Bill C-31

Cost of Living Relief Act, No. 2 (Targeted Support for Households)

An Act respecting cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing

Part 1 enacts the Dental Benefit Act , which provides for the establishment of an application-based interim dental benefit. The benefit provides interim direct financial support for parents for dental care services received by their children under 12 years of age in the period starting in October 2022 and ending in June 2024.
Part 2 enacts the Rental Housing Benefit Act , which provides for the establishment of a one-time rental housing benefit for eligible persons who have paid rent in 2022 for their principal residence and who apply for the benefit.
Finally, Part 3 makes related amendments to the Income Tax Act , the Excise Tax Act and the Excise Act, 2001 .

Cost of Living Relief Act, No. 2.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to come back to the speech by my colleague from Joliette, whom I respect and who does an excellent job.

I agree with the member that the government is misrepresenting the Bloc Québécois when it accuses it of not valuing dental care. That is not what the member just said. After listening to his speech, it is clear that the Bloc is sensitive to this issue. That is not the problem.

I have a question for my colleague from Joliette. Is it because of the agreement between the NDP and the Liberal Party of Canada that we have this bill, which was thrown together without respecting provincial jurisdictions?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier for his question and for his kind words. The feeling is mutual. I appreciate my hon. colleague's dedication and desire to do good and work hard and everything he does for democracy in the House.

We are not in the loop, of course, but we do know there was an agreement to create a dental benefit. The problem is, Ottawa does not have the expertise to provide services directly to the people, whereas the provinces do. What officials told us when the most recent budget came out was that they did not know how they were going to set this up, that it was bound to be long and complicated, and that it would not work.

I suspect that, when the government said that to the other opposition party in the context of the agreement, it was told that would not fly and it would have to find another way. The government cannot create a real insurance program, so it opted to send cheques. The NDP said to be quick about it or lose their support, so the government did it quickly and haphazardly without really taking the facts and the technicalities into account. We figured we could make changes in committee, but the government was not interested and swiftly shut things down with a super closure motion. If a bill is bad from the get-go and does not get amended, it is still a bad bill.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House for months and months listening to the Bloc Québécois demand additional Canada health transfers from the federal government to the province, and it is right about that. I agree. We do need the federal government to pay more of its share for health care.

We have a bill before this House that would see the federal government send $1,300 to all Quebec parents who make under $70,000 a year and have children under the age of 12 and do not have dental coverage now. It would allow them to take their children to the dentist. There are no conditions whatsoever, and the Bloc opposes it.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague can tell me why he is opposing the federal government sending out $1,300 for every child in Quebec who does not have dental care now, 100% of which would be paid by the federal government. What is he saying to those Quebec parents by opposing that payment?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

As I said, we are in favour of the principle. There is a factual problem with his question. He is saying that the program is for every child in Quebec or for the parents of every child in Quebec. That is not true.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer looked into this, and he showed that Quebec will receive only half as much as the rest of Canada will be getting. Quebec is being discriminated against. All we are asking is to drop this super closure motion that the NDP supported so that we can improve this bill in committee. If we had been able to amend it and improve it in committee, we would be voting in favour of the bill now. However, the government imposed super closure on a bill that is out of touch with reality and does not provide fair compensation. If we had had a chance to do the work to ensure that we were not getting just half of what we are entitled to, then we would have voted in favour of the bill. There are consequences to supporting super closure.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I start, I would like to seek unanimous consent from the House to split my time.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Kingsway.

I am delighted to enter into this debate. I have been listening all day to members in the House speak to Bill C-31. What are we talking about with Bill C-31? We are talking about making sure that families with incomes of less than $90,000, and with children under 12 who do not have dental coverage or insurance elsewhere, get oral health support. That is what we are talking about in this bill.

We are also talking about making sure that low-income individuals whose incomes are less than $20,000, and low-income couples and families whose incomes are less than $35,000, get a one-time housing benefit of $500. That is what we are talking about in Bill C-31.

When I listened to members in the House today, I went through a range of emotions, from anger to dismay to sadness. I heard the Conservatives say over and over again that children who need dental care support and who do not have dental care support should not get it. The Conservatives are opposed to this bill, and they used all kinds of rationales, illogical and strange as they may be. They even came right out and said that dental health should not be a priority because there is no crisis. This comes from the people who actually have dental coverage for themselves and their families.

Across the country, 500,000 children do not have access to dental care. Just so Conservative members know, here are the real facts of what is going on. Oral health is actually critical to our overall health. This goes beyond the risk of pain, infection and tooth decay. Particularly in young children, it could impact eating, sleep and growth. It could have long-lasting impacts into adulthood. In fact, oral health is linked to diabetes and respiratory illnesses. The most common surgery preformed on preschool children at most pediatric hospitals in Canada is treatment for dental decay.

