislation, we must not forget that Quebec has already had coverage for 10 years and that we need to respect the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. The impact of this bill is questionable, and it has been shown that these cheques may not help improve Quebeckers' dental health. I would like the member to explain why.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. We are working very closely with all of our partners, including the provinces and territories. As members know, every Canadian deserves good care, because that is key to their overall well-being. Our government is on track to keep its promise on dental care.
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Mr. Speaker, this bill is one small step toward making real dental insurance a part of our public health care system. It is just the first step.
When is the government committed to including, and will the government commit to, full dental coverage for all age groups in our national health plan?
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Mr. Speaker, this is a first step toward developing a full comprehensive dental program, but we felt it was important to take this first step as Canadians who are vulnerable require it.
I want to share some statistics that have recently come out over the needs that are just so important and why we are taking steps. A campaign led by the Canadian Association of Public Health Dentistry suggests that one in five people, and that represents six million Canadians, are not receiving needed dental care due to costs and that only Canadians with financial resources or insurance can experience good oral health. That is why we have taken this first step. It is a recognized first step toward a broader plan.
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Mr. Speaker, we know Canadians are feeling the rising cost of living, particularly through higher food prices and rent. While inflation is a global challenge, we are helping families weather its impact by working to put more money back in the pockets of Canadians.
The Liberal Party of Canada and NDP's supply and confidence agreement committed to launching a national dental care program, and the agreement identified launching a new dental care program for low-income Canadians as the first priority action under the health care stream of the agreement. The program is restricted to families with an income of less than $90,000. It is very important because we know every Canadian deserves—
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Mr. Speaker, it is very disappointing that the Conservative Party has made the decision that it is not going to be voting in favour of Bill C-31. Worse, it is going to do what it can to stop the passage of this bill. There are people from Winnipeg, as I am, and children under the age of 12 who are going to emergency health care services because they are not getting the dental work that is necessary. It is an affordability issue in many ways. This legislation is going to provide children under the age of 12 the opportunity to get badly needed dental care.
Why would the members of the Conservative Party oppose the children of Canada who are under the age of 12 being able to receive support in getting dental care, especially when we have so many children going to the hospital to get surgery on dental work?
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise this afternoon to speak to a very important, but also inadequate, bill.
I am honoured to stand today and recognize the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin peoples. We are on their land.
Bill C-31 represents two parts that would attempt to help Canadians when times are tough. Part 1 deals with dental care and an interim dental benefit and part 2 deals with rental housing and a one-time payment to help low-income renters. It is hard to be against anything in this bill. I hope to approach the two parts in equal measure in the time I have available.
A dental benefit is something that no Green Party member of Parliament could be against. We were the first party to propose bringing dental care into our public health care system. It was a central feature of our platform in 2015. We got it costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, and it would be an enormous cost. We recognized that we would have to start, just as the government would do now, with dental assistance for children under 12, and then move forward to take on more. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in this area, particularly because dentists as a profession are not keen on moving in this direction, at least those I have spoken with.
However, we know that dental care is an essential part of health care. Without adequate dental care, other illnesses can occur and other diseases can occur. It really does create a poor start in life when our children cannot get access to routine dental care. Therefore, I fully support Bill C-31's interim first step at dental care. It is again a baby step, but it is better than nothing, and it does fulfill, as we understand it, the confidence and supply agreement between the New Democrats and the federal Liberals.
However, I know my constituents are asking, with the health care crisis in this country, if this really is the top-of-mind thing we should be addressing. We know, and certainly this is the case in my community, that many people do not have a family doctor. Many places across the country are seeing emergency services cut back, emergency wards closed some days and ambulance services less available. We are facing a significant public health crisis. This bill, while focusing significant resources on dental care for children under 12, does not speak to the things my constituents are most alarmed about. I wanted to flag that.
I am sure the hon. Minister of Health is well aware that the health care system in this country is in crisis. It is practically in free fall, and it is not just about money, with all due respect to my colleagues who say it is all about transfer payments. The Province of British Columbia, where I live, has received transfer payment increases, but the quality of care has not increased with those payments.
One of the local doctors in my riding put it as wanting to see measurable improvements in what they have termed as, and this is brilliant, the bed-to-bureaucrat ratio. They have seen money come in. Talking to health care professionals, I hear about the layers between the person doing the work, the frontline health care worker, and the boss. There are layers of bureaucracy between that health care worker and that decision-maker, and that bureaucracy expands in layers, but health care does not get easier.
One of my friends, who is a wonderful community nurse on Salt Spring Island, was telling me about going to visit a home where somebody needed help to get a vaccination for COVID. They could not go to the clinic. Two nurses went out. One nurse does the vaccination and the other nurse spends the time trying to handle all the required paperwork. She is with the other nurse, so two nurses are in the same house, and most of the work and most of the stress is on the nurse who has to fill out the paperwork.
