Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank both of our speakers today.
My first question is for Dr. Da Silva, although you kind of ruined it. At the end of your talk, you had your three recommendations. I'm going to be touching on one of them.
When I was a kid, long ago but not too long ago, I could not afford to go to a dentist. A lot of people at my school could not afford a dentist. Every year, we had public health nurses come. They were trained in dental hygiene. They would teach us how to brush our teeth, and they did that every year. They showed us a video and a couple of slides, and they literally gave us a toothbrush and told us how to brush our teeth. They walked up the rows in the gym to make sure that we were doing it properly.
I think there must have been a dentist there, because I remember individually going up to the dentist and the dentist looking at each of our mouths. The next day, you would get either a yellow paper or a red paper. The red paper meant you should see a professional dentist, who would say you needed braces. Every year I cringed, because every year I got a red slip of paper. However, there was no way I was going to show it to my parents, because there was no way we could have afforded dentists.
It sounds like a sad story, but the good news is that I never had a cavity until I was 21 years old. Also, because my parents had no money—I don't know if they meant to fool us, but they fooled us—they told us that dessert only ever happened on Sundays, so we only ever had sugar on Sundays. I think that played a big role in why I had my very first cavity when I was 21 years old.
The question I have for you is how we ensure a continued emphasis on prevention and keeping teeth healthy while we introduce this really excellent Canadian national dental care plan.