Mr. Speaker, about $155 million will be saved annually just from emergency room visits alone. That does not take into account the fact that the people going to emergency rooms at all hours of the day are clogging up the system for other people affected by other issues. That is a drain on our economy and our productivity as a society.
If people are going to emergency rooms out of desperation at 10 o'clock at night because they have to be at work the next day, then there is less flow in our economy because productivity goes down for a lot of different reasons related to that. With prevention, an appointment is scheduled and people never end up in that situation and do not become a burden on the emergency health care system.
That is one perfect example of how this would work and how the investment would pay off. It should be measured as part of the formula to do this. We should at least provide some political will.
Everybody knows that hospital wait times are very difficult, very stressful and very painful. Canadians should be asking their MPs why we are sending those with dental problems to the hospital, as opposed to what we should be doing, which is helping them to prevent those problems to begin with.