Nine million Canadians will be eligible for the CDCP, the Canadian dental care plan, and those are people who don't currently have access to oral health care.
Right now, we're focused on seniors. Seniors don't go into long-term care and just put their teeth in a jar anymore. They actually have their natural teeth. Many of them can't communicate that they can't chew and they can't swallow, so those basic qualities of life aren't there because they don't have basic preventive care in their homes and as seniors. That's one example of seniors.
In terms of an economic impact, there are many people who can't even get a job at Tim Hortons because of their poor oral health, so it's going to have an economic impact. There are also many Canadians who actually end up in emergency rooms across the country for oral health care, through accidents or emergency visits, and they just give them a Tylenol 3 and send them home because they're not equipped or it's not covered. Millions and millions of dollars are spent in hospital emergency rooms across the country every year, and this can be prevented by preventing disease before it happens.
Caries is the number one disease in the world, and it's mostly preventable. This investment of $13.5 billion is going to prevent disease. It's going to have economic impacts, social impacts and overall health impacts for Canadians.