Absolutely. I'll give you my card afterwards.
With me is Andrew Jones, our director of public affairs from our office, also here in Ottawa.
The Canadian Dental Association is the national voice for dentistry, dedicated to the advancement and leadership of a unified profession and to the promotion of optimal health, an essential component of general health. That's a mouthful, but what it really means is that our association is focused on building a stronger profession, nurturing a more collaborative dental community, and supporting a healthier public. We accomplish these three priorities through knowledge and advocacy, and it's primarily our work on advocating for a strong profession and supporting a healthier public that brings us before you this afternoon.
The CDA supports Bill C-56 and encourages this committee and the Parliament of Canada to pass it as expeditiously as possible. We have two key reasons for supporting this legislation. First, establishing maternity and family leave benefits for self-employed Canadians has been an advocacy issue of ours for a number of years. We have included it as a recommendation in our submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance's pre-budget consultations, and we've raised it during our regular meetings with policy- and decision-makers here on Parliament Hill.
It might surprise you that we would be a vocal advocate and supporter of extending maternity, parental, sickness, and compassionate care benefits to self-employed Canadians, including dentists. The reality is that the dental workforce and private practice environment is changing. We believe these proposed measures will make our profession more desirable to a greater number of young people who might consider dentistry as a career.
For example, we believe this act will allow a greater number of younger dentists to alter their practice style by making it easier to balance practice and family. Therefore, they can stay more involved in practice during their years of childbirth and raising young children. One of the workforce changes is that many of our new members are coming to the profession with a much different perspective and different needs from those who have come before. Our dental schools are graduating a majority now of female students--58% in 2008--and we believe it's important to allow our new dentists, whether male or female, who are bringing a fresh perspective on work and life balance to the practice of dentistry, to have the opportunity to participate in this program.
In addition, while our profession thankfully does not have provider shortage challenges like our medical colleagues, this is an issue we're watching closely. We're receiving signals that it's becoming more and more difficult to attract new dentists to practice settings in rural and remote areas in Canada. So, again, having the option to join this program may be a positive factor that allows younger dentists to locate to rural areas, alter their practice style from what we would refer to as a full-time traditional model, but still service the area with high-quality dental care that Canadian dentists provide and our patients have come to expect.
Our second key reason for supporting this legislation is its voluntary nature. We believe that the majority of current established dentists will actually not join the program, and if it were compulsory many of them would see the premiums as an unfair and unnecessary tax on their practice that will lead to no individual benefit and simply increase the cost of providing services. We're confident that we would then be sitting before you today asking that the legislation be amended to apply it in a voluntary manner. So we support the fact that it is voluntary.
In closing, Mr. Jones and I thank you for the opportunity to bring the voice of Canada's dentists to your deliberations in support of Bill C-56, and we look forward in a few minutes to responding to any questions you may have.
Thank you.