Madam Chair, I want to thank the member for St. Catharines for his work and for his advocacy, in and out of public life. It is tragic when we see folks, who have not received the dental care that they need, wind up in an emergency room or wind up with an urgent health care situation that could have been avoided.

Two weeks ago, I was in rural New Brunswick talking to a dentist who said, “I know exactly who does not have coverage in my community. I know that, on some given Saturday, that person is going to wind up in an emergency room, and I am going to get a call to go in and give care urgently, pro bono, away from my family, to try to fix that situation, hoping that it is not grievous for that individual.” I think that the member is talking about a situation very similar in St. Catharines.

Not allowing people to have dental care is not just a matter of dignity, of somebody having a proud smile that makes them feel good about who they are and gives them confidence to be out in the world. It is fundamentally an issue of prevention. People who do not get good oral health care wind up with bad health outcomes. They cost our health system an inordinate amount of money. That is why I am so encouraged.

The member asked for an update, and I gave it to the House earlier. We have seen more than 120,000 claims and over 100,000 seniors in just over three weeks. We are seeing, as of July 8, a new portal. We already have 10,500-plus oral health professionals who have signed up to this plan. I think we are going to see a real growth in that number. We have seen two million seniors signed up. Next month, we are going to be opening it up to persons under 18 and folks with disability who are currently on a disability tax credit. It would mean that, by next year, everybody, all nine million Canadians who do not have oral health care, will have coverage.

One may ask why this was not done at the start of our health care system. Well, at the beginning, when we were starting so many decades ago with a national health care system in this country, it was thought that oral health was just a matter of cosmetics and that it was not essential health. Of course, science and data have evolved. We know that a myriad of diseases, illness and conditions is caused by lack of oral health. Oral health is health, and that is why it is so essential that we continue to make progress to make sure that every Canadian is covered.

Mark Holland

$572,303.00