Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak about Motion No 62, the proposal for national dental care.
All Canadians need dental care. The statistics today show that one in three Canadians lack dental insurance, so if we look at things positively, that means two thirds of Canadians have a plan. However, for that one third of Canadians who do not have a plan, this is a serious health concern. Also, one in five do not go to the dentist when they need to for financial reasons. People, even if they do have coverage, may not have full coverage for the work they need to have done on their teeth.
Definitely, when we look at dental health, we have to consider how that relates to the overall health of people. Many conditions can result from poor dental care and cause other health care issues. For example, people can have gum disease, which is a common thing if they do not have their regular cleaning and keep up on their oral hygiene. This can lead to many conditions, including cancer, kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, all kinds of very costly and aggravating conditions. Gingivitis is another one that is a byproduct of poor dental hygiene. People have also linked poor dental hygiene to conditions like Alzheimer's. When we think about that and about the impacts, we know we need to find a way to ensure Canadians can have good dental care.
The member who spoke before me talked about the costs of this program, and that is definitely a consideration. There has been a number of estimates by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. A number of other people have looked at this as well and have put the cost somewhere just less than $1 billion or up to $3 billion a year, depending on what is covered. How will we pay for that? We already have a huge debt, $1.3 trillion, and the government is looking at raising the ceiling on that to $1.8 trillion. This means every individual in the country will have to pay $250 every month for the next 10 years to pay for that. Let us think about that. Spouses, kids, everybody would owe $250 a month.
Interestingly enough, if we think about dental care, I used to be a contractor and worked for a company with which I did not have a plan. For $100 a month, I could get a plan that had dental care, pharmacare, health coverage, all that kind of stuff. If we were not racking up such debt in the country, which will cost the equivalent of $250 a month per person, people could afford to get their own plans and choose what they want.
The concern I have with these national plans when they come forward is that, first, Quebec will always say that it has its own plan, that it is a provincial jurisdiction and that it does not want to participate. Therefore, we really never have a national plan. Then we have situations where some provinces already have some types of coverage. I mentioned that the two thirds of people actually have a plan. Then we come to the part of it that is the federal jurisdiction, which is the indigenous people. Therefore, we would end up with a patchwork at the end of the day. That really is not a nationwide program.
When we look at some of the services the government provides, such as the CRA and immigration, the level of service is not pleasing to Canadians. They are having to wait hours and hours, calling in multiple times, to speak to people who are not always polite to them and at the end of the day, they wait years and years for results. When it comes to dental care, we certainly would not want to that. Therefore, in addition to feeling that the jurisdiction of this whole situation is provincial, the execution of these kinds of things is also not the expertise of the federal government.
The affordability issue for Canadians is really what is keeping many people from having good dental care. Wages are not going up the way the cost of everything else is going up. We have a lot of inflation. The cost of housing is huge. We have a crisis in the country where even in my riding, which is a smaller urban-rural mix, the cheapest house that one can get is $1,000 a month. It becoming unaffordable. If we think about Toronto, Vancouver and the big cities, people's dream of buying a house is gone. They cannot afford to pay the price.
We think about this pandemic and the costs that have escalated through the pandemic, like the cost of groceries and gasoline. The government has had two carbon tax increases in the middle of a pandemic, and a CPP increase at the same time. All of these things are taking money out of people's pockets.
If we talk about the $100 people would need to buy a plan that would get them pharmacare, dental care or health care, we see the amount of burden that the government is putting on them by these taxes. As I mentioned, that is part of the problem of affordability.
I hate to do a rabbit trail here on the Line 5 issue, but this is where issues like Line 5 become very important. People do not always make the link with why that is important to them. A lot of people have called my office on this issue and have asked why they should care about that. It is a pipeline and they want to shut it down.
I ask them if they live in Ontario or Quebec and if they buy gasoline for their car. If they do, the cost of that will go up significantly if Line 5 goes down. Do they have a barbecue? Does it have a propane tank? That is where propane comes from for that propane tank. Do they heat their house with fossil fuels? These are all considerations where people will see increased costs.
Do they buy food? All the farmers heat their barns. They have their greenhouses heated. They are often running their farm equipment with all these kinds of fuels. Those costs will escalate again, and then it is back to unaffordability, where people cannot get the coverage they need for the health care they really want to have.
When I was on the health committee, we did get a few different updates. I heard the member before me speak about how there is a proposal to have another study, and I think that is a good idea. It is always worthwhile to find out where the gaps are in Canada and to see if there is something the federal government can do to address that.
I also remember sitting through a report and update from the Auditor General on the state of the nation on indigenous reserves in this country, where people do not have good dental care and where it is causing health issues that cost more. The gaps have been there for a long time and have not been addressed. We should be doing the things that are in our purview, the things we could do right now.
Instead, we have situations where, and I do not know if members recall from a couple of years ago, indigenous people were being taken to court by the government over their dental bills, which makes no sense at all. The government spent more money litigating than it would have if it had just paid for the dental work, which would have reduced the overall cost in the health care system because of the health impacts that poor dental care will have.
At the end of the day, when I look at Motion No. 62, I know it is well intentioned. There is a need that exists in the country for that one-third of Canadians who do not have dental care and the one in five who are not going to get the dental care they need because they cannot afford it. I do not think this is the right way to go about fixing that. I think the right way to go about fixing that is to get government spending under control, quit raising taxes on people, quit reaching into their pocket at every opportunity, and return that money to them so they can have the option to get a plan that works for them.
With that in mind, I think we also have to be very careful about provincial jurisdiction. The province is supposed to execute all of the health care services. That is its purview. The federal government can help. I know the provinces need our money in health transfers. We can work together and co-operate, but it is really not for the federal government to tell the provinces how to execute. That is their jurisdiction. That is why when we hear about these national programs, we constantly see resistance, especially from Quebec, which is very particular about its jurisdiction in the area.
In summary, I am a fan of dental care. I am a fan of finding solutions to get there, but I do not think this is it. I think the answer lies in reducing the amount of money that we are taking out of taxpayers' pockets, addressing the housing crisis in this country so that housing becomes more affordable, and making sure that people have good wages and well-paying jobs. That is where I would like to see the focus.