The Conservatives may not care about people and the pain they may have to suffer through because they do not have access to dental services, but let me say this: They care about money. They talk about money all the time, not that they would ever stop to talk about ultrarich CEOs, who benefit from excessive bonuses and pandemic profitability. The Conservatives are not worried about those companies. They are not worried about the oil and gas industry, which last year alone made $147 billion. We will never hear them say that those companies should pay their share so those 500,000 children and families can actually get dental care. We will never hear that.

All they talk about is how we cannot afford it and about where the money will come from. The money to support people in Canada can come from the very people who have extra and excessive profits. That is what the New Democrats are here to fight for. Members can bet their bottom dollars that this is what I am here to fight for.

Let us talk about money for a minute. I do not know if any Conservative members know this, but 1% of people end up in the hospital because they do not have dental services. They end up in emergency. Just in British Columbia alone, the cost of that 1% is $155 million. That is just for one province. If we multiply that across the entire country, all the provinces and territories, it makes up all the money required to do this work and then some.

Imagine the pain and suffering that people have to go through. The Conservatives talk about dollars and cents, but they do not really think about them. When they speak, they say that dental care is not a crisis. My goodness. Really? Do we really want everybody to end up in the hospital, and then we can say let us do something about it?

The worst thing is they try to pit communities against communities. I heard them saying all day today that somehow, because there are insufficient funds to address mental health, we should not address dental health. What sort of twisted, illogical thinking is that? The New Democrats on this side of the House absolutely believe that there should be investments in mental health. In fact, we believe that head-to-toe care should be in place. We want to fight for pharmacare as well. We will go to the wall to fight for these things.

I cannot believe what I am hearing today from the Conservatives, including from their own leader, who has said in different places that dental care is not a priority. I have even heard Conservative members say that no constituents in their ridings need dental care. My goodness. I challenge them to validate that by way of proof that not one of their constituents needs dental care.

I want to turn for a minute to the housing issue, as I am also hearing twisted logic on housing.

Let us be clear. Earlier today I put on the record the distribution of how many people qualified for the housing benefit, province by province. It was to the tune of 1,785,600 people. They would qualify for this $500 one-time benefit. In Quebec, 568,800 would qualify for this benefit. It is the second-highest province by number of people who would qualify, so it is simply not true to say that Quebeckers would not get this benefit. They would.

I have to say that I admire Quebec from this perspective. When the federal Liberals cancelled the national affordable housing program in 1993, Quebec and British Columbia were the only two provinces that continued social housing and continued to build affordable housing and co-op housing, doing so by themselves. British Columbia did that. We also subsidize people who have that need. Now with an NDP government back in office there, it is investing significant amounts of money into housing.

Just because some people have safe, secure, affordable housing and rent that is geared to income does not mean we should leave everyone else behind. It does not mean we do not need to fight for them to get supports as well. I will go to my grave fighting for people to get that. As my mother has taught me, we need to lift each other up. As indigenous elders have taught me, we need one heart, one mind. That is what we have to do. People have been left behind, and just because I have made it does not mean we have made it. It means we have to work harder to bring everybody forward.

Once upon a time I lived in poverty. Once upon a time my parents made less than minimum wage to support us. Just because we are no longer living in poverty does not mean that I forget my history and background and all the people who were left behind. That is what this bill is all about. That is why the New Democrats are here, 24 of us, to force the government to take more action to support the people in this country.

We all deserve it. We want to be proud of who we are as Canadians. I ran for office to do a job, and that job is to fight for everyone so they are not left behind. Until that is done, the New Democrats will never rest. No matter what the Conservatives want to call us, or anyone else, it does not matter. At the end of the day, it is not about me; it is about the people. That is why we are here in this House.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the Conservatives are loath to support this bill because they feel that all government spending is inflationary, even though economists have said that the amount of government spending in this bill would not cause inflationary pressure.

Does the member believe that providing dental care to children 12 and under would cause the price of dental care to go up?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is, of course, absurd to say that supporting Canadians who need dental services and who cannot access them because they cannot afford them would cause dental services to increase in cost. It is absurd to even say that.

I think the reason the Conservatives are opposed to the bill is that their wealthy friends in the oil and gas sector already have dental services. The Conservatives are loath to support people who do not have it and hate to contribute to them so they too can have the health care services we all deserve.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleague's speech just now in the House and heard her speak earlier today. I think it was much the same speech, but we are at third reading now so I appreciate that we had to hear the speech twice.