We really need an emergency meeting of the federal Minister of Health and all provincial colleagues to look at health care, listen to doctors and to nurses, and fundamentally rethink what we are doing in health care. It must remain public. It must remain single payer. We must not allow the emergency of the moment to allow any further privatization creep into our public health care system, and that is an enormous risk because it is not like it is new.
I will emphasize the risk in Canada, versus a country like the U.K., of the two-tier system.
Canada's deal with the United States, which was NAFTA and is now CUSMA, means that health care in Canada is a market. It is not just about taking care of people, and the enormously and obscenely wealthy health insurance industry in the U.S., which provides a lesser quality of health care than what we get in Canada, looks north of the border. The more we allow privatization, the greater the risk that we will lose our public single-payer health care system.
I will turn to the second part of Bill C-31, which deals with rental accommodations and includes a welcome short-term $500 benefit for rent paid on a principal residence in 2022. It is a band-aid. Let us look at a real solution, and on that I want to compliment and thank my hon. colleague from Kitchener Centre, who has placed before us Motion No. 71. This is an affordable housing strategy, not what Bill C-31 offers with an affordable housing band-aid. This is an affordable housing strategy that targets the real causes of the enormous escalation in the price of getting a roof over one's head in this country.
The motion starts by recognizing that it is “a fundamental human right”, as recognized under the Canadian national housing strategy and also under international human rights law, to have housing, and that housing must be adequate to people's needs. The hon. member for Kitchener Centre, in his motion M-71, identifies correctly the problem with housing and why the prices have escalated.
It is that we stopped having the price of a home, and I say “home” and not “investment”, tied, as it was historically, to what a community can afford. If someone is living somewhere where everybody's income is roughly the same, and that tends to happen across Canada, nobody is going to start charging $2 million in a community where the average income is $70,000 a year. I am just not going to start trying to sell a house there, because I would have no buyers. When homes became disconnected and unrooted from place and when homes become a free-floating investment open to any speculator from anywhere, that disconnection and commodification of a home into investment territory is when we started seeing massive escalations in pricing.
Vancouver was ground zero for this, tied to money laundering, crime and all manner of nefarious activity, but it has spread. We have targeted, and the member for Kitchener Centre with Motion No. 71 targeted specifically, real estate investment trusts. These REITs create investment opportunities, and they are not taxed appropriately. We need to actually ensure that REITs are no longer exempt from paying corporate income taxes.
There is much more we need to do with housing and making sure it becomes more affordable. The current Liberal government in the budget that was tabled this spring takes some baby steps in looking at non-resident ownership, but there are other areas we have not yet addressed. I would urge the government to look at the impact on available housing stock of the popularity of Airbnbs.
Airbnbs create a tremendous opportunity for investors to buy multiple residential properties. They are unlike the tourism industry, the hotels and bed and breakfasts, which have, over decades, had to pay for their insurance, train their employees and keep their employees with good wages. Right now all of those regulated industries in tourism are being undercut by Airbnbs.
They sound like they must be the most lovely things in the world. It is as if we are playing in The Holiday with Kate Winslet and going back and forth to someone's home. It is not. This is a big business, and it is taking a lot of housing out of market availability for young families that want to buy a home and for people who want to rent a room in someone else's house while they come to do seasonal work in the Gulf Islands. Those properties are disappearing to Airbnbs, and we really do need to tackle that.
I commend the government for bringing forward Bill C-31, but I do not think it is preparing us for the economic storms that are likely to come. We have a number of warnings globally of a coming recession. We need to do much more. We need to tax the excess profits of those who are making a fortune while others suffer, particularly big oil, get that $8 billion and redistribute it to Canadians who need it the most.
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Mr. Speaker, previously when we were debating Bill C-31, we were discussing dental care and that this was a first step.
Would the member like to elaborate in terms of a next step that we could look at for dental care for all Canadians?
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to see amendments to the Canada Health Act to make it really clear that we understand that mental health is public health and that dental care is public health. We need to look at the totality of what the World Health Organization definition of health has always been, which is a complete state of physical, mental and it even uses the term “spiritual” health. We do not take care of Canadians, and if we are looking for a gap in our health care system, I think the opioid crisis and the mental health crisis point us in that direction.
However, as much as I think it is important to take care of dental care, I think that the steps that would be required to get to full dental care require engaging with the dentistry professional community and with the provinces to determine how we move forward to ensure that no Canadian, regardless of their age, lacks adequate dental care.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. She said that, even though the dental insurance program is not perfect, it is better to send money to people than not send it at all.
With all due respect, I disagree. For example, under this program, families that have insurance cannot collect the benefit even if their insurance does not cover everything, whereas families that pay just a small amount collect the full benefit.
Would it not be more effective to just transfer the money to the provinces, which are in a better position to meet people's dental care needs and can therefore make better use of this money? That would be better than the federal government's misguided approach.
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