Health Minister trumpets national dental care plan — and Trudeau

A high-ranking federal cabinet minister tells SooToday the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) is a growing success.

“We want anybody 65 and over, 18 and under and persons with a disability to know that the program is available,” Health Minister Mark Holland told SooToday in a phone interview from Ottawa Tuesday.

The CDCP is expected to cost taxpayers $13 billion over the next five years and cover Canadians who don't have access to private dental insurance plans.

A wide range of services — but not all — are covered. Under the CDCP dentists perform work on patients, then bill the government.

The government states it wants to make dental care affordable for nine million Canadians. There are 2,494,000 individuals eligible for the program across Canada, over 750,000 having received care and 20,900 oral health providers participating in the CDCP nationwide according to federal government statistics released Sept. 19, 2024.

“In Ontario we’re now at over 80 per cent of dentists and other oral health professionals participating in the program. It means people can get care. We’ve been very excited about the numbers. In less than five months more than 750,000 people have gotten care (314,000 in Ontario),” said Holland, MP for Ajax.

“We’ve had more than 2.4 million Canadians sign up and we have a huge number of providers in and around the Sault who are participating in the program,” Holland said.

Holland, however, did not have numbers of Sault and area residents receiving care through the CDCP or the number of local dental professionals providing care through the CDCP immediately available.

“We’ve made huge strides in the number of providers involved in the program. In the last number of weeks we’ve gone from 50 to 60 per cent of providers to over 80 per cent and we’re seeing as a result of that an accelerating number of people getting care,” Holland said.

Holland said the importance of the program cannot be overstated.

“This is huge. I was talking to a dentist the other day and in his clinic in five months they found three people who had oral cancer in their mouth that wouldn’t have been detected if they hadn’t come in for a checkup (through the CDCP). This is so important that people get preventative checkups and cleanings that can avoid all kinds of disastrous issues in the future.”

The CDCP was first rolled out in 2022 to help people without a private dental insurance plan to receive dental care. The interim Canada Dental Benefit was intended to help lower dental costs for eligible families earning less than $90,000 per year. Parents would have been eligible if they paid for dental care for a child under 12 years old who did not have access to a private dental insurance plan. Now in its second phase that began in Dec. 2023 the CDCP provides coverage to people under 18, those over 65 years old and those with disabilities. The government intends to extend the benefits program to all individuals with a family income less than $90,000 and having no dental insurance throughout 2025.

At first some dentists voiced their displeasure with the plan regarding extra administrative work and the time it took to be paid for their work by the government.

“There was a lot of misinformation and that misinformation generated a lot of fear that providers were going to be looped into something that wasn’t going to treat them well and wasn’t going to be good for their patients,” Holland said.

Holland said the government met with providers, heard their concerns and made changes based on their feedback.

He said dental care providers are not locked into a contract with the government and are now getting paid through the CDCP much quicker.

“One of the concerns was that providers didn’t want to officially sign up for the program. That was a big one. In July we said they can participate in the program on a claim by claim basis. That allowed providers to test the program and not feel they were making a long term commitment to it so they could try it and feel how it would work. We also were able to accelerate the speed with which we’re able to pay folks. It’s common in private insurance to take two to three weeks to pay a provider back but now we’ve got that down to 48 hours. It’s faster in most cases than private insurance. People are getting paid in less than 48 hours. People who are using the program are loving it and as we get more people on board more and more people sign up.”

Holland said patients should be aware the CDCP does not pay 100 per cent of the cost for all types of dental work.

“If you’re between $70,000 and $90,000 there is some form of co-pay so that’s where one point of confusion comes. The second is that dentists, hygienists and denturists set their fees completely apart from the government. We have nothing to do with it so we can’t pay 100 per cent of something we’re not involved with. That wouldn’t be responsible so what we do is say this is what we can afford to do on a fee schedule.”

For a list of what dental services are covered visit the Government of Canada’s Canadian Dental Care Plan website.

The Canadian Dental Care Plan came into being in exchange for the NDP propping up the Liberal minority government until 2025.

With that confidence-and-supply agreement between the governing Liberals and the NDP now ended by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, there is talk of an approaching election.

Holland denied the Liberals recent promotion of the CDCP is pre-election campaign talk.

“For me this is about delivering care,” Holland said.

“It’s deeply disappointing what the NDP has decided. And so what’s left is for us to continue doing the work of the country and that very much includes dental care.”

Holland said he fears that millions of Canadians could lose access to dental care if the CDCP is discontinued by a new government, stating that dental care transcends politics and is a matter of social justice.

“When I go to a seniors home and meet a senior who’s had the same set of dentures for 20, 30, even 40 years and they get a new set of teeth, to me that is fundamentally essential to this country. I’m trying to make sure everybody gets coverage and it becomes ingrained in Canadian values. At some point in time there’ll be another government and that government will have to make a choice whether or not it keeps this program. How successful we are now, how successful we are in getting people dental care, means this could be a permanent legacy for this country not just for now but for all future generations that follow.”

Holland added the government intends to keep working to expand eligibility of the CDCP in 2025.

Holland was asked if he supports Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party, possibly heading into an election.

“Categorically yes,” Holland said.