I heard the member paraphrase what my colleagues and I, as I spoke to the bill today too, had to say about the bill, and it was a stretched paraphrase of what we put on the page about why we are opposed to the bill.

I am going to ask her one question. She talked about how everybody is screaming for this need, but there are 10 premiers across Canada, including her New Democratic premier in British Columbia, and none of them have asked the government for any support on dental care. There is a reason for that: It is in provincial jurisdiction and is meant to stay in provincial jurisdiction. However, the government, to appease the member's party, is putting something nice in the window so that its members can say, “That's why the NPD supports us.” It is, as I said earlier, a trinket.

Would the member ask her premier to please ask for this from the federal government before she stands up and says that it is something everybody is demanding?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is not paraphrasing. The member for Cumberland—Colchester actually said on Monday at committee, “I think we've established very clearly that there's no dental crisis here”, as though the 500,000 children who do not have access to dental care are not faced with a crisis when they have dental pain and dental decay, miss school and end up in surgery, which costs more money that they cannot afford.

On the question of dental care and of health care overall, I have to say that it is a shared jurisdictional issue. That is what it is. The federal government has a responsibility for it, as do the provinces. We do not get to walk away and say that it is not about us, although that is what the Conservatives want to do. They want to close their eyes as though somehow dental services have nothing to do with the federal government. It is simply not true.

My constituents have said to me that they desperately need this service. They need it for their children, and seniors need it as well, as seniors have told me. I have met seniors who could not afford dental services and who have to blend their food into a drink because they do not have teeth to eat it. The member can tell my constituents that they do not need this plan.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear my colleague defend the poor. If she thinks that she is the only one from a poor background, I will tell her right away that artists are used to living on $20,000 or less a year. I know what I am talking about. We have many artists in Quebec.

We obviously listened carefully to her speech. The same cannot be said of my colleagues when my colleague from Joliette was speaking. At any rate, the best way to understand a situation that seems inequitable is to imagine oneself in the other person's situation. If my colleague put herself in the place of Quebeckers, who are being denied part of what they are entitled to, I think she would probably react just as strongly as she just did.

What does she think of Quebec's situation? How does she see it, knowing that there is a member from Quebec in her party?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what I know is that under this program, about 100,000 children in Quebec would actually benefit. What I know on the housing benefit is that over 500,000 Quebeckers would actually benefit.

From my perspective, it is not about me; it is about the people and their needs. This is what we are trying to address with the bill. We are trying to help as many people as possible across the country.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-31, the cost of living relief act. As the health critic for the NDP, I am particularly pleased to speak to the dental aspects of this legislation.

Over 50 years ago, Tommy Douglas used his influence in a minority Parliament in this House to build our public health care system. This made access to physician and hospital care a right of citizenship in Canada rather than a privilege. This cherished institution, our public health care system, defines us as a nation. It is an affirmation that we will take care of each other when we are at our most vulnerable. It is a reflection of our commitment to equality and justice.

However, our health care system is not perfect, and it is not complete. Many important health services remain uncovered across Canada. For these, patients remain at the mercy of their ability to pay. In this minority Parliament, Canada's New Democrats are once again putting progress ahead of partisanship to address one of the most glaring gaps in our public system, that of dental care.

Through our confidence and supply agreement with the government, New Democrats were able to compel the Liberals to commit to a national dental care program for uninsured individuals and families with an income of less than $90,000 per year, with no copayments whatsoever for anyone making under $70,000 annually. We intend to build a comprehensive dental plan that would permit millions of Canadians to get dental services equal to what other insured Canadians enjoy, and ultimately to fold dental care into our public health care system as a universal publicly insured benefit, which it was always intended to be.

The Canada dental benefit in this legislation is the first stage of this plan. It is a bridge payment that would allow children under 12 to get the dental care they need urgently while a comprehensive dental plan is developed by the end of 2023 for children under 18, seniors over 65 and people living with disabilities. That plan would then expand to all families in Canada with an income under $90,000 per year in 2025, covering an estimated nine million Canadians.

The Canada dental benefit would provide eligible parents or guardians with up to $1,300 in direct, upfront, tax-free payments to cover dental expenses for their children under 12 years old over the next 14 months. The target implementation date for the program is December 1, 2022, and it would cover expenses retroactive to October 1.

To access this benefit, parents or guardians would need to apply through the Canada Revenue Agency and attest that their child does not have access to private dental care insurance, that they will have out of pocket dental care expenses for which they would use the benefit, and that they understand they would need to retain documentation to verify that out of pocket dental care expenses occurred if required. There would be an effective audit and enforcement policy. Half a million kids across Canada would receive urgently needed investment for dental care.

Unmet oral health needs impose significant costs on other parts of our public health care system through hospital stays for dental emergencies, as well as the long-term impacts of poor oral health on systemic disease. This is particularly true for children, since good oral health practices in childhood serve as a foundation for the rest of a person's life. We know oral health is an essential component of overall health. Tooth decay remains the most common childhood chronic disease in Canada. It is the most common reason for Canadian children to undergo day surgery, and it is a leading cause for children missing school.

In addition to the pain and risk of an infection caused by tooth decay, it can also negatively impact a child's eating, sleeping and growth patterns while increasing the need for treatment later in life. Numbers cannot quantify the impacts of pain, the social impacts and economic losses suffered by people with untreated dental problems, yet today as we debate this bill in this House, over 35% of Canadians, some 13 million Canadians, have no dental insurance whatsoever, and nearly seven million Canadians who may even have it avoid going to the dentist every year because of the cost.

Unsurprisingly, this impacts low-income and marginalized Canadians the most. Canada's most vulnerable people have the highest rates of dental decay and disease and the worst access to oral health care services. According to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, 50% of low-income Canadians, along with the majority of seniors over the age of 60, have no dental coverage.

This is a serious public health issue. Untreated oral health issues lead to many serious conditions, such as cardiac problems, diabetes complications, low birth rates and fatal infections, not to mention the dental health effects of chronic pain, facial disfiguration and shame. That is why Canada's New Democrats have been driving the agenda forward on universal dental care for many years.

At their first meeting following the 2019 election, the leader of the NDP pressed the Prime Minister to work across party lines to implement dental care for all Canadians. I was pleased to see the government acknowledge this NDP priority in the 2019 Speech from the Throne and was heartened to see in the Minister of Health's mandate letter at that time a direction to “Work with Parliament to study and analyze the possibility of national dental care.” Unfortunately, the Liberal government failed to take any action on this commitment in the last Parliament.

In fact, when the New Democrats put forward a plan to fund a national dental care plan by taxing the windfalls reaped by pandemic profiteers and the ultrarich, the Liberals and Conservatives voted against that proposal. When my former caucus colleague Jack Harris introduced a motion in June 2021 to establish a federal dental care plan for uninsured Canadians with household incomes under $90,000 per year, like this plan, as a first step toward universal public dental care, again the Liberals and Conservatives voted it down.

Today, we have an opportunity finally to move forward on national dental care in Canada. We must not squander it. This will represent the single greatest expansion of public health care in a generation and the largest investment in oral health in Canadian history. To those MPs who oppose this initiative, I wish to remind them that every member of this House receives dental coverage for themselves and their families paid for by taxpayers. When they vote against this bill, they are taking taxpayer dollars to cover their teeth and are saying no to the poorest Canadians for theirs, and that is a shame of the most grotesque proportions.

I see people on the Conservative side showing us their teeth. That is disgusting.

For those who claim we simply cannot afford to establish an urgently needed program, let us look at some numbers. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that the Canada dental benefit will cost $703 million in total, and once fully implemented our national dental care plan will cost approximately $1.7 billion a year to provide coverage for nine million Canadians.

We currently spend about $309 billion every year on health care in Canada. This dental care plan represents less than 1% of that, and that does not account for the savings we will achieve due to fewer emergency room visits and avoided serious health complications from untreated oral health issues later in life.

Oral health is not a luxury; it is essential. Those who say we cannot afford dental care now because we have to fix our Canada health care system do not understand that oral health care is primary health care. We would never ask people what they would rather have, heart or cataract surgery, their broken leg fixed or hip surgery. Having one's mouth covered is as much a part of one's overall health as any other part of one's body.

To those who say that the provinces or territories already cover dental care, I say this: That is a myth. There is no province or territory that covers all citizens with no copays in a comprehensive way for people making under $70,000. Every program I have looked at in this country virtually without exception is poorly funded, incomplete and reserved for too few people.

It is time for us to put aside partisan differences. The mouth was always intended to be a part of our Canada health care system. It is only a historical anomaly that it is not. When Prime Minister Diefenbaker asked Justice Hall to recommend what should be in the Canada health care system in 1964, Justice Hall recommended that dental care be included. This is an over 50-year omission that we have the chance to rectify and the New Democrats are not going to stop until all Canadians can get their teeth fixed as a matter of right, just like they can with respect to every other necessary medical issue in this country.